Striking similarities between Kimba The White Lion (1965) and Lion King (1994). “488 Japanese cartoonists and animators signed a petition accusing Disney of plagiarism and demanding that they give due credit to Tezuka (writer)”

Striking similarities between Kimba The White Lion (1965) and Lion King (1994). “488 Japanese cartoonists and animators signed a petition accusing Disney of plagiarism and demanding that they give due credit to Tezuka (writer)”

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  1. Isn’t this like the 100th time this has been posted? If you’ve seen something on Reddit, you shouldn’t repost it the day after stating “Today I Learned…”

  2. If I remember correctly for the previous 100 times this was posted -many of the supposed coincidences can be explained away, simba and Kimba having similar names, Simba is Lion in Swahili, hyenas are often characterised as laughing because of their call, the plots are completely different – the Japanese one focuses on conflict with humans for instance. It’s most likely Disney took some artistic inspiration, but the plot is based on Hamlet. I don’t think it can be called plagiarism.

  3. This is referenced in the Simpsons episode where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies!

    Mufasa appears in the clouds and says, “You must avenge my death Kimba! I mean, Simba!”

    I never knew what it was referencing until now.

  4. Disney [viciously fights to hold on to their IPs indefinately](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act), and yet a massive amount of their properties [are based on, or completely copied from](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_animated_films_based_on_fairy_tales) existing works/fairy tales.

    Their modus operandi is to take some thing public domain (or in some cases, not public domain), culturally adapt it and attempt to maintain ownership of it forever.

    They’re not alone. A host of other media companies would benefit greatly from never having to relinquish IP to the public domain, and have been fighting for this for decades.

  5. I’m pretty sure I read the last time this was posted that those “copied” scenes are from the feature film of Kimba that was released after Lion King?

  6. Not arguing the plagiarism thing at all, as much as I love The Lion King, Disney sucks balls for what they did, and should at the very least own up to it.

    That said: Some of the Kimba scenes used in this video are from a movie Jungle Emperor Leo that came out in 1997, TLK came out in 1994. I think the entire movie is on Youtube if you want to watch it.

  7. Gonna post the same thing I do each of the dozen times I’ve seen this posted

    > Back in 1994, Takayuki Matsutani, the president of Osamu Tezuka’s production company, Tezuka Productions, agreed with what Sito said today:

    >Quite a few staff of our company saw a preview of “The Lion King,” discussed this subject and came to the conclusion that you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them.

    >Matsutani continued saying that if Tezuka had thought Disney “got a hint” of “Lion King” from his work, he would have been pleased

    If the President of the company who created Kimba isn’t getting indignant, why should we?

  8. In the Japanese version, it looks like the 2 cubs are twins which makes their romance weird. In the Lion King, the 2 cubs may or may not have the same mother. It is assumed that they had the same father, but Scar could be the father of Nala. It would explain why Scar hangs around.

    If you give 2 writers a one paragraph description of a movie and ask them to write it, they may come up with very similar movies. They are both set in Africa so many of the animals will be the same. It is common to give villains black hats or in this case a black mane.

  9. The biggest problem I have with this, is that Disney even refuse to acknowledge that they were inspired by Kimba.

    For example, when When Daron Aronvsky wanted to use a few scenes form Perfect Blue in his films he bought rights to that movie (https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/26075/1/the-cult-japanese-filmmaker-that-inspired-darren-aronofsky)

    Co-director of Lion King even lived in Japan for 2 years where he served as an animation director overseeing the Japanese artists and claims he never knew about Kimba . They even tried to torpedo screening of “Jungle Emperor Leo” in 1997 claiming that it is a rip off form Lion King. You can hear more about it here at 5.40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8. Also this video goes into some details about the story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHjktwvqdE

  10. Ive never seen Kimba but I remember seeing a trailer for it after one of my Pokémon VHS (though given the date it maybe it was a remake or something), always thought it was funny that it was so closely named to Simba, hadn’t realized Kimba was first..

    Edit: did some research and the Kimba movie I referred to was made after the Lion King

  11. Learning about this, overreacting to this, and then finally seeing Kimba and realizing that it’s not the direct 1:1 ripoff that some people claim it to be has been a nerd rite of passage for 25+ years now.

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