It's a Titan Crew Christmas! THE FLYING HOUSE, Episodes 1 and 2

The Flying House (1982-83) represents the "last bow" of the crew of talented voice professionals who brought us Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. It's at once a "sequel" of sorts to Superbook and a "leap forward" from that earlier series, both aesthetically and thematically. Indeed, I think it's one of the better animated series of any stripe from its early-80s time period -- a pretty fallow period, to be sure, but there's a considerable amount of entertainment value to be found here.

The "blowback" that Superbook received for thrusting its young protagonists directly into Old Testament storylines -- a backlash that led to the rejiggering of the series' premise into what I consider to be an inferior format -- evidently dissipated very quickly. One would think that, if making modern-day interlopers prime movers in Old Testament tales were a no-no, then doing the same with the story of Jesus Christ and His ministry on Earth would be absolutely verboten, especially for a show telecast on the CHRISTIAN Broadcasting Network. CBN bigwigs, however, evidently decided that it was "no big" for bungling Professor Humphrey Bumble's (Hal Studer) time machine to transport Justin Casey (Billie Lou Watt), Angela Roberts (Sonia Owens), and Corky Roberts (Helena van Koert) into "extremely close and incredibly extensive" contact with Jesus and His disciples. Fer corn sakes, when the gang lands in ancient Israel, the shepherds immediately mistake Justin for the Messiah... and the interaction only "ramps up" from there. I think we really have to salute CBN for its open-mindedness in sanctioning this show for American consumption. Put it this way: I rather doubt that a similar show depicting young Middle Eastern children traveling back in time to hobnob with Mohammed will be appearing on Al-Jazeera anytime soon.

The series' first two eps, "Blast off for the Past" and "Star-Spangled Night," introduce us to the characters and take us through the events of the Nativity and the flight to Egypt.  Go to the CBN Web site and enjoy, and we'll touch base on the "other side."

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The flaws of The Flying House are present at the creation (sorry if I'm mixing Testaments on you there). You hear many of the same basic musical themes over and over and over again in episode after episode, which gets real old real fast. Yeah, I know that the earliest Disney TV series used stock music as well, but nowhere near as unimaginatively as The Flying House tends to. I'm also sorry to say that the annoying Corky doesn't improve that much upon further acquaintance. But the characterization of the robot SIR (George Gladir) is a distinct improvement upon that of Superbook's Gizmo, and Professor Bumble provides a humorous adult presence that Superbook did not have. Professor Peeper's prickly relationship with his son Christopher in Superbook may have given the adult-child relationships there an extra layer of realism, but Peeper could not be classified as endearing by any stretch of the imagination. Professor Bumble, by contrast, with his innocently inflated ego and deviated-septum-influenced voice, is a hoot. Here is where Hal Studer really came into his own as a good voice actor.

Though it's not apparent in these first couple of episodes, The Flying House also took some interesting stylistic chances in its narratives. Entire episodes were devoted to "expanded versions" of Jesus' parables, and, as if to emphasize the "story within a story" nature of these tales, the parables were generally animated in a highly stylized, almost two-dimensional fashion. In many cases, the look was almost that of a more serious version of Jay Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales.

The Flying House's core voice cast of Watt, Ray Owens (the adult Jesus), Studer, van Koert, and Gladir is supplemented by a rotating group of old pros that includes Gilbert Mack, Corinne Orr, and Peter Fernandez. (I suppose that this is why Hal Erickson, in his slightly sniffy entry on The Flying House in TELEVISION CARTOON SHOWS, complains that the show's supporting players, in particular the antagonists, tend to sound like Speed Racer villains.) Billie Lou Watt's "Astro Boy/Kimba" voice for Justin is getting a bit on the thin and strained side by this time, and van Koert's Corky will occasionally "scrootch" your inner ear with his wailing, but, by and large, the voice performances are sturdy enough. Amazingly, no end-of-show credits are given for writing, voice-acting, or anything else, for that matter -- a serious oversight, but certainly no more of one than the absence of any reference whatsoever to the show's New Testament setting in the opening sequence (which would have been a "title sequence" had a title card actually been shown at any point).

All 52 Flying House episodes are available for viewing on CBN's Web site. Give them a look!

