I never really looked too hard into this controversy, but I was definitely someone who believed it from hearing the murmurings or watching some cheap two minute youtube mashup. I watched this video yesterday and the whole thing I'd say was a pretty fascinating look into not just the controversy, but it also hints at some interesting stuff in our own psychology which lead us to believe these things without having the information necessary to make such a judgement.

I feel a bit weird now using this as my conclusive opinion as I still have not watched Kimba, but I have to say that I'm convinced that The Lion King was not a Kimba ripoff.

The same or not, I just don't like the Lion King.
I find it, and the Disney Renaissance in general to be somewhat weak.

Except for this

The Lion King is overrated. There I said it and will continue to say it.

The Iron Giant is x100000000000000000 better.

To claim Kimba or japanese animation as cheap is very low from someone that claim to study animation.
Plus claiming that because Kimba have hundread episodes no one would watch it to rip off sequences is also pretty much lol.

I love Takehiko Inoue and could claim no one would watch thousand hours of NBA games to stop in some scenes or read thousand of newspapers to cut some photographs to copy. Still there are allegations (with good proof) that he used some key 90 players as base for his stars (like Sakuragi based on Rodman) and several panels on the manga were draw almost equal to the photos. There are many counter claims to say he didn't use that as source.

But the thing is several times people end up plagiarizing without even not noticing themselves because it became ingrained in their memory. And other parts is taking several small cuts as reference. You don't want to call it rip-off your right, but don't just try to hammer it down as non-sense.

If you believe this, the best thing to do would be to actually watch some of Kimba.  It's so overwhelmingly different that at best you could argue that Lion King took a few isolated shots from it.  If you had 100 different teams all tasked explicitly with making a movie based on Kimba but changed enough to avoid a lawsuit, I doubt any of them would come up with something similar to Lion King.

Your same argument could be said to Slam Dunk and several others copyright claim infringment and would still not invalidate that one series used the other as basis or ripped it.

The clips in the video are taken from promotional bits that ran on a slew of Disney tapes in the early 90s as promotional material. If I remember correctly (I was in elementary school when the film released), there was even a television special that went on and on about how groundbreaking it was that Disney was making an "original story". 

No deflection. It is simply unnecessary to do an attack on Kimba and call it cheap (and it have connotation of bad not only low budget). As an animator you should have respect for Osamu Tezuka instead of the need to do this type of attack.

Your interpretation of rip-off seem a little narrow. And also it isn't just internet myth, this was covered a lot before internet. The first I heard of this case I think was on magazines on late 90s.

And I woud say that what need to be put down is the idea that they didn't use Kimba at all since they refuse to credit it there is every right to claim they ripped it off.

I knew about this in 1994. Lion King was still an excellent film.

That officially published book by Madhavi Sunder, which included several inaccuracies, listed old youtube links as it's sources. I definitely don't think you should feel bad. Especially when this video is a whole lot more well sourced and comprehensive.