Hakujaden

For some reason when adapting the Legend of the White Snake into an animated movie, producers thought it was a good idea to have utterly boring protagonists. Perhaps attempting to remain faithful to the original, perhaps out of incompetence. Either way, it's a big problem since a lot of screen time is dedicated to them while offering nothing past two winsome bland and wooden stock characters in pursue of whatever it is they're after. I'm not saying there can't be people like that, just that there is no real reason to do that in a movie whose intention is first and foremost to provide an ... enjoyable and colorful experience for the audience. The pets are fine, but I'd rather watch them feature their own picture instead of sitting through pointless padding. If you need constant comic relief, I have bad news. I'd be more impressed at it had colors not been a thing since Flowers and fucking Trees from 1932.

If you want to watch some of the most insane fight scenes, I would definitely recommend this anime.

It's one of those typical stories, where there's the protagonists who fall in love, the antagonist trying to separate them from each other creating the tragedy, and then everything has been resolved and they all live happily ever after, but adapted into an anime film and with an addition to the cast of characters.

The anime accommodates spectacular artwork that I rarely see and the opening music is an absolute banger.

Unfortunately, this is where the praise from me ends. The story was a mess. The supporting characters, ... the pandas, quickly stole the limelight from Xu Xian and Bai Niang and went off on their own adventure for about three-quarters of the film. At the end of the film, I struggled finding any empathy for the two who were finally together again, as all the information I got was that: they met, they had a little chat and they fell deeply in love. The only parts I enjoyed were: the art which was alright, the music which was intense at times but mainly beautiful, and the stupid animations which I ended up making memes out of ;-;

Overall, it was alright, concerning the art and the sounds. It definitely doesn't equate to the animations of modern anime but it does set a decent role model as the first color anime feature film, released in 1958.

I went into this with higher expectations than I should have. TOEI's first feature length animation and also the first Japanese colored animated feature film, The Tale of the White Serpent is a sore disappointment in my eyes. Historically, this is certainly a landmark film in Japanese Animation that went on to inspire the likes of Hayao Miyakazi. If for anothing else, it is worth checking this film out for its historical value.

However, when it comes to critically analyzing the film, I think it has way too many flaws to be considered good. The story is adapted from one of the four "great Chinese folktales" ... that has been a part of the Chinese operatic theatre plays since the 14th Century. The original play in its many forms is a complex character and class study that also critiques the politics of the Middle Kingdom. Toei manages to strip most of the nuance in this story and the deep characterizations to leave us with underdeveloped, paper thin caricatures for characters and the bare sniffs of a coherent narrative.

Watching this, I can clearly see that the original storyboard had neither the budget not the material for a full length feature film. The result is that most of the movie is padded with misplaced establishment shots, transition scenes that lead to even more transitions. Introduction of characters that add nothing to the story, when the primary movers of the narrative have themselves been poorly picturized.

We are frequently greeted with still background frames as placeholders for scenes, that overstay their welcome for dozens of seconds just to pad the length. TOEI clearly struggled to transition from the short film format to a feature length one, especially on the narrative front.

The sound design in this film was to me one of its few redeeming features. Brilliantly designed accompanying background score along with some decent voice work elevated this from what would be a terrible disappointment to a bearable watch. It truly wasn't my intention to go so hard on a piece of art that clearly had a lot of hard work and love poured into it, but we've seen remarkably tighter stuff in American animation over a decade earlier. It doesn't matter how slick the animation looks if there is a severe narrative and pacing failure in the film.

ok so the artwork of the anime was kinda GOOD ngl. But the story was a bit boring i kinda had to skip a lot cuz of some really REALLY boring scenes. The background music was good tho. Also the story progresses real slowly. The protagonist are kinda boring too. I had close to zero fun watching this. But the pets that the mc has are cute and i had fun watching them more than the whole show. Thats why i rated it an overall of 4 just beacause of the pets.


If you like traditional music this anime has a lot of it though i ... am not into japanese traditional musics i liked the musics used in this anime also the instrument that i have never heard before.