Moka wrote:Its a debate, thats for sure. I can see why people would say he existed. Simba and Nala made a mistake and Kopa ran away, or got kidnapped, or died. Then in Simba's Pride no one is allowed to talk about it because they'd be protecting Kiara. Its obvious that a lot of things changed between the "Kopa" ceremony and the Kiara ceremony. One example is that Simba and Nala aged quite a bit. Simba looks like a full adult male and Nala looks more like Sarabi. In the Kopa ceremony they still looked like young adults. So maybe he did exist. Disney certainly never mentioned Kopa anywhere but the Six New Adventures, so I dunno.
To me there's nothing uncertain or confusing. And in my opinion there shouldn't be--not if you care enough to look at the big picture:
1.) 1994: Kopa first appeared into only a few books, all written by non-Disney people. As in, Disney didn't even care to write him themselves if they even had anything to do with him.
2.) 1995: TLK's makers chose to call the film's cub Fluffy with no gender given, even when they already had Kopa in their copyrights and could've turned the cub into hin if they wanted to. Apparently, they didn't want to.
3.) 1998: SP's makers didn't tie Kopa into their film in any way whatsoever either, even though Kopa was still in their copyrights and had even gained some popularity in the fandom. They've never even talked about him in any way.
4.) 2004:
10 years of Kopa in the books! TLK1½ is released. If they wanted to, they could've made a sequel with Kopa. They didn't.
5.) 2011:
16 years of Kopa in the books! Not a single soul at The Walt Disney Company has ever talked about Kopa--at least not for any story means. For all I know, not even at all.
6.) Disney doesn't even have him on their official web site in any way. (At least I can't find anything with their search tool.)
7.) They even stopped selling those books long ago while they never sold them outside USA.
As in: The Walt Disney Company--the very least the film makers--are utterly
NOT interested in Kopa
what-so-ever. Because if they were, they'd at least talked about him at some point.
Resulting in: I'm 110% certain they did not make up a story for Kopa at all, and even more certain that they didn't hide him into SP, Kopa never existed in the movies. Because they haven't even shown interest in him, not half a word. In my logic, you don't make up stories for something you don't care about.
Kopa doesn't officially exist outside his books. Yet. Maybe he never will--but who knows, perhaps some new generation of The Walt Disney Company actually gets interested in him. But I wouldn't hold my breath: Disney has never made a film out of characters other than the film makers' own creative teams creations, or of characters from old epic tales. Plus, the fact that currently the chief guy there is very much anti-sequel.
. It's a good point though, were only stating facts and yet were apparently "Killing Kopa" and yet they want him to be a real character so that they can.... kill him?