A SUPERBOOK SIESTA: The Titan Crew Return in an Early-80s Bible-Themed Anime Series

I knew nothing about Superbook (or its sequel-of-a-sort series, The Flying House) until I met Ray and Sonia Owens in the mid-90s. The Owenses were living in Virginia Beach at the time, and that city, as you may know, is the headquarters of the Christian Broadcasting Network. CBN, working in tandem with Tatsunoko Studios -- the animation outfit that created Speed Racer -- originally created Superbook to proselytize Japanese families and teach them about the Bible. The show wended its way to many other countries as well, premiering in the U.S. in early 1982, and is still in circulation in numerous places. It's also been updated in CGI format (not too well, I'm told).

Reconstituted as Echo Productions, the Superbook production team reunited four of the five performers who'd worked on Astro Boy and Kimba all those years ago: Billie Lou Watt, her husband Hal Studer, and the Owenses. Only Gilbert Mack was not part of the rotation, and he still made occasional guest appearances. The Owenses' daughter, Helena van Koert, took Mack's place. Other "Americanized anime" hands such as Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr pitched in on occasion, making Superbook a delightful audio mashup of some of the most beloved anime series of the 60s.

In its first season, Superbook's structure was pretty basic: "Typical kid" Christopher Peeper (Billie Lou Watt) and his friend Joy (Sonia Owens) are whisked by the magical "Superbook" (the Bible) to various events in Biblical history, mostly drawn from the Old Testament. The kids, accompanied by their "guardian robot" Gizmo (Helena van Koert) -- who started life as one of Chris' toys (does that really make any sense?) -- interact with the Biblical heroes and play roles (sometimes shockingly significant ones) in the unspooling of many famous tales. The high degree of interaction between the kids and the Biblical figures must have made some people at CBN nervous. The second season completely rebooted the concept: now, Chris and Joy stayed at home and watched on a computer as Gizmo, Chris' dog Ruffles, and Joy's little brother, who'd been magically sucked into the past by some unholy combination of spiritual might and computer snafu, wandered around ancient Israel while "true-life Bible stories" were taking place elsewhere. I never found this revised concept to be convincing, even in such a highly fanciful context. The Flying House, which concentrated on the New Testament and the story of Jesus, returned to the "direct interaction" approach and stuck with it -- with considerable success.

You can see "sanctioned" clips from season one at CBN's Superbook Classic Web site. I'll just note a few additional points here:

(1) As you might expect, Billie Lou uses her Astro Boy and Kimba voice for Christopher Peeper. It's a little raspier than it used to be, but still immediately identifiable. What amuses me about its use in Superbook is that Chris is not exactly your standard goody-two-shoes kid. He feuds constantly with his Dad, the persnickety Professor Peeper (Ray Owens), and cannot always be trusted to do the right thing right away. I find it funny to hear that voice used, if not exactly for evil, then certainly for something other than unalloyed good.

(2) Sonia Owens' Joy sounds W-A-Y too much like an adult woman. The Titan/Echo crew were caught between a rock (Simon Peter?) and a hard place here; Sonia's voice for Kitty would have sounded too cutesy, Billie Lou also had difficulty doing convincing young-female voices, and Helena Van Koert apparently couldn't come up with a compromise voice. The Flying House, which also has a young girl as a main character, falls victim to the same problem.

(3) I'm currently watching streaming vids of The Flying House, and, to be honest, it is superior to Superbook in virtually all aesthetic particulars. The scripts (which were done by our friends at Titan/Echo in both cases) are better, and the draftsmanship is vastly better. Superbook, however, seems to be much more fondly remembered for some reason. Maybe it's because of the simple charm of the original concept. I'll be getting to The Flying House before long and will elaborate on the comparison at that time.

UP NEXT: We return to KIMBA with Episode 27, "The Chameleon who Cried Wolf."

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 26, "A Revolting Development"

We're finally halfway through the series, so here are a few "midpoint musings" before I proceed:

(1) I've had a lot of fun writing these. I hope it shows.

(2) I will soon be "cutting back" to one episode per week as the Fall semester nears. My original hope was to get done by the end of 2011, but I don't think I'm going to make that deadline. This is no problem, however; whatever DuckTales 25th anniversary matter I post (I haven't decided as to its nature yet) wouldn't launch until the Fall of 2012.

