An encomium to an era gone but it's influence still finely felt, the diverse range of animators in Before Anime provides a bit of background into a hazier period of animation that would beget spiky-haired ninjas and risqué sailor-suits.
Just in time for the drooling fanboys over at the annual Anime Expo in Anaheim comes the fascinating "Before Anime: Japanese Animation 1925-1946," an assemblage of pre-war anime -- or Japanese animation -- works. The surging popularity of anime here in the states would lead one to concoct a certain measure of characteristic features of the prototypical anime, such as, say, overwhelmingly cute and homicide-inducing talking rats, or generously endowed Japanese cyborg babes. The otaku, Japanese for anime veteran, will be shocked to find such carefully drawn characters absent from the earlier works of Japanese animators.
A disclaimer for otaku: these short films are not introduced with pop vocal theme songs. There are no nurses with laser beams here, okay? No space heiress with three vaginas fucking a horse with tentacles wearing a ... well, you get the idea. Substituting for the vicissitudes of the ani-porn plot is, happily, good ole' fashioned storytelling values and a rare insight into the seeds of Japan's multi-billion dollar anime industry. "Before Anime" is a must for the anime completist, and also an exceptional introduction and education for the cineaste into the history of what is currently the nation with the highest amount of animation auteurs. That the tradition of Japanese animation stretches back as far as the mid-'20s should come as no surprise to enthusiasts, but those who consider Tezuka Osamu the originator of Japanese cartoons will be amazed to see the advanced technique on display at such an early eon. Novices, your anime education can certainly start here.
The compilation begins with the short films of Kimura Hakuzan and Murata Yasuji, directors who worked throughout the '20s in Japan's first animation studios, established after the experimentation in 1917 by animators like Oten Shimokawa who scrawled cartoons together piecemeal on a blackboard (unfortunately, such footage of these earlier works no longer exist). The first five shorts of the film, roughly five to ten minutes each, can be simply described as a good time at the movies. Roughly framed by straightforward moral tutorials with plots voiced by benshi -- a traditional Japanese narrator for silent films -- the animation is understandably primitive in terms of modus operandi: storytelling and technical aspects of animation are disconnected and especially jerky. Still, the charm and simplicity of the narratives are concise enough not to be preachy, while most are very funny. The audience I was with laughed quite a bit, some folks going hysterical at some of the sillier moments, when, for example, Bandanemon the Monster Exterminator slaughters an entire tribe of doppelganger raccoon. These first few shorts, seeking to impart lessons of the payoff of hard work and respect for the natural world, are environed by an atmosphere of folklore and fantasy. One can read these films as an influence on the more recent animated family fare, specifically the Ghibli Studio films of the last 20 years. In Bandanemon the Monster Exterminator (1935), by Murata, for example, there is a drunken festival involving dancing tanuki (shape-shifting raccoon) that is an obvious antecedent to Takahata Isao's Tanuki Wars of the Heisei Era: Pom Poko. Though there is no reason to conclude that the Ghibli consort would be explicitly familiar with said works, these myths themselves are so engrained in the national consciousness that newer films can be constructed from older legends due to their popular familiarity to the Japanese. The creators at Ghibli, similar to creators Kimura or Masaoka Kenzo here, understand that instruction in this framework of fantastic imagination helps mitigate the harsh reality and easy detour to didacticism toward children, the designed target of these specific films.
After these five shorts comes the interesting Momotaro, Eagle of the Sea (1942), by Seo Mitsuyo, reputedly the first feature-length animated film in Japan's history, and also seemingly one of the earlier forms of war propaganda. Casting animals in an anthropomorphic political light is nothing new to readers of Orwell, but unfortunately there is not even a semblance of satire infused in the narrative. Attempting to desensitize children to the horrors and conquests of the Great Yamato while simultaneously cultivating the roots to recruit these kids, pilots are cast as brave mice and dashing dogs -- or at least as dashing as animated dogs can appear to be -- while prodded on by oriental-looking bunnies. These creatures, as I shall henceforth refer to them as, proceed to bomb the shit out of the goofy Americans, who can best be visually described as bewildered Homer Simpsons, led by a captain who looks exactly like Bluto from “Popeye.” The creatures are led by the titular young boy who, sans emotion, represents the stoicism of a silent warrior like Keanu Reeves. The propaganda is predictably nothing new; the film only merits watching in terms of the ambition of the quality of animation. Seo -- aside from his shameless tactics -- shares with Riefenshtal a gift for technique. Momotaro is a landmark for its pioneering effort and larger production values, specifically in the film's incredible amount of cels used to animate each scene. Importantly, Seo seems to understand the constraints of live action that can be eclipsed by the potential of animation. Aircraft dogfights and battles at sea are filled with violent action. Exciting and dramatic, more energy is conveyed here than in those staged navy battles from old Preminger war flicks, where floating toy boats are blown out of a bathtub. Attention to character detail is also impressive; Seo manages to express a fondly detailed range of emotion in his creatures that, contrasting with his subject matter, is surprisingly warm.
The two concluding post-war shorts of the compilation, Magical Pen (1946), by Kumagawa Masao, and Sakura (Spring Fantasy) (1946), by Masaoka, can be considered the gems of the set. The first film concerns a young boy who finds a doll and a pen that can create real objects out of paintings; the boy proceeds to rebuild Japan with a civilization full of futuristic metropolises that are embodied in something like Akira. The second film is a visual dream, a fluid and beautiful portrait of fairy sprites enduring a storm and witnessing the renewal of their forest after the rain, all to the swell of Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Dance. These films can be taken together as a rich document of the perseverance of a decimated nation. Technique -- accurately displaying several levels of scale, more complex shot composition, and fluid, natural-looking movement -- is also a marked step up in the final short film. The pairing of a tranquil requiem with the varied and evolving images of environmental regeneration is not only elegiac in its depiction of a disappearing nature, but is also the short film at its finest, a succinct and moving visual threnody. The attention to detail that these animators lavish on a pair of cavorting dogs or burgeoning flowers is also testament to the fact that no number of bombs will undermine the efforts of artists who will not only encourage a people to plow on and endure, but on another level, simply continue to delight our children.
Tezuka Osamu would pick up where animators like these two left off -- starting with Atom Boy and Metropolis in the early '50s -- to help lift up a shell-shocked country. To see these last short films of "Before Anime," along with the rest of the arrangement, is not only a fun treat, but frankly a necessary precursor toward understanding how the master would go on to create successive masterpieces in the three decades that followed.
For more APA coverage of the L.A. Film festival, click on the links below:
Interview with Damien Nguyen, star of A Beautiful Country
A Beautiful Country review
Cavite review
Before the Flood review
Tony Takitani review
L.A. Film festival preview
Spying Cam, R-Point review