Kimba the White Lion
Kimba the White Lion, known in Japan as Jungle Emperor, is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka which was serialized in the Manga Shōnen magazine from November 1950 to April 1954. An anime based on the manga was created by Mushi Production and was broadcast on Fuji Television from 1965 to 1967. It was the first color animated television series created in Japan. It began airing in North America from 1966. The later series was produced by Tezuka Productions.
A TV special premiered September 5, 2009 on Fuji TV. Produced in commemoration of Fuji TV's 50th anniversary, it was directed by Gorō Taniguchi, written by noted novelist and drama writer Osamu Suzuki, and featuring character designs from noted illustrator Yoshitaka Amano.
Plot
In Africa during the mid-20th century, as mankind encroaches, the white lion Panja gives the jungle's wild animals a. However, he angers nearby villagers by stealing their cattle and their food to feed the jungle carnivores. A professional hunter, Ham Egg, is called in to stop these raids. He avoids directly attacking Panja. Instead, he records the sounds of Panja and uses them to trap his pregnant mate, Eliza, who then becomes bait in a trap for Panja. Panja is killed for his hide, and Eliza is put on a ship, destined for a zoo.Kimba is born on the ship. Eliza teaches him his father's ideals. As a huge tropical storm nears, she urges her cub out through the bars of her cage. The storm wrecks the ship and Kimba starts to drown in the ocean. The fish help him learn to swim. As he begins to despair, the stars in the sky form the face of his mother, who encourages him. Guided by butterflies, he makes it to land.
Kimba lands far from his ancestral home and is found and cared for by some people. He learns the advantages of human culture, and decides that when he returns to his wild home he will bring culture to the jungle and stand for peace like his father.
The show follows Kimba's life after he returns to the wild, still a young cub, and how he learns and grows in the next year. Kimba soon learns that only communication and mutual understanding between animals and humans will bring true peace.
Media
Manga
In 1950, the original Jungle Emperor story started in Manga Shōnen magazine.The first manga volume has been released bilingual as Jungle Emperor Leo – Leo Edition.
Anime
1965 series
The animated series was first broadcast in Japan on Fuji Television from October 6, 1965 to September 28, 1966. It was the first color TV anime series.Other than the original broadcast in Japan in 1965, the series has been broadcast in many countries around the world.
In Asia, it was broadcast in Indonesia on Lativi, antv and SCTV ; in Iran on Channel 1; in the Philippines on ABC 5; in Saudi Arabia on Saudi TV and in Sri Lanka on ART TV.
In Europe, it was broadcast in Bosnia and Herzegovina on RTVUSK; in Croatia on ATV Split/TV Jadran, Nezavisna televizija, TV Nova Pula and Gradska TV Zadar; in Germany 1977 in ZDF; in France on ORTF and on TF1; in Italy first in syndication from 1977 and lately on Italia 1 and Boing and in Spain on TV3.
In North America, it was broadcast in Canada on Knowledge; in Mexico
on Boomerang. It was broadcast, with English-dubbed voices, in the United States and other English-speaking markets, beginning on September 11, 1966. It was first commissioned for U.S. development by NBC Enterprises and adapted by Fred Ladd, for syndicated broadcast, with Kimba voiced by Billie Lou Watt. In 2005 the original 1965 dub of Kimba the White Lion was released as an 11-disc DVD set by Madman Anime of Australia and Right Stuf International of the U.S. It was a best seller. The series was re-dubbed into English in 1993, featuring the voice of Yvonne Murray as Kimba and having a new opening, with an all new soundtrack composed by Paul J. Zaza. In 2012 Bayview Entertainment/Widowmaker releases "Kimba the White Lion: The Complete Series" 10 DVD box set of the original 1965 series. It was broadcast several times in the United States: on KHJ-TV, on NBC, on syndication, on Kids & Teens TV and on Inspiration Life TV.
In Oceania, it was broadcast in Australia on ABC, 31 Brisbane and Access 31 and on the NZBC in New Zealand.
