However, Japanese and American fans of Tezuka’s character seized upon several similarities between the two works that, if they are simply coincidental, would rank high among all-time coincidences. Both are coming-of-age stories centering on an African lion cub, and both cubs’ fathers are murdered in the first act, but Kimba includes several human characters in addition to animals, and focuses on the conflicts between encroaching civilization and nature. The plots of The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion share certain, very broad elements. 11, 1966, and it aired in syndication throughout the ’70s and into the ’80s.
According to a history of Kimba by anime historians Robin Leyden and Fred Patten, in 1964 NBC asked Tezuka if he had other ideas for shows that would appeal to English-speaking audiences, and he suggested a cartoon based on Jungle Emperor. While it first began airing in Japan in 1965, Kimba was actually commissioned by NBC, which had established a relationship with Tezuka after purchasing the U.S. Tezuka’s Jungle Emperor,” Yasue Kuwahara, a professor at Northern Kentucky University and director of popular culture studies, says Tezuka “was regarded as not only the forefather of Japanese comics but one of the great men of Japan.” He is often referred to as the “Walt Disney of Japan” due to the universal appeal of his stories and characters (though in recent years that honorific has been more often applied to Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, who was himself heavily influenced by Tezuka). In her 1997 essay “Japanese Culture and Popular Consciousness: Disney’s The Lion King vs.
It’s hard to overstate how popular the works of Tezuka - who died in 1989, around the same time Disney started work on The Lion King - were in Japan during his lifetime. 'Lion King' Prequel in the Works with Director Barry Jenkins
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