Toshi wo Totta Wani

The Old Crocodile feels like an anime version of one of Aesop's fables. However, as the credits rolled, I was struggling to sort out what the moral was supposed to be.

The English voicing is excellent, and Peter Barakan's voice brings to mind narration of Madeline or Curious George from my childhood. This anime short would stand in good stead in that company, with a very similar tone and feel. One is left with the vague idea that they are watching children's PBS broadcasting.

The characters are strange, and as I initially wondered why anyone would create this, as it clearly seems aimed ... at children but is so baffling and strange. However, a child's notion of what is strange and too fantastical is far less fixed than an adult's, and I don't think its story or the character's motivations and actions would seem unbelievable to the intended audience.

As it is, without giving any spoilers, Octopus's reactions to Crocodile seem surreal and incredulous. The ending was stranger still, but by then I had learned to just roll with it and enjoy the journey The Old Crocodile was taking me on.

As a short anime work, it pails in comparison to Tsumike no Ie, the work most similar in length and tone that I can think of, but is still worth your time as a curiosity and as a short children's story stands on its own merit.

This feels like one of Yamamura's more commercial works, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were commissioned. The art is simple and childlike and a tad crude, but it can be charming when it comes to the animation, though it's nothing very exceptional, especially with the more abstract and dramatic forms Yamamura has committed to the medium. Yeah, this must be one of his worst, other than some of the quite amateurish early credits, and even as a committed Yamamura fan, I saw this as a completionist nope for the longest time.

It's like some kind of fable without much of a lesson, and ... I definitely don't care if it has one, but if you forced me to answer what I thought the point was, I'd say: "Don't eat your friends and family. First, believe in yourself, get a really good tan until you're sunburned, wait until people form a cult around you, and then they will feed themselves to you." Deep enough for a fortune cookie message?

It becomes more about the adventure, a few themes, and the fantasticalness of it all. A kind of macabre whimsy. It's quite slow and painful in its point a to point b linear telling of the crocodile's tale, and we're given the banal, rather non-artistic treatment of narration and voices from one professional actor with a dramatic TV voice, making the whole thing feel like National Geographic, but with a staff far too lazy to head to Egypt and mosey on into the Nile for a crocodile.

It seems to be the kind of thing made without a clear-cut audience, and I see this as having a very limited appeal: too cute for film circuit snobs, not cute enough for anime fans, too grotesque for children, overly childish for adults, slooooow for the TV viewer, a little mundane for the Yamamura fan, and too unreal for the people weird enough to actually sit through animal documentaries. And while horror fans wouldn't be into this, the POV shot towards the end is really disturbing.

I definitely get scorpion and the frog boat ride lol lmao vibes from the relationship between the dimwitted octopus and the crotchety crock, though it's not quite the same. I'm also really hungry, and I wish I could have eaten the octopus—if only to have ended the story faster.