“I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba”
Apparently, this similarity was confusing for some of The Lion King’s cast as well. Matthew Broderick, the voice of adult Simba, assumed he was participating in a remake of Kimba the White Lion, the beloved cartoon from his childhood.
According to him, he told everybody that he was going to be the voice of Kimba, but when he learned that’s not the case it didn’t really make any difference. Two of the film’s animators also admitted to watching the Japanese show in their childhood.