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"A Revolting Development" is an extremely frustrating episode -- an episode that could have been SO much better had things been "boiled" a bit more thoroughly. Granted, it's great to finally get some closure on one of the series' main themes, namely, the animals' search for some palatable, humane alternative to meat-eating. The method of closure, while relying heavily on "overly convenient" happenstances, is reasonably clever and satisfying. The episode's illogical portrayal of Claw, Cassius, Tom, and Tab, however, knocks the ep out of any chance at top-, or even middle-, -drawer status. Not only are the perpetual villains cast in a role that would NEVER be accepted by the most naive subject of Kimba's kingdom, much less Kimba himself, but they actually punt on a chance to dispose of Kimba once and for all... and, would you believe, they do so on the request of a zany one-shot character! These problems were present in the original script, and the Titan crew can't do much to fix them, try as they might.

Link to episode at Hulu

The "skip-to-my-lou" opening sequence is the sort of thing that we'll be seeing quite a bit of in future episodes featuring "jungle cubs" Dot, Dash, and Dinky (here, joined by Speedy Cheetah and... a giant ground squirrel? Does Sandy Cheeks know about this?). The difference here is that Kimba cuts the fun and games short to... go and do jungle-prince business, I suppose. In many of those later episodes, he will maintain a cub's POV and reactions for a good deal longer than this. The offhand reference to a cub's being named "Doozy" is a gaffe.

Wouldn't you know that a zebra (Stripes = Ray Owens) would be the one to exploit the hitherto-unexplored "loophole" that allows herbivores in Kimba's kingdom to insult carnivores with impunity? One can hardly blame goofy Uncle Beetle (Gilbert Mack, apparently channeling Ed Wynn) for regarding the "kick-off" as an insult to members of the cat family (which apparently includes giant squirrels for the duration). Of course, to insult an elderly, stumble-prone lion with the longest set of bangs in or out of captivity would take some doing to begin with. Beetle makes a more cogent point (not to mention a better intellectual impression) when he reminds Kimba that the animals have relied on insects to fill the gap. Dan'l's argument that Kimba "never liked the idea" would have had more force had we heard it at some point during "The Insect Invasion" or "The Gigantic Grasshopper."

The "cat family protest meeting" can also be said to double as this episode's "shark-jumping meeting." Not because what follows is of low quality; rather, because Cassius, Tom, and Tab are attendees and no one pays them any particular notice. Would even Uncle Beetle take Cassius' advice on anything? As bizarre as it sounds, for the rest of the episode, we're asked to buy Claw and his minions as trouble-making members of Kimba's jungle community -- the equivalents of Montana Max in Acme Acres, Dr. Smith on Lost in Space, or Snake Jailbird in Springfield. This gives the remainder of the ep a slightly cockeyed feel, as if we're watching the thing at a Dutch-tilted moral angle.

The "seduction of the innocent" scene should have been great, but all I keep thinking is, haven't the kids learned by now that Cassius, Tom, and Tab are bad news? If not through direct personal experience, then through the advice of their parents? Had Dash and the others fallen under the spell of meat by accident, then we would have had a far more satisfying scenario in which Kimba must convince the youngsters -- who represent, after all, the future of Kimba's vision -- to sacrifice their desires for the greater good. Instead, to be frank, Cassius comes off as the equivalent of a "pusher" here. Not a particularly pleasant message to send, even with the slapstick humor, the amusingly self-referential version of Tom and Tab's song, and Cassius' treatment of Tom and Tab as what Greg Weagle might call "international objects."

After the kids meet meat, we learn that a carnivorous diet... makes one a careless, arrogant jerk! Who knew? Uncle Beetle's protest suddenly seems dignified by comparison. As the kids prance along, we learn as a side note that Dot and Dash are siblings. Also mark that kick of the turtle; it'll actually mean something later.

The use of Roger Ranger in this episode strikes me as essentially pointless. The herbivores are gathered in a nervous huddle, the campsite comes into view, and Roger appears OUT OF NOWHERE to check things out... and discover that his old scientist friend Calvin Hottidge (Gilbert Mack) is inside the tent. The problem isn't that Calvin and Roger happen to be old buds; the problem is that Roger really isn't needed in order to allow the animals to interact believably with Calvin. Calvin could have been attacked by the hungry carnivores and Kimba could have saved him -- which in fact happens later on -- and then the story of Hottidge's search for the final ingredient of his "meat substitute" could have been told. Of course, Calvin would still have had to experience the shock of Kimba and the other animals speaking to him, but that certainly didn't bother other humans in earlier eps. So why use Roger at all?...

...."Ooooooohkay, fine..."

