TV Show Review: "Simba the King Lion" (1996) · 8:40pm Jan 12th, 2019
Before we begin, I'd like to give a shoutout to A Man Undercover for giving me the idea for all this. If you happen to be reading this, thank you for the inspiration. With that out of the way, sit back, relax, and prepare to read of things that no living soul should ever endure.
We all know the rumors that Disney's 1994 classic, The Lion King, took some pretty heavy inspiration from a Japanese series called Kimba the White Lion, with some going so far as to call the former a rip-off of the latter.
But what most people don't know about is that other lion-cartoon rip-off that came on the scene barely two years after Disney's film.
This is Simba the King Lion, written and directed by Orlando Corradi and made by Mondo TV in Italy, the creators of the now infamous The Legend of the Titanic and its sequel In Search of the Titanic
Here is the link to the full series, if you're interested. Watch at your own sanity's peril.
I'll make it brief. It's bad. Like, really bad. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's even worse than The Emoji Movie.
But you probably won't take my word for it, so perhaps I ought to go into more detail. Or maybe not. There’s just so much the human mind can handle, and I guarantee you this show is not a part of that list of things it can handle.
But I take it you want to know how bad it is, so I might as well get on with it.
Lord, give me strength.
So, like The Lion King, this show’s main events are kicked off when Simba’s father (who’s never even granted the dignity of having an actual name) is killed off by a rival to the throne.
Except things are different here. This all takes place in the same location and timeline as The Jungle Book. Simba has two sisters. The Lion King is shot by a hunter who, after the horrifying spectacle of the former bleeding out all over his kids, never even bothers to take the body away. And, finally, the whole plot was put together by none other than Shere Khan, his hyena lackey Kurdy, and their villainous army of monkeys, rhinos, and vultures.
No, you are not misreading that. That is exactly what happens here. You can’t make this stuff up.
I tried to warn you that this show was bad, but you didn’t listen to me, did you? Now you’re sanity’s starting to go, isn’t it? Of course it is. Mine certainly did. You could have turned back and saved yourselves all this trouble. But you didn’t!
Oh, and this is all within the first minute of this 56-episode, 25-minute-each series. Try to wrap your head around that. You will fail.
So, the other animals of the jungle–a bear named Baloo, a leopard named Bagheera, a snake named Kaa, a wise, college-graduation-garb-wearing owl with glow-in-the-dark glasses named Augustine, a top-hat-wearing crow named Ludwig, a couple of nurse squirrels, and a few others–decide to take care of the newly orphaned prince and his siblings, with most of the actual parenting falling to a wolf named, simply enough, Mother Wolf. Living alongside him and the others is a young deer named Buckshot, his best friend and fellow adoptee.
Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Also, am I the only one who thinks “Buckshot” is an incredibly cruel name for a deer? What was his mom’s name, “Got-Shot”?
So, they all grow up together, evading Shere Khan and Kurdy’s attempts to bump them off and having all sorts of wild adventures, including, but not limited to, disposing of toxic waste left behind by the eeeeevil humans, staring into the sun to undersand its secrets, fighting off a pack of “wild red dogs”, testing out invisibility formulas, getting high on strange grass, meeting a giant anthropomorphic tree named Arbor, and finding a cult of fireflys that worship the Big Dipper and share its power with the protagonists, eventually culminating in Simba and Buckshot being able to fire off rays of intense heat and light from their paws and chests, respectively.
I kid you not.
Along the way, they also pick up a few new pals, including an overbearing canary with a thing for singing (badly), a pair of sailor rats that washed up on shore one day, and a poodle named Toy whose a little to obsessed with a yellow ball he–or she, it’s kind of hard to tell with that voice–brought along.
About midway through this little shop of rip-offs, Simba–now a young adult–decides that it’s about time that he take the throne of his kingdom (well, to be more precise, his oddly omniscient “conscience” tells him too, or something). So begins an epic quest to reclaim leadership of the savannah, in which Simba and literally every friend he’s made over the course of the show accompany him. Along the way, they go through several adventures, including a valley of dinosaurs (yep, they’re ripping off The Land Before Time now. Big surprise there), ancient mouse pharaohs, royal capes that turn you invisible, Toy changing his name to Winner for some reason, an epic and graphic final clash with Shere Khan, and shallow and characterless love interests for Simba and Buckshot, all leading up to the former’s crowning as king of the animal kingdom, or whatever.
