Jungle Emperor Leo & Kimba the White Lion – Introduction
An Overview and Essay
by Chris Moon
Of the iconic characters created by Osamu Tezuka, few are as easily recognizable as the white lion cub known as Leo or Kimba. The white lion and the stories surrounding him make up one of Tezuka’s earliest fully developed works (1950) and would remain important enough to him that he would revisit the stories and characters several times via animation and occasionally in manga.
In sharp contrast to the Astroboy stories which are very direct, accessible and stand-alone, the white lion’s story is lengthy, spanning the character’s entire lifetime with plot threads extending well beyond the limits of the manga or films. Readers familiar with Tezuka will find most of his mature themes present here, though of course in their earliest iteration. There is a sense of metamorphosis from the rugged (if not outright amateurish) nature of works like Lost World and Metropolis into the young Tezuka who would someday write Phoenix. I will go so far as to say that this is the story where Tezuka found his voice.
Before proceeding further I’ll need to make a few distinctions for the sake of clarity. In Japan, the white lion has always been Leo and his father Panja, and the formal name of the work is of course Jungle Emperor. When I refer to Kimba I will specifically be referring to the 1966 series done in conjunction with NBC, not the character Leo.
In the course of this essay my intentions are to compare and contrast most of the Leo works (Jungle Emperor, Kimba the white lion, Onward Leo and the feature film Jungle Emperor Leo), make suggestions for reasonable entry points into the ‘Leo’ stories and establish the position of Leo in the framework of Tezuka’s other creations. Because of the need to discuss the plot directly, those who would not want these stories spoiled prematurely are encouraged to skip ahead to the third section of this paper or skim lightly, attempting to avoid sensitive content!
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