The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治
/ Wanpaku Ōji no Daija taiji, 1963)
is the first feature film that I watched on my new Toshiba Satellite Ultrabook with its cinema-wide 21:9 ratio
screen and it looked fantastic. Directed
by Yūgo Serikawa, Toei Dōga’s sixth animated feature film
was shot using Toei’s anamorphic process Toeiscope
(東映スコープ), whose slogan at the time was
“Picture Size Three Times as Large; Interest One Hundred Times as Great”
(Anderson/Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, p.252). In so-doing, Toei Dōga was following in the
steps of Walt Disney who had produced the first animated film in Cinemascope, Lady and the Tramp (1955), less than a decade earlier. In terms of its unique art design and colour palette,
The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed
Dragon has much more in common with Disney’s spectacular Sleeping Beauty (1958) which was the
first animated film shot using the Super
Technirama 70 widescreen process.
The epic scope of the story is in keeping with the trend of the
times. I’m thinking of the classic
Hollywood epics of the 1950s and 60s, such as The Robe (1953), The Ten
Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur
(1959), Spartacus (1960), and El Cid (1961), which all employed
widescreen technologies and spectacular colours in order to keep cinema
competitive against the threat of the new medium of television.
Ichirō Ikeda
and Takashi Iijima’s screenplay is
an adaptation of various mythological stories surrounding Susanō (voiced by Morio Kazama, at the time going by his
birth name, Tomohito Sumita), the Shintō god of the sea and storms. Many of the key details of the stories are unchanged
from how they appeared in the original sources (the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki), but others
have been altered or modernized. One of
the main reason for the changes is that children were the target audience, thus
many salacious and grotesque details were excised and the stories have been
repackaged as the childhood exploits of Susanō.
According to legend, Susanō was the youngest child of the gods of
creation, Izanagi (Setsuo Shinoda) and
Izanami (Mitsuko Tomobe). He was reputedly brave; however, his
quick-temper would often get him into trouble.
Susanō’s hot-headed nature is established in
the opening scenes of the film in which he plays with his friends in the form
anthropomorphic animals. Talking animals
are a modern twist to the Susanō story. This may have been influenced by
Disney, but certainly anthropomorphic animals appeared in early pre-war anime as well. Susanō’s sidekick, the rabbit Akahana
(literally “red nose”, voiced by Chiharu
Kuri), is being chased by a tiger and Susanō comes to his rescue. The young
boy almost loses his temper completely with the tiger but his mother, Izanami,
intervenes. The loving bond between
mother and child is illustrated with a bathing scene where Izanami washes her
son and sings a sweet song to him. Their
actions are mirrored by a tanuki
mother and child.
Susanō’s idyllic childhood comes to a
sudden halt when he learns of his mother’s death. He refuses to accept that she has passed on
and in spite of his father’s protests, Susanō sets off to sea with Akahana
determined to recover his mother from the Underworld. His adventures, which are punctuated by
dramatic fight sequences with a giant fish and a fire god, take Susanō to visit
his brother Tsukuyomi (Hideo Kinoshita),
the moon god, in his crystal palace and later to his sister Amaterasu (Noriko Shindō), the sun goddess, where
the famous story of the cave takes place.
Because of the trouble Susanō
causes Amaterasu, he is asked to leave her realm which leads to climax of the
film: the tale of Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed dragon. Susanō meets
Kushinada-hime (Yukiko Okada) and
learns of the sad fate of her sisters who have been sacrificed to Yamata no Orochi. Susanō’s fight with the giant beast is one of
the most visually dynamic fight scenes in all of anime history, which was
principally animated by Yasuo Otsuka
and Sadao Tsukioka (Learn more about
this scene from: Anipages)
.jpg)
This is the first Japanese animation
to formally introduce the role of animation
director, who in this case was the legendary Yasuji Mori (filmography).
As animation director, Mori would have supervised all the work done by
the key animators (Hideo Furusawa, Masao Kumagawa, Yasuo Ōtsuka, Daikichirō
Kusube, Makoto Nagasawa, Chikao Katsui, Yōichi Kotabe, Masatake Kita) in order
to correct any errors and maintain continuity.
I associate Mori with the idealised animal characters of Magic Boy (少年猿飛佐助,
1959) and Fables of the Green Forest (山ねずみロッキーチャック, 1973), but this film has a unique look that makes it
stand out among other animation of this era.
The central characters (Susanō, Kushinada-hime, Akahana, the Tiger) have
broad heads, except for Izanami and Amaterasu who have the more typical
idealized doll-like oval heads. The most
unique character designs are the angular ones of Tsukuyomi and his people who
look as though they have been hewn from blocks of ice. (See the Ghibli Blog for original character sketches).
Romantic pastels are a rarity in the mostly high contrast colour palette of this film.
Although the choice of colours and many of the character designs are
typical of early to mid-century illustration and animation art, the composition
of the widescreen frames seems heavily influenced by traditional Japanese aesthetics. Frames
are not composed according to Western principles as used by Disney, but
according to the Japanese aesthetic as seen in art such as sansui-ga and woodblock prints.
From a filmic perspective, the innovative variety of shots from extreme
close-ups to extreme high angles keep the spectator actively engaged from start
to finish.
.jpg)
Another element that makes this one
of the top anime of all time is the dramatic score. It was
composed and arranged by Akira Ifukube,
of Godzilla fame. He really was the
ideal choice for a Shintō epic for he had both a deep knowledge of traditional
Japanese and Ainu music (his father was a Shintō priest in Hokkaido) and was
inspired to become a composer after hearing a radio performance of Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring (coincidentally used
in Fantasia). It is a wonderful score – which can be
enjoyed on its own as an audio track as well as with the visuals. His soundtrack would easily make my list of
top ten animated feature film soundtracks of the 20th century.
The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon won Toei Dōga the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1963 – the only feature length
film to do so until Hayao Miyazaki won for Lupin the Third: The Castle of
Cagliostro
(1979). Among those in the anime
industry in Japan, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon
is considered one of the best anime of all time. It ranked 10th in the Laputa Top 150 Japanese and World
Animation survey
(2003). It is available on DVD (JP
only).
©Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013
This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s Noburo Ofuji Award series.
