JWeinCom said:
There's nothing I can do to definitively prove that they didn't have Kimba in mind when they were making the product. But, that's not how we determine that something is copyrighted. I'm not going to argue over the specific example I gave (I'm simply not committed enough that I want to defend it, so if you think it's a bad argument then fine), but "you can't prove it wasn't copyrighted" is a bad argument that it was.
... They both feature a male Lion? Come on, Kimba didn't invent lions, or the idea of using an animal as a protagonist.
Simba is Swahili for lion. It seems pretty reasonable that this is how both came up with the name. All the lion king characters are named by using African words that describe what they are or a trait they have. Simba has been used to describe a lion in other media prior.
Kimba doesn't have a talking bird as a sidekick generally. There's no major bird character. There just happened to be a bird he interacted with in some episodes and in the movie. In the 50 hours or so of Kimba footage he's interacted with pretty much every animal). The bird character in the video you posted is from the 1997 movie (after the Lion King) and is actually quite an idiot who encourages Kimba's son (he's not Kimba's sidekick, but at best his son's) to use leaves in an attempt to fly via catapult, whereas Zazu is overly cautious and pretty much the antithesis.
You know who else had his father killed when he was a kid? Hamlet. Which was openly stated as the major inspiration for The Lion King. Is it more likely that they took the idea of a dead father from the source they claimed, which happens to be probably the most famous play of all time, or that they just made this up as a cover story?
Also, a character losing a parental figure as a motivating factor is hardly a unique thing *spoilers*. Bambi, a stated source of inspiration for both, has that. Batman, Spider-man, Magneto in X-Men First Class, Inigo Montoya, Goku, Gohan, Elsa/Anna, Tarzan, Naruto off the top of my head. Not all necessarily murdered (although a lot were) but generally being the parent of the hero means there is a good chance you'll be killed.
As a matter of fact, Kimba did not talk to his dead father in the clouds. Simply did not happen. There was an image in the manga where the clouds are in the shape of an adult lion. Maybe meant to represent Panja or maybe Kimba himself. Kimba does not interact with this cloud at all, and there is no indication that it is an apparition of any kind. It doesn't give him fatherly advice.
You know who does interact with an apparition of his dead father? Hamlet. Which is again, what the Lion King is actually based on. So, Simba was going to talk to Mufassa somehow. If they had him see his father in the stars, Kimba did that too. Moon? Done by Kimba. Just appearing as a ghost in front of him? Kimba did that. In the form of the lightning? Kimba did it. In his reflection in the water? Kimba did that. Kimba apparently saw his dead parents a lot, so whatever method they ultimately decided on was probably going to be something done in Kimba.
And for that matter, getting advice from a dead character isn't uncommon. Luke Skywalker does it, Fox McCloud does it, Shawn Hunter in Boy Meets World does it, Naruto does it, Remy from Ratattouille, Phoenix Wright, Harry Potter, Spider-man in Spider-man 3 and so on. Whatever way they chose to have Simba speak to Mufassa, it was going to be similar to something someone else had done.
Claw and Scar are definitely the best argument. Although, Claw doesn't really have a scar over his eye, his eye is just like permanently closed. And personality wise, he's not very much like scar. Using a darker color for villains is, perhaps unfortunately, not uncommon, nor is having a character of the same race/group allied with the bad guys, or having the evil character have a scar. Of course, all of those elements coming together is mildly suspicious. If there were a lot of elements like this, it'd make a case, but there's not enough here.
As pointed out, the shot you use comes from the 1997 movie. Does that mean Kimba ripped off the Lion King? No. If you're both making a movie about Lions, then you're going to likely use the Savanah. It's not unreasonable that both shows will have a sunset since you generally want to show your setting at different times of days with interesting lighting. And if I draw the Savannah at sunset, I'm probably going to have something similar to another artist drawing the same thing.
I'm not saying Lion King wasn't inspired by Kimba... cause I don't have access to the creator's minds. What I am saying is that there's no good reason to believe it was, and Disney's official story (they were making Hamlet with lions) is a far more likely explanation of why the film is the way it is than Disney was secretly inspired by an anime that was really obscure in the US.
|
