Jungle Taitei (1965) is the earliest TV anime that was aired fully in colour. Written by Osamu Tezuka, it is the unlikely younger brother of his TV debut (that is, anime's TV debut) Tetsuwan Atom in 1963, and despite the radically different setting it is unmistakably a Tezuka show, as can be already seen from the character designs.

The titular Jungle Emperor is Kimba the white lion, who has been kidnapped by hunters and shipped to a big city where he learned about human civilisation before returning to the jungle where his father previously reigned (Lions live in the savanna and not the jungle, but the series prefers to ignore that). Although frequently challenged, Kimba assumes the role of a benevolent monarch who tries to modernise or civilise the otherwise conspicuously uninhabited jungle. When Kimba is not defending the peace of the jungle against hunters or other animals, he ventures out into the human world to learn from them, or introduces human inventions to his kingdom. Among those inventions are a school, a farm, human language, a restaurant, a courthouse, a literal firewall, as well as an entire amusement park which btw is a really bad idea if none of you knows calculus. This continuity of cultural development across the series is appealing, however it slightly conflicts with the otherwise completely episodic nature of the show because it means you have to watch all the episodes in order, or you will be blindsighted on things like why the animals can talk to humans or use bricklaying now.

It must be considered that TV anime was two years old at the time, so no one involved knew anything about screenwriting. This is why you frequently have drawn-out sequences of the animals going someplace by repeating the same movements for 10-15 seconds, why they often break into songs and instrumental sequences that are only vaguely related to the plot if at all, or why some of the plots only have cosmetic differences between them. It frequently happens that Kimba has an idea for which the team did neither research the actual origins nor write down some pros and cons, so rather than explaining where the idea comes from, why it is good, or answering any objections, Kimba has to press the idea through by sheer brute force against animals who sabotage it for zero reason at all.

It is easy to speak ill of this show, but there is a great reason to watch select episodes of this show, if not its entirety. If nothing else, this show has atmosphere. Watch any episode of it and complain about the haphazard screen-writing, the ill-aged character animation, the hammy voice-acting, the questionable lessons of the stories, or the harebrained conceptions of both the episode and the anime, but there will come moments where you just sit there and admire the artistry with which the backgrounds and the music sweep out the grandeur and vastness of the nature of Africa.