Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 11, 1994                   TAG: 9407110088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO                                LENGTH: Medium

IS `LION KING' ORIGINAL OR RIP-OFF?

Disney has promoted the film as its first cartoon feature since 1970 not taken from an existing story, but there are striking similarities to a tale that began as a Japanese comic book in the 1950s called "Jungle Emperor" and was reincarnated in a Japanese TV series in America in 1966 called "Kimba, the White Lion."

Claims of unacknowledged borrowing are common in the film world, but this dispute is particularly significant because the creator of the Japanese story is an animation pioneer, the late Osamu Tezuka, who journalists sometimes call "the Walt Disney of Japan."

Both Disney and Tezuka's animations center on lions in Africa. In both, a father lion is the king and is killed early, leaving a young son. The son returns after an exile and struggles with himself over his responsibility to become the new king. In both stories, the son overthrows an evil lion who has usurped the throne in his absence.

In both, the good lions are aided by a wise old baboon and a talkative bird, while the evil lions are aided by henchmen hyenas. The hero in the American TV adaptation of Tezuka's story was called Kimba. In Disney, he is Simba. The evil Japanese lion has one eye and was called Claw. The evil Disney lion is called Scar and has a scar over one eye.

Even some specific images - the promotional shot of a lion on a jutting rock or the outline of a dead father lion in the clouds talking to his son - are common to both.

And although the stories differ in major respects - humans play key roles in Tezuka's saga, for example, and the plots diverge sharply - the parallels are close enough that many people familiar with the Japanese story are "quite up in arms," said Trish Ledoux, editor of a magazine on Japanese animation.

"I was horrified," said Toren Smith, owner of San Francisco's Studio Proteus, which licenses American versions of Japanese comics. "It looks awfully damn fishy."

"I've received calls every day from people all over the country who are outraged by this," said Robin Leyden, a former animator in Canoga Park who wrote a history of the "Kimba" TV series. "People are screaming, especially when Mr. Eisner says, `It's our original thing - it's not based on anything else.' "

Many people in the animation industry said Disney artists would be familiar with the work of Tezuka, a prolific artist who inspired Japan's post-war mania for comic books, created the popular film series known in America as "Astroboy" and who visited the Disney studios when he was preparing the TV version of his lion story.

Disney has publicized "The Lion King's" debt to "Bambi" and "Hamlet," but has been quiet about Tezuka, an omission that Smith said helps explain the anger of those who believe that Japanese animation, among the best in the world, has long been denied the credit it deserves in the United States.