TV Show Review: "Simba Junior Goes To New York And The World Cup" (1998) · 3:21am Feb 22nd, 2019
DISCLAIMER: Yes, that is the full title. You can't make this stuff up.
Also, you might want to check out my previous review here to get a better idea of the horrors of which I am about to describe to you.
(For your viewing [in]convenience, the full series can be found here.)
My first movie/TV show review blog revolved around a 1996 Italian made show entitled Simba the King Lion. Written and directed by the late Orlando Corradi, and produced by Mondo TV, this animated abomination shamelessly ripped-off beloved classics such as The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Bambi, The Land Before Time, and a multitude of others while blending them together with Mondo's own twisted fantasy elements in what can only be described as a travesty of media production.
And for whatever reason, the powers-that-be that run Mondo thought this show was so amazing, so spectacular, that it deserved a part two.
You know, I don't really say this of people often, but I'm gonna say it now...what were these people on?
Anyways, this is Simba Junior Goes To New York And The World Cup.
You know, they always say don't judge a book by it's cover. I dunno about you, but I think that title speaks volumes about the quality of this show.
This tale of audience woe begins an unspecified time after the original show (not that anyone cares about the Mondo TV canon). King Simba now has two children, Simba Junior and his sister Light. One day while out playing with Winner, the toy-ball-obsessed poodle from the last show, they run a cross a young couple on a safari. Thinking that Winner is a lost dog, the couple "kidnaps" him, and Junior and Light are powerless to stop them as they return home to New York City, where Winner manages to escape from them on the airport tarmac and flee into the suburban jungle.
The leaders of the jungle are incensed ('cause, you know, humans are the Devil), and decide to mount a rescue operation. Aided by the magical humanoid tree, Arbor, the majority of the original cast travels to New York (it's never made clear how–in these first few episodes, he seems to teleport them through a hole in his trunk, but in later episodes he's shown actually walking, which begs the question of how did he get into Central Park with nobody noticing) to rescue their friend.
But right away, they run into problems. First off, while escaping from the NYPD, the animals accidentally shrink themselves to the size of toys. I dunno, it's got something to do with some magic medallions that the two pirate rats picked up in the first show–don't ask. It's a really long and weird story, like everything else in this twisted reality.
Secondly, after escaping into the sewer system, they quickly come under fire by a gang of rats. No, that is not a loose term. I mean literal rat gangs who drive motorcycles and dress in leather and have mohawks and smoke cigarettes and every other gang stereotype imaginable. The jungle animals are initially able to repel them, but the rats return later, having allied with the other local gangs, and eventually trap the group in a cage and charge the other rat denizens to see them like a zoo.
At this point, the children of the group manage to hypnotize Arbor (who had gone back to the jungle after the drop off) into taking them to New York so they can rescue their parents. I'd like to point out that, until the show's halfway point, the children are only secondary characters.
But it turns out the adults are able to manage just fine. It turns out that the rat's behavior is, at least in part, being influenced by some kind of pinkish slime that feeds on and encourages negative emotions. The jungle animals (with a little help from the canary reciting Shakespeare) are able to arouse enough positive emotions in the rats that they are released with little trouble.
So now we can add Ghostbusters II to the list of things these shows have ripped off.
But they still have to go back anyway. It turns out that Shere Khan's twin cousin Berdan has shown up back home in the jungle and is causing all sorts of trouble. So the adults go back home to take care of that, while the children take over the search. Along the way, they befriend a ghost cat named Catsper (gee, I wonder where they got that idea from!) who somehow becomes corporeal when zapped with Simba Junior and Light's Big Dipper laser powers (please don't ask), as well as a suave, smooth-talking dog named M.J. Fox.
Now, up until this point, these shows have just been poorly-written, poorly-animated, and poorly-acted bad. Ya' know, the usual, maybe just a little exceptional in that regard. But with the introduction of Fox, we cross into a new realm of awful. Light, the lioness cub who is the equivalent of a twelve year old, and Fox, a grown-up dog, begin to fall in love with each other. We now have a pedophilic relationship between a lioness cub and an adult dog!
No, Twilight, I am not. And what's worse, none of the characters seem to have a problem with it! The only complaint that's brought up is by Light's mom, who points out that Fox is a dog, to which Light responds along the lines of "I never thought my parents would be capable of racism!" But other than that, it is never once treated as a problem, and the other characters are actually happy for them!
