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.
