Usagi to Kame

A fun little animation of the Aesop fable. There's a few moments of excellent creativity in this short film, such as when the rabbit is shown rolling down the hill in one cut, or the raven's insults of the rabbit homing in on the rabbit's head.

However, overall the animation isn't particularly good. A lot of the motion isn't very smooth, and the tortoise's limb and neck movements in particular don't look very natural. The rabbit's face looks quite bizarre at times, too. Simply put, the animation here just doesn't measure up to most Western films, nor even to many other Japanese animation, from the same time period.

On the other hand... it does have a breakdancing tortoise.

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Rate a 6
English subtitled
art film

Story
I am well aware of the classic tale of the bunny and the turtle. Those not familiar with the message behind it is to not underestimate your opponent. I like the childish song approach. Reminds me of Anything you can do I can do better song. While the story has an uplifting message the ending dialog was a bit snootiness and the animated art wasn't that better on that point.

Art
-black and white production
-A tad too long of a delay on the animation for introduction.

Sound- nothing to comment on

Character- nothing to comment on

Enjoyment: With the minor exception of the crown scene this a delightful short starting animation most ages can benefit from. The crow scene involves the noise you would expect although like English has taught one countless times before words generally carry multiple meanings. In this case the animated sound in word form is also a vulgar mention, a no-no word. Not easily caught by english folks because you would need to know Japanese to catch it.

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