Board Thread:Lion Guard Discussion/@comment-33104295-20180703162540/@comment-5488183-20180703171341

I definitely agree that the writers screwed up Simba, but I think I know why. And it's the same reason he's kind of a jerk in Simba's Pride. Although Simba's voice is still incredibly jarring to me, and I still don't think it fits in the slightest. INCOMING WALL O' TEXT.

To put it simply: Kion is the hero of this show, much like Kiara is in SP. Some writers, for whatever reason, feel the need to portray parents as awful-yet-loving characters. Why? Presumably so their kids can 'show them the way'. I've heard that the Alpha & Omega series is notorious for letting the kids get away with everything, constantly justifying their bad behavior under the guise of 'but we were just doing the right thing!111'.

And it's a similar thing to what happens in TLG. Kion hires non-lions for the Guard? Simba strikes out at him, even though he is already fully aware of how important diversity is, having been raised by a meerkat and a warthog. Simba in the first movie wouldn't have cared. And, like you said, the Christmas ep was out of place for him, still pushing the 'awful parent, amazing kiddo' thing. For that performance, in the words of Zazu, "(he) should have been first in line"!

With Kiara, I think they changed her because, well, she would probably make a better Lion Guard leader than a queen with her old personality. You could possibly put the change down to her growing up. Perhaps she's just forcing herself to be mature for her father's sake, and by the time of the second movie, she's reverted to her playful self, realising that she should be proud of her nature (this, however, is just me filling in what others would consider a sort of plot hole, mind). However, I wouldn't call Kiara a girly girl in this series, especially with her annoyance at Tiifu/Zuri's spa day. If anything, she was more 'girly' in SP (i wuv u Kovu uWu). The voice thing could be a variety of reasons. It could be that Michelle Horn didn't want to return. Or it could be because Disney wanted an all-star cast where possible (ugh).

With Zira, I think the writers knew that the fans would want to see them again. But since this is a preschool show, they had to show her a little more friendly. I think this would have worked out better if they had introduced Zira before Kovu met Kiara, where it could be argued that Zira wasn't actually all that bad, and that it was Kion using his Roar (and perhaps the defeat of Scar the second time around) which broke her inside. It was also explain the 'our new home' line. But I digress. The stripe was almost certainly an error, since she has the stripe in her cave painting.

But yeah, that's my opinion on those. Also, I'm probably in the minority, but I actually prefer Kiara in TLG to SP... *dodges attacks*