It strikes me that beta-testing a new invention without an important ingredient is not a particularly credible example of the scientific method in action. Why didn't Calvin put his foot down and simply refuse to allow people to eat his creation until he could locate some Tickle-Chicle blossoms? Then again, Calvin is a bit of a wimp, as we learn when the carnivores attack his camp, take him to the proverbial "remote location" (simply eating him on the spot, as opposed to making the meal "to-go," would actually have made more sense), and have a ball scaring him silly. The cute scene in which a hesitant Dash gets to "make the first move" on Calvin is quickly "nega-trumped" by the absurd business involving Kimba offering himself as food to the carnivores. When Claw subsequently yields to Uncle Beetle's demand that the meat-eaters give Calvin one week to produce pseudo-meat, the ep really tips over "the edge of no return." Again, it makes no sense at all for Claw to act, and to be treated, as just another member of the jungle community, or to allow another community member to make his decisions for him. Whoever thought up the original Japanese script for this episode really needed to be called into conference before the thing made it onto film.

Granted that the major damage has already been done, the rest of the episode is pretty decent. The incidental "collateral damage" that Dash did to the turtle (Ray Owens, sounding a bit like the future Superbook's fastidious Professor Peeper) is resurrected in a clever and thoughtful way, and Kimba's subsequent efforts to get the slow-moving fellow to cooperate with the desperate search are amusing. Kimba's Chicle-blossom-bearing dash back to the jungle is evidently meant to be an "action scene" of sorts, but it is so truncated that it really doesn't make much sense. Why would Hottidge's minions think that Kimba was trying to injure their boss simply because he was running towards the jungle? Perhaps fittingly, the jeep wrecks here take the prize for the most senseless scenes of "mechanical destruction" in Kimba. The average car wreck in Speed Racer was far more meaningful (not to mention deadlier).

We bow out with Hottidge and Kimba both showing magnanimity -- Hottidge by refusing the "government" medal (are we to infer here that the United Nations literally runs the world?! *shudder*), Kimba by freeing the remaining insects (though he might have said something a tad less utilitarian than "We won't be needing you any more"). I wish I could be a bit more magnanimous about the episode at large, especially given its thematic importance. Well, at least it's watchable, provided that you can accept the illogic. Call it a "good episode substitute" and let it go at that.

Up next: It's time for a SUPERBOOK SIESTA as we take a look at the Titan Crew's "comeback" series of the early 1980s.

THE BEST OF KIMBA: Episode 1, "Go, White Lion!"

UPDATE (4/19/13):  Scratch the YouTube worries.  Kimba is now available for free on Hulu and I will be redoing all of my links to direct readers to Hulu to watch episodes.

Time to get this puppy (or white lion cub) underway. I would be interested in feedback regarding how I have arranged this first entry.  The YouTube videos of the episodes of Kimba have the embedding feature disabled, so I'll have to break my comments into parts linked to the appropriate vids on YouTube itself. Or should I provide one single link to the start of each episode, let you watch it on YouTube, and then comment on the ep as a whole? I'll start with the former method, but please let me know which you would prefer, if you happen to have a preference.

The impressive opening and closing credits of the Japanese series (with music performed by the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, no less) reflect a certain amount of "low-level tension" that existed between Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Studios and NBC Films, Tezuka's American distributor, regarding how this new project was to be developed. Mushi and NBC had worked smoothly together during the earlier production of Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), with NBC providing funds to allow Mushi to improve its production quality as the series went on. Tezuka's original print version of Astro Boy, however, was a lengthy series of adventures that were only loosely connected, if at all. Jungle Emperor was something else again: a graphic novel that ran to over 500 pages and told a continuing story, namely, the life story of the white lion Leo and his family. Tezuka's original proposal to NBC included the entire story, but NBC didn't want to touch a property in which the hero dies (and is literally eaten) in the end. The two sides ultimately reached a compromise: Mushi would produce a 52-episode series starring young Leo, and, if the series was a success, NBC would consider buying a follow-up series in which Leo would be allowed to grow up. In the back of his mind, however, Tezuka was already thinking of the adult-Leo series as a done deal, and he wound up springing the 26-episode sequel on NBC by surprise after the renamed Kimba the White Lion had already become a syndicated hit. This 26-episode follow-up was much more in the somewhat grimmer spirit of the manga, though, and NBC passed on it. It wouldn't be broadcast in the U.S. until 1984, and it made next to no impression then.

