Doubutsu Takarajima

The last great entry in the Toei Doga series of animated films, Animal Treasure Island is a fun and visually sumptuous kid's adventure film.

The film's animation is some of the best I've ever seen, full of lively and snappy movement, and bolstered by simple and appealing designs, bold, crisp colors (in the animation cels and the background art), and good, if simple layouts. The narrative is an extremely loose adaptation of Treasure Island, basically keeping the treasure hunt aspect and some characters names, and the initial setup and nothing else. The standout original character among the cast is Cathy, a tough, fierce, no-nonsense girl that ... feels inspired by the bandit girl in the Soviet animation The Snow Queen. The film maintains a light atmosphere throughout, high on slapstick and hijinks all the way to its conclusion. The film does drag in parts, most noticeably in some unnecessary musical sequences, but for the most part it's an engaging watch.

Animal Treasure Island turned out to be quite a nice little adventure, and for something made in 1971, it holds up really well.

The story follows the rough outline of the original novel it's based on with obvious liberties taken around every corner. I haven't read the actual book but I've seen 3 or 4 different adaptations by now and it's been fun to spot the similarities along the way. The only major departure seems to be a boy meets girl element when Jim meets Kathy. Can't really complain about it cause it's added in quite naturally and their relationship is rather cute. This kind ... of stuff is also pretty common in anime when dealing with this type of story.

The presentation is where this adaptation really shines though cause its relatively short runtime for a movie is chock full of various visual gags and action scenes. It's all not only creative, funny, and well-choreographed, the animation is excellent as well. There's really a lot of expression in how characters move and act, I think any animation fan would enjoy this for the craft alone.

There's also some decent musical numbers peppered in throughout but I didn't find them quite as good as other parts of the movie. The only standout is a sequence where Jim and Kathy discuss what they'd do with a treasure and it culminates in a musical scene with pretty dreamy visuals where their imaginary ship floats through abstract backgrounds and places where they'd want to go.

Overall it's a pretty easy recommendation for anyone who liked adventure stories, old anime, or animation. It's a great example of a movie that's obviously intended for a younger audience but can still be entertaining well outside that age group.

Based on the popular classic young boys novel by Robert Stevenson, only with animals added! All of the characters (save two) are anthropomorphized, although it really doesn't mean anything with respect to the story itself (as in, the animal characteristics do not really play a role in how the characters act). It's really just to make the story a little more palatable to a wider (and a bit younger) audience.

The story is pretty straight-forward. Young Jim Hawkins gets his hands on a treasure map, and heads out to sea in search of his fortune. He ends up ... on a pirate ship, where the captain tries to take the map and find the treasure himself. Along the way they run across Kathy, the granddaughter of the map's original creator. And the keep fighting as they make their way towards Treasure Island.

Lots of swashbuckling fight scenes, but since this is aimed at a younger (pre-teen) audience there's no blood and many of the scenes are over-exaggerated for cartoony effect. Furthermore, the action/adventure fight scenes are then interspersed with more slapstick humor -- in fact, there's a bit too much of the slapstick overbalancing the action.

The animation is very crisp and clean and well done, as Toei was really starting to come into its own at this time. They were still very much heavily under the shadow of Disney (as the storytelling and character designs reveal), but the more non-Disney anime elements were just starting to work their way in.

Partly due to the influence of Hayao Miyazaki as key animator, it is very easy to spot his influences throughout. Not only in some of the character designs, but in some of the very well choreographed action scenes.

Animal Treasure Island is a worthwhile watch, as long as you keep in mind that it's generally aimed at the 8-10 year old viewer. Also, as an English dub, it can be enjoyed by the young non-anime fan as well -- it still holds up almost half a century after it was created, worthy to be held up in comparison with any Disney movie of the era.