
Did Disney's The Lion King Rip Off an Old Japanese TV Series? (1999) - networked
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1378/did-disneys-em-the-lion-king-em-rip-off-an-old-japanese-tv-series
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imjk
Here's some visual comparisons:
[http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm](http://www.kimbawlion.com/kimbawlion/rant2.htm)

~~~
gjkood
Thank you that was amazing. I didn't think it was that close. Imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery after all.

~~~
derekp7
I think that the similarities might be a form of the Texas Sharpshooter
fallacy. That is, there are many millions of creative works in existence
throughout all time. With that many, you are bound to find multiple examples
of pairs of works that have similarities, even if the creators were unaware of
each others' works.

Non-creative works of the same fallacy include the Lincoln/Kennedy comparison,
the one book (can't remember the name) that seemed to predict the sinking of
the Titanic decades earlier, and the various Nostradamus "predictions". Also
see the Birthday Paradox.

~~~
gwern
> That is, there are many millions of creative works in existence throughout
> all time.

Yes, but creators will typically only be aware of a few thousand. And the
Disney staff had indeed watched the original.

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yrochat
Osamu Tezuka, author of Jungle Emperor Leo, was a huge fan of Disney's work,
and he was his main influence. Personally, I love to see this as a tribute
rather than as plagiarism. And I'm saddened every time this story pops up,
especially when it's framed like that.

Just found a discussion on that topic on IMDB:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110357/board/thread/235177489](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110357/board/thread/235177489)
I hope that the discussion in this actual thread is not going to end like that
:-)

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> Personally, I love to see this as a tribute rather than as plagiarism.

Try to create a similar tribute to Disney's intellectual property, then
explain it to their lawyers. Here's what happened with deadmau5:
[http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/09/disney-attempts-to-
blo...](http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/09/disney-attempts-to-block-
deadmau5s-trademark-application-deadmau5-responds-with-cease-and-desist/)

~~~
savanaly
That doesn't mean it was wrong for Disney to do it in the first place.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)

~~~
pyre
It makes them hypocritical in a morally reprehensible way.

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gjkood
I remember as a child watching Kimba the white lion. If I remember rightly it
was translated from Japanese. There were some amazing Japanese Animes then as
now.

I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Disney was just being
sincere. With permission I am sure if it indeed was based on the original
Kimba show.

Kimba..Simba.. Nope can't see any coincidences there.

~~~
pyre
The "Simba" one is the most likely to be coincidence though. "Simba" is the
word for lion on Swahili.

~~~
gjkood
Thats interesting. I didn't connect that. The word for lion in some Indian
languages is 'Simha' or 'Simham'.

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agos
See also “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and “The secret of blue water”

~~~
nicolaslegland
Back in 2001:
[http://www.thesecretofbluewater.com/atlantis2-i.htm](http://www.thesecretofbluewater.com/atlantis2-i.htm)

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Avshalom
They also ripped off Hamlet. People seem less annoyed by that though

~~~
morganvachon
Well, Hamlet (like all of Shakespeare's works) is not copyrighted. A manga
that had been out only a few years before The Lion King would certainly be.

But you make an excellent point: There's not really any originality left in
the arts. It's all been done before.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>Well, Hamlet (like all of Shakespeare's works) is not copyrighted

I find it interesting that the HN community is usually deeply anti-copyright
until they're own works or the works they like are used seemingly without
permission. Then we all become copyright nannies and strict copyright lawyers.
This is why I think IP reform will never truly work. We're all to hypocritical
about it. We want to use Disney's stuff but we don't want to let Disney use
anyone else's. If the stuff that someone else owns is more valuable that ours
we want it. When someone takes something of value from us, we freak out. That
isn't politics, that's just envy and theft.

I saw reddit take down a site that was using some redditors clip-art without
permission, most likely accidentately. The outrage and DDOS was unbelievable
for a place where "free culture" is the norm. It seems like there is no real
anti-copyright movement, at least an organized one. Just a disorganized group
engaging in hypocritical self-interest under the guise of "political
reformer."

Shame really, 10+ years ago, it seemed guys like Lessig were making progress
and we were just one SCOTUS ruling from change. If anything, we're farther
from reform than ever now.