As the opening credits indicate, Tezuka's real interest was always in getting to the era of the adult Leo, who, inspired by his experiences in the human world, has painstakingly built a jungle kingdom in the face of obstacles "foreign and domestic." In their article on Kimba, Fred Patten and Robin Leyden remark on the "ponderous awesomeness" of Tezuka's original concept, with its deep ruminations on the nature of civilization, the conflict between the forward-thinking and the backward-looking, and so forth. While they may have overstated things just a tad -- the manga has plenty of slapstick humor to leaven the tension -- the opening bit does give you some of the flavor of what Tezuka would have done if he had had complete creative control of the series. The adolescent prince Leo's "arrival" in the closing sequence is accompanied by a quickened tempo and a somewhat lighter "feel," reflecting NBC's wishes. (Unsurprisingly, NBC chose to use this as the opening of Kimba, complete with a peppy new theme song.)

NBC's caution over what the American audience would "accept" aside, there was no getting around the deadly seriousness of "Go, White Lion!", the series pilot. We've seen many superb curtain-raisers in TV animation since, but, within the limits of a half-hour broadcast, you'd be hard-pressed to name a modern series with a stronger pilot than this. The original version was so powerful, in fact, that NBC asked Fred Ladd's Titan Productions writing and dubbing crew to tone things down a little. The version available on Hulu is the "revised" version, completed just four days before Kimba debuted in many national syndicated markets on September 2, 1966. A few copies of the original version, recorded in November 1965, did slip through the cracks, and it is available... but I don't own it. (I know some of you are shocked. What can I say, I lead a busy life.) If/when I get a copy, I'll discuss it here. You can, however, see a brief clip of a relevant portion below.

Link to episode on Hulu

So where does Kimba take place, anyway? Yes, I know we're in Africa -- the Omniscient yet Unseen Narrator (Ray Owens -- and thanks, Joe) helpfully provided that info -- but where in Africa, exactly? The original "plan" of the animated Jungle Emperor posited Central Africa, but, by the looks of things, we must be in South Africa. You see broad veldts, busy ports, large European-style cities, and, above all, plenty of white people like the ruthless hunter Viper Snakely (Owens) and his omnivorous sidekick Tubby (Gilbert Mack). You even hear a sort of an Afrikaner inflection in the voice of the "game warden" (Mack) who criticizes Snakely for failing to snare Kimba's father Caesar. The somewhat "denatured" version of Africa that we're presented with here probably exists because the manga's depiction of black Africans as the dreaded "ooga-booga," living-in-huts natives of stereotypical lore was "no sale" even in 1966. You can see a remnant of this in the sight of the native huts near the warden's office. Black characters -- and even an actual native or two -- do appear on screen later in the series, but Kimba generally treaded very cautiously when it was obliged to display scenes of human civilization. (Needless to say, the series ultimately caught flak from blacks who criticized the show's lack of modernized black Africans -- one of the reasons why Kimba disappeared from general circulation in the late 1970s.)

Caesar (Owens) is depicted reasonably accurately -- if anything, his actions are toned down. Tezuka's Caesar (Panja, originally) thought nothing of torching native villages to make his liberate-the-animals point. Unlike Kimba, there's no evidence whatsoever that Caesar would have taken a cue from human civilization at any point, his line about "someday they'll learn" notwithstanding. Kimba defended the rights of animals to live in peace with one another but would never have gone so far as to "unchain" livestock. Those father-son "conversations" might have been interesting to listen to...

Caesar's reaction to Snowene's (Billie Lou Watt) baby announcement would probably cheese off Kimba's OLDER SISTER Leona, who'll appear twice in future eps. Still, the all-important status of the "alpha male" was certainly believable in an animal-kingdom context. BTW, though Snowene is tan-colored, she is officially supposed to be a "white lion."

The conning/trapping of Snowene and dispatch of Caesar are drawn straight from the manga, with an extra element of drama added in that the showdown takes place in a ravine. In the manga, Caesar was slain in a native stockade (and only after he had nearly destroyed the place). The relative ease with which Snakely does the deed only serves to emphasize how vulnerable the animals are in the face of human civilization. There seems to be a flash of a Christian theme as well when Caesar speaks his dying words to Snowene. It sounds almost like an "Annunciation" moment to me, especially in the way in which Caesar essentially "prearranges" for Kimba to get his name. I don't know whether this explicit intention was in the Titan crew's mind, but the gang reassembled some 15 years later to dub the Bible-based series Superbook and The Flying House, so it's certainly possible.