1966 film
The theatrical version of Jungle Emperor, directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, was released in Japan on July 31, 1966.1966 series
A sequel series, Jungle Taitei: Susume Leo! first aired in Japan on Fuji Television from October 5, 1966 to March 29, 1968, featuring Leo as an adult. It aired in the United States in 1984 as Leo the Lion on CBN Cable Network.1989 series
In 1989, Dr. Osamu Tezuka died at age 60 on February 9. A remake of Jungle Emperor, The New Adventures of Kimba The White Lion was broadcast in Japan from October 12, 1989 to October 11, 1990. This series bears little resemblance to the original manga or the first TV series, as the plot is extremely different and the characters have been completely reworked and changed. Several heavily edited episodes of the series were dubbed into English and released directly to video in 1998 under the name: The New Adventures of Kimba the White Lion, by Pioneer Family Entertainment. It features the voice of Brad Swaile as Kimba.1991 OVA film
In 1991, an original video animation film was created, using the Symphonic Poem for its audio.1997 film
A new Jungle Taitei theatrical film, Jungle Emperor Leo, was released in Japan on August 1, 1997. Directed by Hiro Takeuchi, it is based on the second half of Dr. Tezuka's original manga story. It is not entirely faithful however. It was dubbed into English and released on DVD in 2003 under the name Jungle Emperor Leo by Anime Works.The film had a distribution income of at the Japanese box office in 1997.
2009 television film
A television film, Jungle Taitei – Yūki ga Mirai wo Kaeru, aired in Japan on September 5, 2009 with a completely new story, different from both the previous TV shows and the original manga. The setting was an artificially created jungle in 20XX Earth. In this movie, Panja and his mate, Eliza, are still alive; Coco is an unspecified female bird; and Sylvester, the black panther, serves as an antagonist until he changes his ways when a young boy mends his leg.In 2019, the Japan Foundation produced an English dub of the film which was released on RetroCrush in July 2020.
An earlier English dub of the film premiered on Cartoon Network in the Philippines on November 19, 2010.
Music video
The music video for the song "A Boy" by Leo Ieiri, which has an animated part made by Tezuka Productions, features an anime version of the singer which meets other characters from the Kimba the White Lion series.Other media
Jungle Emperor is a cancelled 1990 eight-bit platform action game that was in development by Taito for the Nintendo Entertainment System, based on the popular manga/anime of the same name by Osamu Tezuka. Not much is known about this game, except that it was going to be released in November 1990, but it was cancelled for unknown reasons. No prototypes of the game are hasn’t not release yet. There was planned for the unreleased Nintendo 64. Jungle Emperor/Kimba the White Lion possibles N64 game title under Emperor of the Jungle is a canceled N64 video game that was made for the magnetic disk drive peripheral. The only known evidence of its existence is a short video clip from Space World. It was to be an action-adventure game with vast exploration, but no information regarding the plot of the game currently exists. The game had its first on-video appearance at the 1996 Tokyo Shoshinkai Show, after which the game was announced to be released in spring 1999. A little bit later only a few scenes from the game were shown at the Nintendo Space World. Later that year in an interview made on 1998's E3, Mr. Miyamoto mentioned that the project is in a bit of trouble and may take longer to complete than originally expected, due to inexperience. It was unfortunately soon followed by the cancellation.Jungle Emperor characters have cameos in the GBA game , as well as a chapter from the Black Jack manga and Naoki Urasawa's Pluto.
In the Fox TV series Fringe, Kimba had a cameo in one of the episodes.
