Sabor (Disney)

Sabor is the secondary antagonist of Disney's 37th full-length animated feature film Tarzan (which is based on the 1912 American novel Tarzan of the Apes by the late Edgar Rice Burroughs), and a supporting antagonist in its 2005 prequel Tarzan II. She is a leopard who killed Tarzan's parents and Kerchak and Kala's son. In a way, Sabor is the reason Kala adopted Tarzan.

Her vocal effects were provided by Frank Welker.

Personality
While the reason of Sabor's villainy was due to living as a fierce, dangerous, bloodthirsty and aggressive predator who is trying to survive in a harsh jungle just like real-life predators, Sabor is also regarded as a villainous character due to the fact that her antagonism and villainy are motivated by her odds with the gorillas: Sabor viewed Kala as one of her archenemies since the female gorilla saved the baby Tarzan not long after Sabor killed his parents and the said gorilla's son. However, Sabor seemed to focused more on Tarzan than Kala, which is seemingly obvious due to the fact that she was denied the opportunity to eat Tarzan at least twice (which the second time was due to Zugor's interference) and thus marked Tarzan as the main priority.

Tarzan
Sabor first appears stalking through vines, where she spots Kerchak and Kala's baby strolling while chasing a frog. Roaring at the baby gorilla, Sabor manages to catch and devour him, much to both Kerchak and Kala's complete distraught. Sabor is able to infiltrate a couple's home, where she manages to kill the couple offscreen. Eventually, Sabor is about to eat their baby son, who is rescued by a visiting Kala. By luck, Kala manages to trap Sabor by trapping one of her paws with a rope and a pulley while elevating down on a boat. Kala then growls at Sabor before fleeing away with the baby, calling him Tarzan and raising him as her own son.

Many years later, Sabor ambushes the gorilla troop. Kerchak does battle with the leopard, but despite his huge size and strength, Sabor's swift and deadly moves prove to be too much for the silverback to handle. Fortunately, a grown Tarzan engages into a fight against Sabor, which culminates when Sabor leaps down on Tarzan and plunges them both into a pit, and is incidentally impaled on the head of Tarzan's spear tip as the ape man raises it against the leopard, killing the leopard. Tarzan then calls out his famous ape man cry, as he lifts up Sabor's dead body. Unknown to him, Tarzan finally avenged his real parents deaths that day, along with Kerchak's and Kala's child. Despite his early reservations against raising Tarzan as a member of the gorillas, Kerchak showed some respect towards Tarzan for killing Sabor, just as they hear several gunshots fired by Cecil Clayton, who intends to track down the gorillas and sell them for profit.

Tarzan II
Sabor also made a brief appearance in Tarzan II, which took place during Tarzan's youth. While she chased Tarzan into a valley, Sabor nearly kills Tarzan, but the sudden cry of the Zugor frightens the leopard off.

Legend of Tarzan
Sheeta, the discarded original Burroughs designation, was later used in The Legend of Tarzan as the name for one of two black panthers that attack together (the name of the other was Noru). Black panthers are actually a color variety of leopards and they do exist in African jungles, although they seem to be rare. Sabor has been mentioned in the series.

Kingdom Hearts
Sabor features as a prominent antagonist and boss in the Deep Jungle world in the first Kingdom Hearts game. After the main character named Sora crash lands in the treehouse, Sabor attempts to kill him, but Sora beats Sabor back until Tarzan appears and drives the leopard off. Sabor later attacks Sora, Donald, Goofy and Tarzan several times, but is always forced to back off. Eventually, just when Clayton goes missing, Sabor appears for one final battle with Sora, who kills the leopard.

Trivia

 * Sabor is classified as a female leopard (also called the leopardess).
 * Jiminy Cricket's journal entry in Kingdom Hearts infamously got Sabor's gender wrong, referring to her as a "he".
 * Despite being a leopard, Sabor was portrayed in a very stylized way, with a body and head with strange angles, very long thin fangs (almost like that of a saber-toothed cat), and scarce spots unlike those of a real leopard, but more like those of a jaguar. This design contrasts sharply with that of other characters in the film (like Kerchak) who were designed on a relatively more realistic style. As usual in film depictions of big cats, Sabor's roars are a mixture of sounds of several felines, including leopards, lions and tigers, but especially cougars.
 * Sabor is another close enemy of Tarzan, alongside Clayton, since the leopard killed his birth parents and relentlessly pursued him ever since he was a baby.
 * Despite being dangerous, she can be classified as a hungry predator as the fact that leopards hunt only to get food, so she only killed Kerchak and Kala’s son and Tarzan’s biological parents as she was hunting for food.
 * Sabor is the only villain in Tarzan who never speaks.
 * The name "Sabor" means "taste" in Spanish and Portuguese.
 * Although Sabor was killed off halfway to introduce the real main antagonist, Sabor served as the Heavy because it was the murder of Kerchak and Kala's baby and Tarzan's parents that drove the plot which made Clayton the Big Bad because he was far more dangerous than the leopard, and the one behind the plot.