We’re supposed to cheer for Simba’s triumph. To hoot and holler for this lion that we’re supposed to have come to love over the course of his trials. Me? I cheered because the whole, stupid thing was finally over.
Honestly, the fact that every character is basically a rip-off of something else makes it nigh-impossible to get any sort of enjoyment out of this. They’re not even good rip-offs, either. The characters all tend to have moments of jerkiness or downright cruelty at times. A lot of them tend to lash out at each other for very minor things. Toy, in particular, looks like he could murder somebody if they try to take his ball away. And tries to!
The series also gets pretty violent at times. I’ve already mentioned the sequence where, upon being shot, Simba’s father’s blood actually drips down onto one of his daughters. Later, during the red dogs episode, Simba and his adoptive mother are brutally beaten down by the titular villains, and the former has a rather disturbing vision of his siblings, both biological and adopted, getting horrifically mauled by the dogs. The fact that the imaginary victims’ faces look way over the top mitigates it a little, but still, it's pretty terrible. There's also Shere Khan's ultimate demise. At the end of their fight, Simba crushes his neck in his jaws, vaporizes him into dust with his Big Dipper laser powers, and buries him under a literal mountain of rocks. You know, real heroic stuff.
But that’s not the worst thing about it. Not by a long shot. The most horrific thing in this entire show is that it has a sequel! I’m dead serious, Mondo TV thought it was good enough to give us an entire second round in which Simba’s son goes to New York city with a bunch of his friends and plays SOCCER!!!
But that’s another story. One I don’t really want to tell, but I feel I have to, because now I’ve undoubtably piqued your intersts, and will be mercilessly hounded to review it until I do*.
Overall, I’d give this whole thing a 0.2 out of 5. It’s weird, plagiaristic, poorly-written, poorly-animated, and just plain bad. My suggestion? Unless you’re dead-set on watching this plagiaristic atrocity of animation, I’d advise you to take the advice poised in the opening credits of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events; look away. Because this show really will wreck your evening, your whole life, and your day. As well as your sanity. Can’t leave out that.
This is Jade Dawn, signing off…for now.
*Not really. I know you guys have a lot more sense than that…right?
My gosh. It's like someone took the worst crossover fanfiction on the internet and put it into the hands of an animator perpetually high on cocaine, and then donated the final product to the Umbrella Corporation.
5017519
Well, considering these are the guys who made The Legend of the Titanic and In Search of the Titanic, no surprise there.
One of these days I'm gonna get around to writing about that sequel show...
Boy. I’m definitely not going near that show. It sounds terrible even when you become familiar with it through words.
By the way, thanks for the shoutout. I feel honored by the fact that I inspired you in doing something that I do myself, which is reviewing movies and tv shows.
You know, I actually remember catching a couple of episodes of this at one point. Glad to know I didn't imagine it all.
Ah, so Simba is an Asiatic lion in this one.
That always seemed weird to me. Family dinners must have been awkward.
wat
Hey, that is actually a legit plotline from The Jungle Book. (The real animals in question are called dholes.) IIRC, in the story they were basically like the Mongols of the animal world or something and everyone was like: "Shit, we're all gonna die," but then Mowgli wipes most of them out by using tactics and weaponizing bees. They do manage to kill his wolf-mom, though.
Ah, yes. Another thing that never made sense to me.
You know, if there are actually modern humans in this setting, you'd think they'd notice if some animals learned to harness the power of astrology to shoot magical death rays.
Yep, I remember seeing that part. So, hold on, he got burned to dust and then they buried the dust in rocks? Because that seems a bit unnecessary.
Starting to see why the death rays didn't raise any eyebrows. Man, the nature documentaries in this universe have to be pretty weird.
5021913
Yeah, I do remember that one, now that I think of it. I didn't read the actual book until the 2016 film came out.
So I guess I can give them points for that, plus being the only (known to me) adaptation where Kaa is, true to the books, a good guy.
5017519
I disagree.
With cocaine the product would be at least momentarily fascinating
Actually, Disney's The Lion King is pretty much Shakespeare's Hamlet but with animals
5022045
True. But there was an older Japanese anime called Kimba the White Lion that many claim was ripped-off by Disney when they made The Lion King.
I mean, I can definitely see the similarities, but I don't think the latter was a straight up rip-off.
This, on the other hand...
5022048
I wouldn't call it a blatant rip off either.
Definitely borrowing of ideas, but by no means plagiarism