The animation quality has regressed from the highs of Hakujaden, a feature film produced by the same studio just a year earlier. While the repeated reuse of frames and tepid background art does not reach the blatant low levels of "The Littlest Warrior", it is still far below the standards the studio set for itself with some stellar animation with Hakujaden and Sayuuki.
I watched this film two ways. First the original Japanese version with fan made subtitles and secondly the official English language localization made for American audiences in the 60s. I have to say that in this case the English localization was actually superior to the original voice work in Japanese. Neither are particularly good, which in itself points to the half hearted effort made when it came to the original sound design.
A lot of scenes feel empty and devoid of life, because there is no music or sound effects to bolster what is happening on screen. The various characters all sound almost the same - often speaking in an inchoate fashion - clearly because the animators couldn't bother animating scenes long enough for suitable dialogue to be used.
Once again the imitation of Disney character designs of the animals, which seem to be lifted straight out of the other TOEI doga films without any modifications whatsoever, add little to the plot and serve to bog down the pacing. While the animals and their antics are cute to observe, they fail to add any context to the overall narrative only become impediments in the otherwise rather dark human character stories.
The only reason I'm grading this better than the Littlest Warrior is because of the rather dark and psychedelic final battle with the witch and the rudimentary training montages with increased my enjoyment of the film by a notch. The ending battle was the one section of the movie where it felt like the studio was actually experimenting with the medium and taking risks, inserting some horror elements into a children's animated story.
