Tora-chan no Kankan Mushi

Here is another wonderful work of Kenzou Masaoka. With our main protagonist Tora-chan, this 10 minute short delivers all the aspects of a children's drama.

This is one of 2-3 short films involving anthropomorphic felines in their day to day adventures, the others being Tora-chan to Hanayome and Suteneko Tora-chan. The animation for such an early set of shorts is very fluid and characteristic to the Disney shorts of the same era. The story concerns itself more with the characters' goofiness than with consistency, but being targeted towards children audiences its no surprise. The sound quality was average, however depending on which source you use it ... may differ.

Overall its a decent watch and among the trademark anime for this era in animation.

This wasn't the best of the Tora-chan omnibus of shorts, but subtle allegories about real Japanese life still abound as hidden metaphors in this made for children chaotic story. There's more style than substance at play here - the art is constantly playing with dimensions and colors, lot of experimentation with the flow of fluids and dynamic objects like fireworks that fill life into templates that otherwise lack the expressive background detail to fill the world out and make it lived in.

There are some references once again to the obstinacy of elders, the rebelliousness of youth and the consequences of bullheaded obsession with work ... that might lead to disastrous consequences. The abrupt and explosive ending was a pretty clear reference to the naval battles and the war. The cats quickly moved through the process of the short from wooden fishing boats to modern iron and steel carriers that looked like naval warships. The symbolism of the firecrackers and the attack of the octopi are pretty obvious with this revelatory context.

The execution of the story, if one can even pinpoint to a coherent narrative in here, is pretty mediocre. Other Tora-chan shorts have done much better in this aspect and I suggest you watch them first instead.