The ease with which people are fooled (A Lion King/Kimba topic)

[MrCalavera]

Okay, so since the discussion been going in circles, i'll try to explain what's the fuss about.

It's not one of those "Disney stole shit again without crediting original author(s)" videos.
It's actually quite the opposite. The author(Adum) states that it started as a short summary of a conspiracy theory, that was meant to be featured in the beginning of his "Lion King" review, until he did some more research, which resulted in the big, over 2-hour long debunk video.
The theory being Disney allegedly plagiarazing Osamu Tezuka's "Kimba: The White Lion"(which isn't the name it's known under in Japan!) animated movie. Excuse me, movie? No, not just movie, but also animated series spanning from the 60s to roughly today. The author watched hundreds of hours of Kimba content to see if the theory holds water.

Spoiler

It doesn't.

I haven't been watching YMS regularly for a while now. Last video i saw was his Spike Lee's "Oldboy" review. I don't particularly care about Kimba or The Lion King - only seen one of those, once - so i watched the video due to curiosity and word-of-mouth... But it might be Adum's best one. Not cause it's pretty funny(the abysmal english dub of the old Kimba tv series is hilarious), but cause it shows how fucking wrong people can be due to perception bias and jumping to conclusions.
Now this isn't exactly discovering America, but i think it can be worthwile due to abundace of conspiracy theories flooding social media. Usually because of their mostly political nature, questioning those makes their believers simply scoff and withdraw back to echo chambers. But since this one is all about plagiarism and cartoons, some gears might start moving after watching it, and encountering another one those "definitely not a coincidence" twitter posts.

 

[Kwak]

Okay, so since the discussion been going in circles, i'll try to explain what's the fuss about.
...

Notably, the original claims include comparisons between similar shots and characters - the shots are easy to dismiss on the basis that basic art composition with a certain theme and setting will have similarities, but the character comparison goes into more detail on how the characters are not at all alike.
Some claims were just factually wrong (basic dates, some of the arguments used come from Kimba media made AFTER the Lion King).
And some of the claims made were just due to laziness and not actually even really watching the source material it was being claimed was being stolen from.
The moral of the video is it's pretty easy to be tricked into believing a narrative with edited words and pictures (and apparently, a TED talk) and for that to become just a background belief you don't question, as YMS himself thought it was true himself at one time.

 

[JoJo]

You can get the gist of the argument from the first few minutes. There's some images and videos floating around the Internet which suggest that much of The Lion King was based on a sixties Japanese film, Kimba the White Lion. Except, as others have said, it's not a single movie as many of these collections misleadingly imply, but instead a whole franchise of manga, anime and movies that spans the sixties to the early 2000s. Ironically, many of the clips shown in comparison were actually made after The Lion King was released. Many others don't hold up in context, for example putting an image of Pumba side-by-side with a random warthog who appeared as a character of the day in one episode of Kimba and doesn't share any similarities to Pumba, beyond being a warthog.

I'm sure the OP can give a fuller description, I've only watched a quarter so far. Surprisingly entertaining, though. Good find.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Ok, I've made my summary of the video now. It goes over similar things to Calavera and Kwak, but I said I'd make my own summary, so I have. Hopefully this makes why I think this is so important more apparent.

 

[Gordon_4]

I figured The Mouse may have borrowed a little bit from Kimba - as they did from Castle Of Cagliostro for Basil of Baker Street - because animators love to wink and nod at their contemporaries and people they respect. Besides, the story of Lion King also borrows heavily (as far as I remember) from Shakespeare with several dynamics surrounding Simba, Mufasa, Scar etc coming from Hamlet. Then again everyone steals from old Will.

Besides, Disney aren’t master story craftsmen in the sense that they create stories. They are however, legendarily good story tellers.

 

[MrCalavera]

This is the biggest pie in the face I've ever seen over something like this. The way so many people bought into this and made videos speaking this controversy as truth while NEVER actually watching the series they were defending is awful. This is the age of the internet, non of this information was being held secret or anything, just how lazy ARE we as a species that it took this long to debunk this?

Well in this particular case, it's because there's not much real life incentive to get worked about two old cartoons. Adam did, as a part of his livelihood - and he spend hudred of hours in doing so(i think)! Average Joe has better(or more interesting to them) things to do with his time.
Most looking at this conspiracy theory probably just nodded in agreement and moved on.Because of course a soulless, hegemonic corporation like Disney(truth) would rip off a poor, indie mangaka(not truth) given chance? And Simba's only one letter away from Kimba. Hmm, suspicious...

 

[Drathnoxis]

That said, most Dinsey animated movies were based on older stories, most of which were comfortably in the open domain so royalties wouldn't have to be paid. Fairy tales, folklore, children's stories. Even Bambi and Mulan were based on existing stories. Even the Black Cauldron, which nobody even remembers. The only Disney (non-Pixar) animated movie I can think of which wasn't based off of an existing work is Pocahontas.

I remember The Black Cauldron. It gave me nightmares as a child.