~~~
innguest
The reason for the contradiction between belief and behavior arises from lack
of principles. Most people will decide on a per-issue basis how they feel
about it, and then rationalize their sentiment.

The truth is intellectual property is not real property, and therefore has no
legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society. That's the principle,
property rights for property. Be it Disney or whomever.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The truth is intellectual property is not real property, and therefore has
> no legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society.

This is true in the sense that intellectual property is a subcategory of
intangible personal property which is a subcategory of personal property,
which is a different and mutually exclusive subcategory of "property" from
real property.

But I suspect that you are using "real property" to mean something other than
what that term means in discussing categories of property (since otherwise
you'd be arguing that all _personal property_ is inconsistent with capitalism,
which only makes sense if you've gotten capitalism confused with a
particularly extreme form of communism.) But I don't know exactly what you
_do_ mean by "real property", and I think you would do well to define what you
mean by it (and maybe choose a term that doesn't already have a clear and
well-understood meaning in the context of property) and explain why that thing
is the only thing with a "legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist
society".

(And then, for bonus points, explain what relevance being the only thing with
a "legitimate claim for protection a capitalist society" should even be
relevant in any modern mixed economy, all of which have made the conscious
choice to deviate in some important ways from pure capitalist notions of
property rights.)

~~~
innguest
Real property = that which is material, i.e. made out of stuff that you can
carry around.

For instance, if you print a computer file, the sheet of paper with the data
on it is real property because it's a material thing in the world. The file on
the computer is not real property because it is not a material thing in the
real world that you can carry around - you can put it on a flash drive and
carry _that_ around, but not the bytes or the letters that make up that data.

Even if you could carry the bytes around (let's say for the sake of the
nitpickers) in your hand without a flash drive, just the bytes, then only
_those_ bytes would be property, but the information those bytes represent is
never property because the information anything represents is purely
conceptual; not inherently material, but something that comes from the
interpretation of material things. So I'd be free to arrange my own bytes in
the same way you arranged your bytes, if you happen to publish your
arrangement in any way, and you could not sue me for some bogus "copyright"
claim since you have your bytes and I have mine, and you'd impinge on my right
if you told me I can't arrange my bytes in a certain way because you've
arranged yours that way first.

Capitalism can only concern itself with real, material property because one
can only _possess_ material things. IT is not possible, really, to _possess_
an interpretation of something material (unless you never tell anyone, like
Coca-Cola does, but they do not rely on law for their trade secret to be
enforced, they simply don't tell anyone).

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honkyderp
I believe Kimba may have been a possible influence in some regard(at least
prior to Roger Allers coming on board and changing the story to the Hamlet-
esque plot). However, a lot of those "scene comparisons" are absolutely utter
nonsense or just grasp-strawing. The only single one that's worth noting is
the lion in the clouds similarity(although Mufasa appeared as a ghost in the
clouds, whereas the Kimba one's just a cloud formation).

A good example of this article just trying to trick people into thinking that
it is a rip off if that cliff dangling comparison. In truth, Kimba is actually
just trying to climb out of a small hole with a spiked trap at the bottom of
it, and the female lioness herself gets herself caught in trouble soon after
that.

A lot of these comparisons are pretty much just a classic case of grabbing
similar looking screen captures, and pairing them together out of context to
fool people into thinking the scenes themselves are exactly alike.

I have no doubt that Kimba played some influence very early on in production,
but plot-wise, they're significantly different at the end of it. This old
article really needs to have a bullet put its head. It's caused so much damage
and warped the whole thing into an unnecessary "rip off" controversy.

------
Osiris
This is similar to the questions around "Blurred Lines" and whether or not it
was a copy of a copyrighted work or just inspired by another work but still a
creative work of its own.

Look at industries that aren't protected by copyright, like fashion. There is
a lot of progress and change in that industry because it's legal to borrow
from other people's ideas while still making a unique work.

Scientific progress is another area that requires the sharing of knowledge and
ideas freely in order for all of society to benefit and progress.

I'm not convinced that borrowing, even heavily, from someone else to make a
new work is a bad thing as seems to be the implication in this article.