The deaths of Caesar and Snowene bring to mind one of the supreme ironies concerning the Americanized Kimba. As we'll see, the series had the notorious habit of frequently camouflaging obvious character deaths with phrases like "I'll just lie down here and rest a while..." Yet the series BEGINS with the cub Kimba losing both of his parents, so why wasn't it considered acceptable to admit to the deaths of future one-shot characters? Certainly, the "deaths-that-weren't-really-deaths" in Kimba were nowhere near as gratuitous as the accidental deaths that many a character suffered in, say, Speed Racer. Most every death in Kimba carried some meaning, up to and including redemption of the dying character. Why play it safe to such a ludicrous extent?

The mice who befriend Kimba on board the ship are taken from the manga -- if not from the exact same place in the manga. In Tezuka's original, after the ship carrying Snowene went down, Kimba drifted for a bit before being picked up by another ship, which had the mice on board. The little fella with the tie (Watt) even ultimately accompanied Kimba on his first adventure in human society. It's easy to see why the animated retelling of the story "telescoped" this sequence into a more compact form.

Kimba's leap from the porthole is almost an exact copy of Tezuka's version, right down to the dramatic back-shot of Kimba poised with his paws on the hole looking down at the sea. Snowene's "info dump" MUST have been far more extensive than the one depicted on screen, however. It's tough to buy Kimba progressing from a baby who can barely speak to a young lion who is capable of striking out on his own in just one scene. Also, in episode 2, "The Wind in the Desert," Kimba evinces some knowledge that he wouldn't have had if this were the only backstory that Snowene had provided concerning Caesar and his jungle kingdom.

The dramatic storm sequence is still mightily effective even after 45 years of progress in the quality of TV animation. The music box adds a mournful motif that was not present in the manga.

Kimba first displays his distinctive qualities during the magnificent swimming sequence, which takes a handful of panels from the manga and expands upon it in visually spectacular fashion. Here is where Kimba, in my view, differs most dramatically from his heroic predecessor, Astro Boy. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that, while Astro Boy was a character to whom things happened, Kimba was a character who made things happen. (I, meanwhile, am currently filling the "wondering what happened" role.) Astro Boy was built to be a boy robot and remained one, despite acquiring increasingly human qualities as time went on; Kimba matured. Astro Boy was forever being sent off on "missions"; Kimba was the ultimate proactive protagonist who set larger movements in motion. At the end of "Go, White Lion," Kimba -- with a little friendly encouragement from the fish and the Richard Haydn-voiced stork (Owens) -- takes matters into his own paws and begins paddling his way towards his destiny.

Snowene's starry soliloquy was somewhat more dramatic (and lengthier) in the 1965 dubbed version, as can be seen below. Watt's slightly different voice for Kimba is also noteworthy. (True story: the Titan crew's original attempt to dub this ep was cut short by the famous Northeastern blackout of November 9, 1965.)

It would be mere carping to point out that Kimba really shouldn't know what butterflies are. That trip back to the jungle would have to wait a while, anyway -- Kimba's sojourn in the human world would intervene. More anon.

I'll close with a few words regarding that eternal controversy: Did Disney's The Lion King (1994) crib from Kimba? Visual evidence abounds that it did. My own interpretation of the evidence has remained pretty consistent: one or two parallels might have been mere coincidence, but there are simply too many similarities to refute the "copycat" theory. In statistical parlance, the P-value is too small for all of these similarities to have arisen by chance alone. Nearly two decades after the original controversy, however, I realize that, even if The Lion King didn't rip off Kimba in any way, shape, or form, it couldn't have done Kimba a bigger favor. Recent attempts to do semi-"straight" live-action adaptations of Speed Racer and Astro Boy served mainly to (in the case of Speed) make many folks wonder what they'd seen in the original anime or (in the case of Astro Boy) barely joggle the status quo of a character that hadn't been seen on American TV in years. The Lion King controversy, by contrast, practically invited those "in the know" to carefully examine the strengths and weaknesses of the supposed "source material" and actively encouraged those who'd never seen Kimba to give it a try, especially after the 2000 VHS collections and the 2005 Ultimate DVD Set became available.

Up next: Episode 2, "The Wind in the Desert."