Why Kopa From the Lion King Books Is Not Canon

My belief is that Kopa and the Six New Adventures stories were never meant to be official or canon, even at the time. These are the reasons why:

1) If the stories were supposed to be canon then that would class them as official sequels. Disney are primarily a movie company, so why do the sequels as anything other than movies? Even most of the Disney Channel shows can't be classed as canon as they often contradict the movie on which they are based, e.g. the Hercules series has Hades aware that Hercules is alive while he is still a teen, which is a direct condradiction of the movie. The main exception is the Lilo and Stitch series, the premise of which was set up by the second movie and concluded by the third. For the most part though these are just ways to squeeze as much money out of the original movie as possible, as are tie-in books.

2) Many new Lion King stories were published in print format. Here in the UK I used to buy a magazine series about The Lion King which featured new stories that gave new information, some of which complied with the movie and some of which didn't. For example, it told the story of how Nala decided to leave the Pride Lands and almost ran into Simba earlier, but just missed him. That could easily have happened. But i've also read many Lion King stories where Timon and Pumbaa are friends with Simba while he is still in the Pride Lands as a cub, or where Kiara and Kovu are friends as cubs despite the movie's implying that they never saw each other between that one encounter and the fire. These stories are obviously not canon, so why should the Six New Adventures books be?

3) If the books were meant to be canon then surely the writers and artists would have put more effort into Kopa, giving him his own look and personality as with Kiara, rather than simply using stock pictures of young Simba and giving him an extra tuft of fur and young Simba's personaliy?

4) If they were meant to be canon then surely they would have been released more widely than just the USA, just as the movies are?

5) Reportedly, though I haven't found the source of this, a brother to Kiara did appear in a very early draft of the Simba's Pride script, however he was not called Kopa. So it looks as though the film makers had never even heard of Kopa. If he was supposed to be canon they would have been informed of him.

The differences between the ending of the original Lion King and the opening of Simba's Pride are as follows:

1) They appear to be set at a different time of day. In Simba's Pride it is obviously the early morning, whereas in the original it seems later in the day.

2) In the original, Simba, Nala, Timon and Pumbaa stand on Pride Rock and Rafiki brings the cub up behind them. In the sequel, Rafiki stands on Pride Rock and Simba and Nala bring Kiara to him. Timon and Pumbaa watch from further back.

3) The cub looks different. The original cub, as previously stated, was golden coloured like Simba. Kiara is darker coloured. Kiara does not have the black ring around her ears, nor the tiny tuft of fur on the top of the head.

4) Simba and Nala look older.

When you think about it from a film makers' perspective, it makes sense that the cub looks different. The original film makers had no idea that there would ever be a sequel. At the time that the movie was in production there had only ever been one sequel to a Disney movie, and that was The Rescuers Down Under. The first direct to video sequel was released the same year as The Lion kIng (The Return of Jafar, 1994). They could been aware of its production, but it's entirely possible that the Disney company had not yet decided to release sequels to as many of its movies as possible. Aladdin was special because of its popularity. The makers of The Lion King had no idea that it would be so popular.

This is clear in the movie itself. The cub at the end is only referred to in the script as 'newborn cub'. They haven't bothered to give it its own character design or a name, just modelled it on Simba. The cub serves thematic purposes only. When the makers of the second movie (a completely different creative team working for a different Disney studio) sat down to work out the plot and character design, they couldn't just have this new character be a carbon copy of the last one. They had to do something different or the movie wouldn't be interesting. So they redesigned the cub and decided to make it a girl instead of another boy (which they could get away with because the original movie never SAID that it was a boy).

The audience are just supposed to accept these changes. It's a concept called suspension of disbelief, whereby the audience accepts or ignores paricular unrealistic or fantastical elements. For example, in The Lion King musical, audiences aren't supposed to question why they can see Timon's puppeteer standing behind him dressed all in green, or why he's as tall as Pumbaa - they just accept it as a production detail rather than an in-world one. The theatre uses a lot of suspension of disbelief, as does Disney. We accept that animals can talk or read or know what a throw rug is. And just as we accept a soap recasting a character with an actor that looks only vaguely similar to the last, we're supposed to accept an animated character changing in design or voice between movies. So Kiara looks a bit different in this movie. Zazu sounds a bit different, but we're not theorising that he had to have an operation on his voice box at the Jungle Hospital. Again, it's a production detail rather than an in world detail.

All this being said, it is fun to come up with in world explanations for the differences, and to write the fiction and draw the pictures, and knowing the real reasons behind the change doesn't stop that. This lense was in response to those fans whose comments I have read who seem confused. Kopa will still live on in the fandom.