~~~
laumars
As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the issue here is the double
standards used by Disney. On the one hand, they borrow ideas from other
people; and on the other hand, they extend copyright law and sue anyone who is
inspired by them (even people who aren't profiting from their content)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But that applies to anyone who owns a copyright. If you don't attempt to
enforce it, you can't then sue if someone does significantly violate it. Not a
Disney thing; its a copyright thing.

~~~
laumars
You're thinking of trademark law where you have to be seen to protect your
trademark. Copyright law works a little differently as you can pick and choose
your fights to some degree (and many artists do operate this way by turning a
blind eye to YouTube bootlegs but upholding their claim when their
intellectual property is used commercially without permission).

------
arunix
“You must avenge my death Kimba, .. I mean Simba.”

~~~
colomon
"If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
a couch for luxury and damned incest."

------
binxbolling
Just curious: why are we dredging up stuff from 1999? Is it throwback Friday
now?

------
Gravityloss
Pretty incredible if all this is coincidences:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72AVvgRNf2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72AVvgRNf2Q)

------
Spooky23
No more than Star Wars ripped off "The Hidden Fortress" and "Midway". Art
riffs off other art. In the Star Wars sense, there were a lot of parallels to
the other works, but it was and is still an original creation.

~~~
pyre
I get that art riffs off other art, but the actions of Disney are what upset
people. In cases like this, they will "take" from others without giving
anything in return, but if someone gets too close to their "intellectual
property" they pull out the big guns and attempt to erase that person from
existence.

------
sreyaNotfilc
Yes...

------
billyhoffman
Betteridge's law of headlines wins again!

~~~
settsu
Came to comment specifically with this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
saraid216
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge&sort=byPopularity&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
settsu
S̶o̶?̶

Fuck it, I don't give a shit. It's painfully lazy headline writing like every
other commercial site on the web and it has made Hacker News as fucking
useless as the articles it links to...

~~~
saraid216
So leave. Flag the articles. If you comment on a shitty article with a shitty
headline, the algorithm very probably gives it more weight and makes it more
likely to show up on the front page.

Leaving comments like this is painfully lazy writing, if you can call it
writing at all, and it has helped make Hacker News as fucking useless as you
are.

------
madaxe_again
Disney ripped of Kimba in much the same way as DS9 ripped off B5... or vice-
versa, depending on who you talk to.

This won't have been down to a storyboarder or artist going "mwahahaha,
appropriate the things", rather down to execs going "hey guys... you know... I
was thinking it'd be neat if like the daddy lion appeared in clouds like a
ghost... above a pointy rock or something. Left a bit. Slope it more. Give the
baddie lion a scar or something. Hey, hyenas are evil, let's use hyenas as a
sort of critical greek chorus.". This is apparently largely what happened with
DS9 - "hey, it'd be great if there were like, some aliens or something, and if
we had long expansive plot arcs... and let's make it on a space station. with
a bar. and hookers. and blackjack. ok, forget the hookers and the blackjack.".

Typically, the people who are doing the ripping off have absolutely no idea
that this is what they're doing. Talk to a web developer who, after the event,
realises he's been made to clone a site through drip-fed inference by their
client.

~~~
philwelch
Having watched both B5 and DS9, I would agree that they have similarities, but
a great number of them are coincidental, overblown, or convergent evolution.
For example, in DS9 they eventually get the Defiant and in B5 they eventually
get the White Star, but any series that takes place on a space station is
eventually going to want some way for the characters to get off the station
and take trips.

Did Paramount see that B5 was in development and decide, "we need a space
station show too"? Yes. Are the two series especially comparable? No. There's
ten times as much similarity between the backstory to _Star Trek: The Next
Gemeration_ and the writings of the Argentine Marxist J. Posadas, who believed
that nuclear war on Earth (World War III in TNG) would inevitably lead to
visitation from benevolent communist aliens (first contact with the Vulcans,
as shown in _Star Trek: First Contact_ ) who would usher in a utopian paradise
of communism (as repeatedly established in TNG, where Picard gives passionate
speeches about people no longer caring about accumulating wealth and that
there's no money in the future).

But back to the point with Kimba: the article I jj posted in the comments
repeatedly mentions references to the notion that Disney was explicitly
working on an adaptation to Kimba until their effort to get the rights fell
through, to storyboard artists using stills of Kimba as points of reference
and to quotes from people involved in the project implying that it was an
adaptation.