Well, eventually, the heroes manage to find Winner, alive and well. Except he doesn't want to go home just yet. It turns out that animals from all around the world are gathering to host the first ever animal Soccer Tournament, and Winner has become the Coach for the fledgling African team, and enlists the other jungle animals into playing for the team.
Yeah, apparently soccer is a big thing over in Europe, so I guess this was Mondo trying to cash in on that. There's even a part where Fox runs out to get a sponsor, and Mondo TV themselves end up sponsoring the Jungle Team, with their own stipulation being the rights to use their likenesses as part of a cartoon series. It's supposed to be a clever fourth wall break, but given the quality of this show, it falls utterly flat and just feels self-congratulatory.
Well, the soccer thing takes up pretty much the rest of the show's 26-episode run, starting at around episode 13. Now, I normally would go into more detail about that whole arc, but I won't, because...
[A.] I don't know a single thing about soccer. I am not a sports expert, nor do I have any interest in sports whatsoever.
[B.] This review is long enough already without me forcing you to slog through all of that.
[C.] I just don't want to.
So, yeah, they play in the championships, win first place, get a trophy, Light and Fox become a couple and nobody bats an eye, and they all go home. There. Done. Finito. End of story, right?
In the final few minutes of the very last episode, Light receives a strange vision of herself traveling to a far-away land of knights, castles, and dinosaur-knights (?) and helping rescue a baby prince from the clutches of an evil witch so that he can grow up to fulfill his destiny and conquer the evil witch once and for all.
And it's only after the weirdness of all of that wears off that the true horror of that sequence begins to weigh upon your mind.
It's a sequel hook. There's a THIRD one out there.
But that's still not the end of it. That weird fairy-tale stuff we saw? That's from the final moments of another Mondo TV show called The Legend of Sleeping Beauty. So that means if you want to be all caught up, you're gonna have to go and watch all 26 episodes of that. And then you're gonna have to come all the way back so you can watch the crossover show, Winner and the Golden Child!!!
And before you ask...NO. I am NOT gonna review those two shows. Ever. I've already suffered enough, and I think that you all have too. This ends here.
On a scale of one to ten, I'd give this show a "'No Hope For Humanity' Awful". This is even worse than Simba the King Lion. It's insane, it's crazy, it's a total nuthouse of animation, and the pedophilic content is absolutely unacceptable.
This is Jade Dawn, and it's about time that I move on to reviewing better things.
This studio has somehow earned enough money to continue making these absolutely awful ideas? That fact alone is the worst part of the whole piece. Freaking...I was having a good day. We all were having a good day. And then I received the news that this existed.
This was a hilarious review; I loved every word of it. But now I'm afraid this nightmarish Simba is going to pop up in my peripheral vision when I'm having sleep paralysis!
5017999
Oh, man, I totally forgot today was your birthday! Sorry about putting a damper on your day.
I'm not sure how Mondo TV got enough cash to make these things, nor how nobody has sued them yet. I'm not even sure how they managed to hire anybody to dub these things (they were made overseas, after all). I think I also forgot to mention that in this series, the other animals like Bagheera and Kaa are simply referred to by their species names, like "Leopard" and "Snake". Meanwhile, Buckshot is now interchangeably called "Bimbi" (as if the rip-off couldn't be any more obvious) or "Bimbo" (?!).
On a side note, I heard somewhere that part of their animation team is based in North Korea. So maybe that has something to do with it...psychological warfare, perhaps?
But let's think of something happier now. Happy Birthday!
5017999
5018123
BTW, how was your birthday?
5022878
Pretty nice. I got candy, new shoes, a new suit, lego sets, pretty warm clothes, and a bit of homemade stuff from my family. I didn't find out a way to bring Fluttershy to this dimension, though.
5022886
Well, I'm glad to hear it went well. Happy Birthday. :)
xD
Probably for the best, though. After all, there's the science of how to do it, what her friends would think, what she would think, and don't even get me started on what would happen if she caught even a fleeting glimpse at social media. 'Course, ponies probably have some issues we do, but still.
5022926
How about I actually search out a real person like Fluttershy instead of endlessly fantasizing about her?
...Pshahahahahahaha! Never gonna happen!