60's Anime
KIMBA THE WHITE LION

Kimba The White Lion was known as Jungle Taitei in Japan and translates as "The Jungle Emporer."  It was a colour anime series created and produced by Osamu Tezuka, through his own company named Mushi Productions, released in Japan in 1966 and aired on Melbourne TV in December 1967 at 4pm on channel 2 and as recently as 1982. The English version was produced and coordinated by Fred Ladd with Billie Lou Watt playing the voice of Kimba, who was a female and not a male as many people believe. Billie passed away in 2001 and is survived by her husband Hal Studer. She was also the voice of Jimmy Sparks in Gigantor and Astroboy. The voice of Dan’l Baboon was Cliff Owen who was also Inspector Blooper from Gigantor and Dr Elefun from Astroboy. Gilbert Mack was the voice of Pauley Cracker as well as Dick Strong from Gigantor and Mr Pompos from Astroboy. Roger Ranger was the voice of Hal Studer. 49 episodes were made and were released worldwide through NBC. Kimba was released on video in 1993 by a Canadian group titled ‘Kimba the Lion Prince’. The theme song, voices and many of the character names have changed. The only thing that remains of the original is the animation, but it has been digitally remastered. A huge disappointment! ‘Leo the Lion' was a sequel to Kimba following the adventures of Kimba as an adult. It was produced in Japan in 1966 with the English version being released in America in 1984. It has not been shown on Melbourne TV, but is available on video. 'The New Adventures of Kimba' has just been released in the U.S with some of the episodes dubbed in English and others in Japanese with Fan subs.  The original names have been kept.
The very first episode titled ‘Go White Lion’ opens up with the words ‘Only the strong survive in the Jungle.’ Before Kimba is born, his father Caeser is killed trying to free Kimba’s mother Snowlene from lion hunters. The lion hunters are hired by the game warden to kill Caeser who is always releasing the natives' livestock as he wants all the animals to live a free existence. Snowlene is taken away on a ship to be sold to a zoo, and it is aboard the ship that Kimba is born in a cage. His mother convinces him to jump overboard. He later sees the wreckage of the ship in the water and realises the ship must have sunk, with his mother who is now dead. Kimba swims ashore guided by the memory of his father and the voice of his mother with her image being formed from a group of stars in the dark sky. In his travels to reach the jungle he sees the great cities of the humans and decides if he ever reaches the jungle he will teach the animals to be civilised like the humans. When Kimba reaches his home he is against fighting Claw who has taken over as king of the jungle from Caeser, and it is not until Kimba is captured by hunters and saved by a human that he realises that ‘sometimes you have to fight for what's right.’
He comes back stronger, defeating Claw and, like his father, becomes king. Kimba believes that destroying fellow animals is wrong, no matter what (even though he kills a few in the series), and that animals should not eat one another but learn to farm and be vegetarians.
Some of the characters were Dan’l Baboon, his wisest and closest friend, Pauley Cracker (a parrot), Dodie Deer (female) and Bucky Deer with enemies including Cassius a black panther, Claw the Lion and Tom and Tab (two hyenas). Roger Ranger first appears in the episode titled "A human friend" where he teaches the animals to talk. He often helps the animals when in trouble from humans on hunting expeditions.
An interesting thing was pointed out to me by 'Dave Sternberg' in the episode "Such Sweet Sorrow". The character Mr Pompous from Astroboy appears in this episode. It is the same character and is drawn the same way and even his name is the same. He ends up in a cage towards the end of the episode and builds a fire to keep warm in a snow storm. It is the episode with the Magical Woolly Mammoth which comes down from the mountain to save Kimba and the other animals from being captured by Mary "The Poacher," who refers to Mr Pompous as "Uncle Pompous". He is also known in the episode to Roger the Ranger as Mr Pompous. It seems that Osamu Tezuka decided to recycle the Pompous character from the Astroboy series.
Many of the original episodes are available on video. See my home page

Side note: The Leo The Lion series was done immediately after Kimba, and intended to be Kimba's adventures as an adult. Tezuka was so thrilled with NBC's reception of Kimba, that he went ahead and did the series, neglecting to obtain a little something called a contract. When he showed NBC the finished series, they told him Leo was too "dark", not suitable for children, and they were quite happy with the 52 episodes they had. Too bad for us, because the folks who finally got a chance to dub it in the 80s were not nearly as good as Billie Lou Watt and company.Tezuka's budget only allowed for 2500 new cels per episode, hence the almost-trademark cyclical animation.(Thanks to Dave Sternberg for this info)

JUNGLE EMPEROR / KIMBA THE WHITE LION [1965] Comparison Chart (Japanese and
English Language Versions)  BY Kelly Lannan (BASE_KOALA@bigpond.com)
Intended Chronolgical order - (last column) supplied by Dave Sternberg (drblake@mail.lig.bellsouth.net)

1. the Japanese language episodes themselves for their translated titles;
2. the 1965 English translation language versions of the episodes;
3. NBC's catalogue list of episodes;
4. various Australian lists, catalogues and records for the alternative titles
   
   

   The following information is from Dave Sternberg. There is one slight problem.with NBC's official sequence.
   Osamu Tezuka, who created Kimba, had a different idea for the show than NBC did. Tezuka had written this epic fable about his white lion, and he envisioned the TV series as a vehicle for it. Tezuka's story follows Kimba from birth to death. In the cartoons created for NBC, Kimba grows throughout the series. Character develops. But, like most television companies, NBC was looking at syndication, where they could not control the order in which the episodes were shown. NBC tried to play down any development throughout the series in order to make each episode self-sufficient. This causes several problems, like they try to make him talk in an early episode like 'Wind In The Desert' when in the story he doesn't learn to talk until 'A Human Friend'.  As for the differences in his looks, I guess we were just supposed to think he wasn't drawn on model. A while back Robin Leyden and Wendell Washer consulted with Tezuka, Billie Lou Watt and Ray Owens to try to determine the order in which the episodes were meant to be shown. They came up with the list above in the last column (Intended Chronological order)
   
   Kimba theme song (original)

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