Simba (The Lion Guard)

Simba is a major character in the 2015 Disney Junior TV film The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar and a supporting character in its 2016-2019 follow-up series The Lion Guard, both of which are sequels to the 1994 Disney film The Lion King.

While Simba is a loveable and sympathetic character in both the original 1994 film and its 1998 sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, the same unfortunately cannot be said for him in The Lion Guard, in which he was terribly flanderized.

Why He's Not The King

 * 1) He lost his original personality from the first two films. In the first film, he started off as a bratty and mischievous cub, but he then became traumatized after his father's death, which his uncle, Scar, made him believe he was responsible for, leading to him running away and trying to forget about his past, but upon reaching adulthood, he realized that even if it's not easy, he had to confront his past, and that is exactly what he did. Because of all this, he became affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was incredibly overprotective of his daughter, Kiara, in the second film and was hostile towards Kovu due to him being Scar's heir, but with some encouragement from Kiara, he redeemed himself at the end and welcomed Kovu and the Outsiders back into his pride. Here, however, he doesn't have any of that. Instead, he's portrayed as a downright bossy jerk.
 * 2) In the series' pilot film The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar, when he finds out that the members of Kion's Lion Guard aren't lions, he yells at him for this and accuses Kion of treating his role as leader of the Lion Guard as a game and not taking it seriously. It is understandable that he was upset about Kion's teammates not being lions since all previous Lion Guards were all made up of only lions, but he didn't have to be so hard on him like that. Thankfully, he does at the very least redeem himself later.
 * 3) He was at his absolute worst in "Bunga and the King", as when Bunga says "Duh" to him, Simba gets extremely angry to the point where he literally uses the phrase "I am the king!" as a threat to one of his subjects. In fact, at one point in The Lion King, Scar used the same phrase as a threat against Zazu. In other words, The Lion Guard turned Simba into Scar!
 * 4) In the episode "The Scorpion's Sting", when Scar sends his scorpion minion to sting Simba, Simba somehow does not feel that giant scorpion crawl up onto his tail. Surely he would have felt a decent amount of pressure there.
 * 5) His design here is pretty ugly compared to his design in the films.
 * 6) His voice by Rob Lowe sounds absolutely nothing like his original voice by Matthew Broderick. In fact a lot of characters from both The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride who return in The Lion Guard have this problem. Kiara sounds nothing like herself, Scar sounds nothing like himself, the list goes on.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) He was a much better character in The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
 * 2) As the series goes on, he becomes kinder.
 * 3) He does care for his family, friends, and kingdom.