Basically - no, the Kimba / Lion King controversy is fake (the Kimba movie often cited as the work copied was actually released 3 years after the Lion King). Check out YMS's review on this exact topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5B1mIfQuo4
Yes, the Kimba TV show is about 30 years older, but this show has basically 0 similarities with TLK. It's like saying The Simpsons is the same as The Princess Bride - yes, some individual shots and scenes are comparable but its only when those are taken out of context, and it completely misses the overarching story/themes/characters. And it also misses the fact that the anime has ~3,000 hours of content in comparison to the 90 minute runtime of TLK.
Seriously, watch the YMS video about it. Apart from some superficial similarities Kimba and The Lion King are majorly different. And Kimba is just bizarre, The Lion King never had humans genocide elephants with tanks and helicopters, Kimba did. The Lion King never had weird racist stuff, Kimba did. Simba never wore Mufasa's hide around to boost his confidence, Kimba did with his father's hide.
This is addressed in the video. Tezuka's work has very little in common with The Lion King. The bulk of the apparent similarity comes from the 1997 movie; if one ignores that there's very little.
