How can I describe my experience watching this show? There were times I was really interested in its characters, its world-building, its maturity, its social commentary... but there were also times I really wanted to pour bleach on my brain for some of the most stupid and pointless episodes I've ever seen from an anime.
You see, the big problem of Kimba is not its limited animation, it isn't its heavily censored English dub, and it isn't the fact that this series is constantly thrown around as the progenitor of The Lion King by people who have never watched it.
The problem of this series, in my view, is how it absolutely cannot find a middle ground on what it wants to be. Sometimes, you're watching a show about how war, prejudice and lack of communication kills people.
Other times, sometimes in the very same episode, you're watching a bunch of talking animals do silly, pointless, mind-numbing stuff like build a restaurant or an amusement park, go to school, ride on a balloon around Africa, etc.
The show zig-zags a lot between being dead serious and being so silly that it becomes unbearable for anyone older than five to watch. I understand that most of these problems resulted from Executive Meddling, but even with that knowledge, that doesn't make the show any better.
While the English dub it received is far from being terrible, it does reduce many of the good episodes into nonsensical stories in a show that's already heavily censored and kid-friendly.
One of its worst examples comes from Episode 32, where the English dub makes the intentionally ambiguous morality of a great episode moot by adding a very culturally insensitive message that doesn't exist, nor is alluded to in the Japanese original.
Not that the Japanese original is much better either, Episode 11 tries to discuss a heavy theme like the cruelty of hunting by having Kimba fight "The Three Most Dangerous Hunters in the World": A mad scientist, a cowboy, and a circus performer. Yes, the moral of the episode is dead serious, yet the episode itself is anything but.
On the plus side, when the show wants to be good, it's darn good. There are episodes here and there that challenge ideas, that question the characters' morality, that change your perspective about life. Sadly, these episodes are buried under a thick layer of filler and kid-friendly shenanigans.
The show definitely has great moments, but even with the producers' attempts at softening the blow that Executive Meddling had caused, this is still a show meant for very young children to watch and it hasn't aged very well.
At best, I would recommend to watch only the first half of the show, where most of the more mature themes lie, then jump straight into the 1997 movie, Jungle Emperor Leo.
Jungle Emperor (1965) - Half great, half terrible
How can I describe my experience watching this show? There were times I was really interested in its characters, its world-building, its maturity, its social commentary... but there were also times I really wanted to pour bleach on my brain for some of the most stupid and pointless episodes I've ever seen from an anime.
You see, the big problem of Kimba is not its limited animation, it isn't its heavily censored English dub, and it isn't the fact that this series is constantly thrown around as the progenitor of The Lion King by people who have never watched it.
The problem of this series, in my view, is how it absolutely cannot find a middle ground on what it wants to be. Sometimes, you're watching a show about how war, prejudice and lack of communication kills people.
Other times, sometimes in the very same episode, you're watching a bunch of talking animals do silly, pointless, mind-numbing stuff like build a restaurant or an amusement park, go to school, ride on a balloon around Africa, etc.
The show zig-zags a lot between being dead serious and being so silly that it becomes unbearable for anyone older than five to watch. I understand that most of these problems resulted from Executive Meddling, but even with that knowledge, that doesn't make the show any better.
While the English dub it received is far from being terrible, it does reduce many of the good episodes into nonsensical stories in a show that's already heavily censored and kid-friendly.
One of its worst examples comes from Episode 32, where the English dub makes the intentionally ambiguous morality of a great episode moot by adding a very culturally insensitive message that doesn't exist, nor is alluded to in the Japanese original.
Not that the Japanese original is much better either, Episode 11 tries to discuss a heavy theme like the cruelty of hunting by having Kimba fight "The Three Most Dangerous Hunters in the World": A mad scientist, a cowboy, and a circus performer. Yes, the moral of the episode is dead serious, yet the episode itself is anything but.
On the plus side, when the show wants to be good, it's darn good. There are episodes here and there that challenge ideas, that question the characters' morality, that change your perspective about life. Sadly, these episodes are buried under a thick layer of filler and kid-friendly shenanigans.
The show definitely has great moments, but even with the producers' attempts at softening the blow that Executive Meddling had caused, this is still a show meant for very young children to watch and it hasn't aged very well.
At best, I would recommend to watch only the first half of the show, where most of the more mature themes lie, then jump straight into the 1997 movie, Jungle Emperor Leo.