Ranked #1430

Jungle Emperor Leo: The Movie

It's a little hard to review a film such as this. It had all the makings of what more popular anime movies got, yet Jungle Emperor Leo never made a big impression to anime fans or the movie industry. It's a bit sad to note that this movie was pretty accurate to its manga counterpart and had an obvious effort done to it only to be cast aside to other big-shot movies such as Princess Mononoke, Rurouni Kenshin: Ishinshishi e no Requiem, and The End of Evangelion in the same year.

Unneeded opinions aside, the animation in the movie is excellent for a late 90s film. Most animals are drawn accurately to Tezuka's design and the opening sequence is stunningly vivid and flowing. One scene might off-put some people due to it being a dream sequence of pink elephants and many things that look like they came straight from some of Disney's old movies. Also, sticking close to Tezuka's image, a lot of sound effects and facial expression go back to the styles most anime used in the 1960s, but these can be easily overlooked as charming additions rather than total turn-offs. Though the more animation-picky fans might not particularly like it.

Moving right along, there are two storylines working in the movie at once, so the audience is given a handful of different characters, both animal and human. The humans in particular are drawn again to Tezuka's style and any fan of his will recognize Dr. Moustache, Doctor Plus (Duke Red), and Ham Egg. Thankfully the animal characters don't suffer from having such weird names, and, as a wonderful surprise, Media Blasters decided NOT to re-dub their names as past American producers had. (Keeping Leo as Leo and not switching his name to Kimba for instance.)

In fact, Jungle Emperor's dub is one of the best you can find. Dan Green in particular stands out as the voice of Leo; he does an excellent job projecting his character, as does all the rest of the voice acting crew. So sub or dub, you'll get a good experience either way. It's just a matter of preference.

Technical stuff aside, the story of Jungle Emperor is found on the fence of whether it can be considered worth the hour and a half. In the movie there is an energy crisis around the world, so on the human side of the storyline, you get a parade of men trekking through a jungle and up a mountain to find some crystals that will solve their problems. And then on the animal side, you get both life and death as the lion cubs are born before the poachers attack and a mysterious plague runs through the land. While these two storylines are solid enough for a movie, there was a third storyline involved just to prove to one of the characters that humans can be both good and bad. This could've easily been dealt with in another way without the awkward goodbye and returning home, but it does its part.

Also, given the title "Jungle Emperor Leo," it's to be assumed that the movie is centered around Leo. But that is not the case as he gets a little more than half the screen time. For whatever unknown reason, Media Blasters added "Leo" to the title instead of keeping it just the simple "Jungle Emperor." It's a weird edit that serves seemingly no purpose.

Furthermore the end of the movie seems a little sudden. Just a little. Its a bittersweet ending as well, since many characters had died at that point but the ending still tried to end on the positive note that the world will be saved of its energy crisis. The very last scene is that of Leo in cloud form (as it looks on the DVD cover) that provides some symbolism, but not enough to really end the movie in exactly the right way. There is just something missing from the ending, like there are loose ends that still needed to be tied up.

Perhaps Tezuka Productions was aware that they couldn't find a suitable ending, besides making the movie one big funeral, that they just decided to leave it like that. However, it is not told whether or not the world actually gets the energy problem solved, nor does it say anything more if the lion cubs will make it through life without their parents. Presumably, everything is sunshine and rainbows after the movie ends, but it would be nice to witness such closure instead of it just being mentioned backhandedly in the dialogue. read more