New Jungle Emperor, Go Ahead Leo! (1966)

Genre

comedy television series

Country

Japan

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

An adult white lion named Leo tries to keep wild animals away from humans, staying true to a promise from his youth. New adventures unfold as he leads his jungle community.

lightheartedwhimsicalbittersweetadventuroussentimentalmellowearnest

What happens

Leo the Lion (新ジャングル大帝 進めレオ!, Shin Janguru Taitei: Susume Reo!; lit. 'New Jungle Emperor: Move Ahead Leo!') is a sequel to the Japanese anime television series Jungle Emperor, (localized in English as Kimba the White Lion). While the original 1965 series primarily followed the first half of Osamu Tezuka's original manga series, this series more closely adapted the second half and was produced in 1966 without the first series' American partners. An English dub of the series was first broadcast in the United States in 1984 on the CBN Cable Network (now Freeform). Making the series without a co-producer gave Tezuka complete creative control. For example, Tezuka changed the conclusion of his original manga story (represented in the last two episodes of this series) to a happy ending. The story of Leo the Lion follows many years from the end of the Jungle Emperor series, when Leo has become a full adult. At the end of the first series, in the original Japanese script, Leo promises to keep his animals separate from humans; this drives Leo to behave hermit-like in this series, leading to some confusion in English-speaking audiences. As the series unfolds, the focus shifts from the title character to his son, a male cub named Rune (nicknamed "Runi"). This series as a whole is about Rune's growth, from a helpless cub to a confident leader. This Japanese series was dubbed into English by a company based in Miami, Florida in the United States known as SONIC-Sound International Corporation, and run by Enzo Caputo. The theme song for the English dub was written by Mark Boccaccio and Susan Brunet. Stuart Chapin, who dubbed many of the voices into English, "colloquialized" all 26 scripts. After Chapin and Caputo clashed about basic matters (Chapin wanted the series to reference Kimba, a show Caputo never heard of; Chapin also wanted the Thompson gazelle to be called "Tommy" but Caputo stuck with "Tumy" because that was how the Japanese spelled it), Chapin ignored most of the plots and made up the scripts as he pleased, matching the dialog to lip movements. Thus, an elephant quotes a poem by Emily Dickinson and a gadget-heavy spy episode becomes a vehicle for "Sterling Bond", James Bond's hapless brother. In later scripts, puns abounded. In the last script, Chapin had Leo/Kimba (voiced by Caputo himself) explain the Kimba name mix-up by claiming that "Kimba" was a word that meant "little coward". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Jungle Emperor Leo (1997)
• Jungle Emperor Leo (1966)
• Jungle Taitei Movie (1966)
• Leo and Fred (1984)
• Jungle Taitei: Susume Leo! (1966)
• The New Adventures of Kimba The White Lion (1989)
• Kimba the White Lion (1965)
• Seton Academy: Join the Pack! (2020)