Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke

Like most other TOEI doga films of the period, Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke or Magic Boy, has a lot of issues. Its major distinguishing factor is that it was the first Japanese animated feature to be exported and dubbed into the US. But when it comes to quality, the story is a leap backwards. Again.

The animation quality has regressed from the highs of Hakujaden, a feature film produced by the same studio just a year earlier. While the repeated reuse of frames and tepid background art does not reach the blatant low levels of "The Littlest Warrior", it is still far below the standards the studio ... set for itself with some stellar animation with Hakujaden and Sayuuki.

I watched this film two ways. First the original Japanese version with fan made subtitles and secondly the official English language localization made for American audiences in the 60s. I have to say that in this case the English localization was actually superior to the original voice work in Japanese. Neither are particularly good, which in itself points to the half hearted effort made when it came to the original sound design.

A lot of scenes feel empty and devoid of life, because there is no music or sound effects to bolster what is happening on screen. The various characters all sound almost the same - often speaking in an inchoate fashion - clearly because the animators couldn't bother animating scenes long enough for suitable dialogue to be used.

Once again the imitation of Disney character designs of the animals, which seem to be lifted straight out of the other TOEI doga films without any modifications whatsoever, add little to the plot and serve to bog down the pacing. While the animals and their antics are cute to observe, they fail to add any context to the overall narrative only become impediments in the otherwise rather dark human character stories.

The only reason I'm grading this better than the Littlest Warrior is because of the rather dark and psychedelic final battle with the witch and the rudimentary training montages with increased my enjoyment of the film by a notch. The ending battle was the one section of the movie where it felt like the studio was actually experimenting with the medium and taking risks, inserting some horror elements into a children's animated story.

So much resemblance to Naruto, I'm starting to think that Kishimoto was inspired to create Naruto from this movie because there are lots of similarities,
Sasuke Sarutobi = Hiruzen'rs grandfather (or was his father?)
The evil witch = Orochimaru
The old guy who taught our hero magic = Jiraya
Sasuke goes to train away from home for 3 years, = The same as naruto did
That pretty much use hand signs to perform magic, = much like ninjutsu
That chubby villain called Kokoro = much like kankuro
and the list goes long

Honestly, I had 0 expectations for this movie, In fact, I was just bored and pressed the 'Random' button on the ... home page and it recommended this to me out of the blue, I just started watching, and in the middle of the movie I realized I was enjoying it, The art and music selection was the most thing I admire, anyway, I give this movie like 8/10, better than most modern movies

Following Hakujaden, this picture also begs the question of why the screenwriters couldn't simply mesh what was clearly meant to appeal to children and the actual storyline. These old movies can feel so divided between the gratuitous cuteness and what supposedly matters. I know the moral lesson, whichever it is, can only be absorbed by sticking to the latter, but that takes a lot of potential quality away. Like with Hakujaden, I'd rather spend one hour watching cute animals doing cute stuff than boring main characters fighting over something I don't care about that happens to be constantly discontinued for the sake of pleasing kids, ... which boils down to one request: make an actual children's movie god damn it! Japanese animators had such attachment to their folklore, but it was only when they started thinking outside the box the problem ceased to be. That could also have been avoided by making Sasuke's journey interesting to begin with, which sadly never happened. It's as boring as you get. The movie is an improvement on its predecessor and far more pleasing to watch given the fact being colored isn't its only concern. Here we also see the first semblance of accurately moving mouths. There really isn't much else to say. At least it's not as bad as Saiyuuki.