MOMOTAROU NO UMIWASHI

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MOVIE ActionMomotaro, Sacred Sailors

REVIEWS

• 

  Entrylevelweebfrom22

  60/100
  How 'bout we take it aaaallllll the way back to the early world of Japanese animation, shall we?

  Well, here's the next required viewing for my history of anime college course!

  A nationalist propaganda cartoon about cute chibi animal soldiers bombing the shit out of enemy fleets......

  ...

  ......yaaaayyyyy............amirite?......

  ---

  To be serious though, I'll admit, I almost always have a fascination towards media of the far past. Admittedly, it's partly from a place of "I don't have all the time in the world to keep up with what's hot right now in the 2020s, so I figure I may as well go through as much of the 'classics' as possible and see what made them great or important." But even besides that, it's the same with music where I very much like listening to a band or artist's very first album just to admire the humble beginnings (though of course, the details surrounding this film are anything but humble).

  Made and realased only a couple years before the atomic bombings, but also some years after Japan's nightmarish Rape of Nanking, China, "Momotaro" is a Japanese Navy-endorsed 36-minute animated film, with its sequel released a couple years later, and is even considered (to my knowledge) being Japan's first-ever feature-length animated film.

  It's an unsurprisingly kid-friendly portrayal of a national military pretty damn infamous for being absolutely psychotic in real life; ideologically anyway. Though honestly, to separate real-world cultural context more (despite this outright telling you it's approved by the Japanese Navy in the opening credits), I gotta say it was entertaining at least. The choppy, primitive animation has a vintage charm to it, as these chibified animals squash and stretch their way to victory. It was surprisingly more fluid than I thought it'd be, though you still can see some clear tape spring up, or see where some cels start to tear, or how any character or object in the background turns blurry (and I doubt even upscalings would fix how the quality is just inherently stuck in "glorious" 240p).

  Politically, this short's nationalism is, especially by today's standards, pretty collar-tugging at best, and decidedly rancid at worst. But that aside, there's still an early, very unique atmosphere of black-and-white media from decades ago that can still draw you in. Like one of the last shots of the boat's rear sailing away. Darkened black, to where if you squint hard enough, it may even feel like live-action, which I assume it isn't (though some shots were actual real photos from the Pearl Harbor attack). There's a melancholic feel to it even, and the primitive visuals and how blurry it gets even has the (probably unintended) effect of feeling dreamlike. Which in essence, all animation and artworks are other worlds you get to explore through varying levels of exaggeration. I guess I'm just glad there's at least other more approachable old cartoons where I could get that fix from.

  The Yankees are portrayed as scaredy buffoons who don't stand a chance against the aerial might of Nippon. There's no blood or straight-up gore, but even in cartoon-logic fashion, it can be grisly to watch. Two primary characters we follow are this dog and monkey, and you do admittedly grow attached to them as they're humanized by playing with blocks on the plane. The film can even be at times funny, as seen with the Monkey tying the dog's tail in a bow or when they both put on their headbands.

  With the main Japanese human being the titular, folkloric Momotaro, representing the proud, optimistic young soldier Uncle (idk, Kintaro?) wants YOU to be, the film is a straight-forward piece of history where Japanese Nationalism was framed more glowingly, as opposed to a vast chunk of Japanese animation moving forward not being able to shake off the trauma of nuclear power, and expressing those unpropagandized feelings through subversions galore. Be it through the technology, the raising of children, the escapism away from it....the horrors of war we may see as a tried-and-true trope is nothing but absent here in the early 40s. Unless you're the enemy from their perspective.

  6/10.

  [Note to self: watch all 52 episodes of Speed Racer next year so I can review it on here for y'all. Someone's gotta give the past its due for the newer gens of today and tomorrow. And I'm a Gen-Z'er myself no less.]

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