Momotarou: Umi no Shinpei

Yes it's a wartime propaganda film, but one that spends as much time with cute animal soldiers packing and eating their bento lunches as it does with any fighting. It's only in the last fifteen minutes of runtime that there's any War at all. There are also extended scenes of singing alphabet songs, hanging laundry and feeding birds.

The animation is amazing, of course continuity is a little jumpy which considering the conditions of it being made make sense, so a lot of the scenes have little jumps and skips in the motion. Still the movement is remarkably three dimensional, and the characters have very expressive ... facial expressions.

When compared to the Disney wartime movies, these one lacks the coherent plots and punchy action and quick gags. It's all rather hallucinatory, slow moving and brilliant in its own way, but definitely not one for all tastes.

I can't rightfully support this film in any genuine manner, it's wartime propaganda at its finest. But viewing this as a piece of history, both in terms of Japanese history and animation history is incredibly interesting, and I will rate it based purely on how well I feel it's made, not what it represents.

For allegedly being the first feature length Japanese animation, it's animated surprisingly well, with adorable characters to boot, which is very evidently on purpose as it's trying to sell the idea of joining the military to kids. It's showing that it's an honorable decision that'll leave you with love and respect from ... all those around you. This is also shown in the scenes highlighting the beautiful nature of Japan, and the heroics displayed by the squad of Sacred Sailors. And I will say, the scenes of farms with Mt. Fuji looming over the horizon do look good. Where Momotaro drops the ball (other than the obvious), is both the scenes where characters go completely off model, looking genuinely horrendous in certain scenes, as well as the music. Music and sound effects that sound like they were lifted from a Creative Commons library. During the final third is where we get the meat and potatoes of the propaganda, and while this is obviously wholly disagreeable in every manner, it's also poorly animated and the style clashes heavily with the rest of the film. With the changes in animation style and long stretches filled with seemingly nonsensical shots, it feels undercooked for the most part.

Despite that, there's genuine thought put into this propaganda-piece which is as impressive as it is worrying.

Oh jeez, where do I even start with a film that has such a difficult history? While not technically the first anime, this was the first feature-length anime film. And it's WWII propaganda. There are two ways to approach a film like this: as a piece of entertainment or a historical artefact. Depending on which you opt for, you'll have two very different experiences.


Viewed in isolation, purely on its own narrative merits as a piece of entertainment, Momotaro doesn't hold up. That's not necessarily a failure on its part because its primary aim is to indoctrinate as much as entertain, ... but there's not much left for an audience where the propaganda aspect is anachronistic. Also, the expectations for an animated film have changed so much in the decades since. The Disney influence on this film is obvious, and that extends beyond the animation style. When you think of early US animation, the likes of Snow White or Bambi are the ones that come to mind, but between Warner's Merrie Melodies and the likes of Saludos Amigos it was just as common for them to just be a string of song-and-dance routines. Momotaro sits somewhere in the middle. Very little happens narratively for the first hour of this 75-minute movie, with the emphasis being more on songs until the assault on the subtly named Devil's Island begins. The strong nationalistic angle of these songs makes for uncomfortable viewing, especially the one where the army teach the alphabet to a village of 'savages', which was clearly intended to have children singing along.


If you view Momotaro as an artistic work, however, there's more to appreciate. This was decades before Tezuka defined the signature look of anime, and it offers a glimpse into a different evolutionary path that could have been. As Japan's first animated feature, it's not only surprisingly accomplished, it uses advanced techniques that would all but disappear until long after. Most striking are the depth-of-field effects, which must have required a multi-layered rostrum. There's also complex parallax scrolling, characters moving in and out of shadow, and one stunning shot at a waterfall where it transitions from one painted background, through a fully animated camera angle shift, to a different painted background. The overall atmosphere of the visuals also changes drastically in the final 15 minutes, taking on more realistic lighting while the paratroopers wait inside the plane.


The overall feel of motion is completely different from the stylised look of later anime. There's a realistic sense of weight to much of it, undermined only by the languid smoothness of having such a high sheet count throughout. Particularly impressive is the attention paid to air flow on fabric, with the collars of sailor suits catching the wind, and parachutes filling and collapsing in a convincing manner.


This is a hard one to give a score out of ten. If you watch it for entertainment, it's a 3/10. If you watch it with an academic eye, it's a 7/10.