Music
The series uses several themes. The 1966 Japanese version uses an opening theme and a closing theme. The opening is called "Jungle-Taitei". The end song is "Leo no Uta". For the Japanese remake, the opening song is "Savanna o Koete" sung by Ichiro Mizuki, and the ending is "Yūbae ni Nare" sung by Tomoko Tokugai. The American theme was written by Bernie Baum, Bill Giant and Florence Kaye and sung by Bill Giant. The opening song for the sequel series is "Go Ahead Onward Leo!" written by Isao Tomita and sung by Mieko Hirota. The US-American theme song known as "Leo the Lion" was written by Mark Boccaccio and Susan Brunet of Miami, Florida's SONIC-Sound International Corporation in 1984. Jungle Emperor Symphonic Poem was released on LP in 1966.''The Lion King'' controversy
As a number of journalists and fans watched Disney's animated feature film The Lion King they noticed characters and events in the story resembling those of Kimba. Although the two works follow different screenplays, there are strong artistic similarities, and The Lion King contains numerous sequences that closely match Kimbas.Alleged similarities in the characters, beginning with the protagonist lion cubs Kimba and Simba, include the evil lions, the one-eyed Claw and Scar, the sage mandrils Dan'l and Rafiki, the animated birds Pauley Cracker and Zazu, and the pair of hyena sidekicks. The Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff deflected criticism of similarities in the characters by stating it was "not unusual to have characters like a baboon, a bird or hyenas" in films set in Africa.
Upon the release of The Lion King in Japan, multiple Japanese cartoonists including Machiko Satonaka signed a letter urging The Walt Disney Company acknowledge due credit to Jungle Emperor Leo in the making of The Lion King. 488 Japanese cartoonists and animators signed the petition, which drew a protest in Japan, where Tezuka and Kimba are cultural icons.
The Lion King director Roger Allers claimed he remained unfamiliar with Kimba throughout production until his film was nearly completed. Co-director Rob Minkoff also claimed he was unfamiliar with Kimba.
Fred Ladd, who was involved early on with importing Kimba and other Japanese anime into America for NBC, expressed incredulity that Disney's people could remain ignorant. Ladd stated there was at least one Disney animator, Shawn Keller, remembered by his colleagues as being an avid Kimba fan and being quite vociferous about Disney's conduct during production.
Matthew Broderick has said that when he was hired as the voice of adult Simba in The Lion King, he presumed the project was related to Kimba the White Lion. He explained that he "thought he meant Kimba, who was a white lion in a cartoon when I was a little kid, so I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba. I didn't really know anything about it, but I didn't really care." Animators Tom Sito and Mark Kausler, who both have story credits, have admitted to watching Kimba, and assumed many of their colleagues had too, especially if they grew up in the 1960s.
The Tezuka–Disney connection extends back decades before the movie. Tezuka met Walt Disney at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and Disney said he hoped to "make something just like" Tezuka's Astro Boy.
In 2020, the controversy was subject of an extensive video essay by Adam Johnston, covering every Kimba anime series and films. In the video, Johnston addresses many previous arguments on the controversy and concludes that previous authors mischaracterized the Japanese series when comparing it to the Disney film.
Tezuka's family and Tezuka Productions have never pursued litigation against The Walt Disney Company for copyright infringement. Yoshihiro Shimizu, the company's director, stated that many of their employees saw resemblances between the two properties, but "any similarities in their plots are based in the facts of nature and therefore are two different works". In his book, Makoto Tezuka states that the controversy started in America and people inflated the issue because of their opposition to Disney's business practices. He also states that he refuses to participate in this denunciation of Disney and that he does not want to see his father's works being turned into a weapon for those people. Tezuka acknowledges that Kimba and The Lion King are two different stories with different themes, and if the latter was about a white lion who spoke with humans, then he would not be able to pardon the similarities.
Reception
In 1967, the Jungle Emperor theatrical feature was awarded the St. Mark's Silver Lion Award at the 19th Venice International Film Festival.Commercial use
In 1978 the adult Leo character, designed by Tezuka himself, became the mascot for the Seibu Lions baseball team, along with his sister Lina who was created for the baseball team. The was used on the team baseball cap and helmet for decades Leo also appeared on the players' uniform for the 2014 season, designed by Tezuka Productions. The Seibu conglomerate-owned team's mascot became highly visible throughout Japan on baseball caps, shirts, etc., as well as being heavily used in advertisement especially in the Tokyo area. Frederick L. Schodt makes the argument that by the 1980s, Leo the lion could hardly escape the notice of foreign visitors to the city.Image from the Jungle Emperor manga appears on shirts made by Lacoste in cooperation with Tezuka Productions for their "Lacoste Live" capsule collection "Tezuka Collection", edition Fall/Winter 2013/2014.