Nala (The Lion King) accompanying her and her best friend Simba on their adventures. Pronounced "me too", the character's name is a reference to this personality trait. Simba was intended to save the cub from a wildebeest stampede, and Nala would eventually become responsible for protecting Mheetu from Simba's tyrannical uncle Scar. Nala also had a fox friend named Bhati. According to Woolverton, Mheetu and Bhati were eventually written out of the film because their stories were beginning to distract from Simba's, in addition to the Mheetu-Scar subplot making the film too dark when combined with the death of Simba's father Mufasa. At one
Simba more seasoned animators gravitated towards "Pocahontas" because "The Lion King "was deemed a "risk", while less experienced animators were assigned to work on "The Lion King". Co-director Rob Minkoff received this positively, saying that this decision "gave a lot of newer animators a chance to step up to leadership roles." The role of animating Simba was divided between Ruben A. Aquino and Mark Henn, the former of whom was the first animator to be assigned to the project. While Henn served as the supervising animator of Simba as a cub, credited as Young Simba, Aquino was placed in charge of