by Gemini » August 6th, 2014, 6:03 am
I have to agree with juhouh and TheLionPrince. I'll address both points here.
Regarding the colors: I, too, like Kiara's end design as shown in TLKII more than Fluffy's. In fact, I really wouldn't mind if she were a couple shades lighter, or perhaps had a different shade of eyes, to reflect that she's related to Nala, not just Simba. The picture that juhouh posted really fits perfectly with this - though Kiara looks a bit too much like Simba, imo, it's still a long shot better than the coloring on the right, which essentially is just a Simba clone and honestly doesn't even look that feminine. That said, Fluffy works for the end of the movie because the creators were not intending to have a sequel, and just kind of wanted to go with a 'full-circle' ending that would link back to the beginning (this is pretty commonly seen to be the case throughout the commentaries/interviews/etc - the creators of TLK were expecting the movie to be second-banana to Pocahontas and were not considering a sequel at the time of release). So, a Simba clone is alright for a brief ending scene. But in a sequel dedicated to Simba and Nala's child, it is notably less so.
Personally, again, I think they could have done a bit more instead of making Kiara a Simba look-alike and Kovu a Scar-clone, but again, it could have been a lot worse (not to mention the Outlanders seem to have Scar's features, so they probably wouldn't have incorporated that into the design of Simba's offspring).
Anyways, rambling, sorry.
In short, I think Kiara's design was alright, though not really anything special. However, I like it considerably more than Fluffy's.
That said, as the poster above me already pointed out, the cub at the end isn't Kopa, nor does it make sense for it to be Kopa. The semi-canon cubs simply don't play a role in the original (as they came after), and didn't affect the making of the sequel at all. So there's no way for it to be Kopa, which explains why Disney didn't mention him in the sequel... as they no doubt would have if he were the cub at the end of TLK II. Overall, I think Disney majorly screwed up their canon of TLK with the making of TLKII... but I still think they would know better than to change the cub like that unless the animators genuinely didn't consider the books. Which it seems that they didn't - otherwise, there would be at least some mention of Kula, or Tama, or Tojo, or Chumvi, or any of those other cubs that were in books only.
So sorry, but I don't, and never will, consider Kopa as a fully-canon cub and the character portrayed at the end of TLK. It just doesn't make logical sense.