On One Edge of Anime: Hakujaden

Every so often I run across comments chiding “making a big deal of entertainment consumed,” and the latest one of them was just in time to have me supposing “watching particular bits of anime from a range of different decades in the space of three months” had been a bit of a stunt. Not about to dismiss the whole thing, though, I could at least tell myself I’d found some enjoyment in the oldest works I’d seen. Along with that, however, I’d already laid plans to stop by one more decade. The earliest feature-length, full-colour animated features made in Japan were from the end of the 1950s, and I had access to the first of them, Hakujaden. It’s no more “the beginning of animation in Japan” than Mighty Atom. (Nor is Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, the black-and-white feature screened just months before the end of World War II and now officially available over here if with a certain amount of “now here’s a foreign curiosity for you” rhetoric and reactions; I have to admit, though, to some reluctance to watch it whether by itself or even contrasted to Hollywood animation from the war; it would feel that much more like another empty boast.) Knowing Hakujaden had been made five years before the much more limited animation of the black-and-white TV series with its Osamu Tezuka character designs and having seen some stills from it, however, I suppose my curiosity about the movie included the thought it would “look distinct from anime as it developed,” even if I fear trying to explain that might look indelicate in brief but ramble at length.
( Winding back )