Dankichi-jima no Olympic Taikai

One of the first things I tend to look at whenever I go into an anime this old is the art and the animation, trying to discern all of the different techniques they used and also simply the quality of the drawings. Dankichi-jima no Olympic Taikai has some pretty basic human character designs, but I thought the animal designs were pretty interesting. However, when comparing the animation to other films of the time period it ends up being kind of simple and average.

The story is simple and has a few gags within it. This film was obviously intended to make the audience laugh, and it ... did get a few chuckles out of me, but it doesn't craft much of a tale, which other films of the era were doing. Still it ends up being fine, and generally enjoyable, if a bit underwhelming.

Being a silent film, the audio is pretty much nonexistent. The version I was watching had a reconstructed background track, but I will avoid rating that as I'm not sure how that will appear in other versions of this film.

Overall, this is an enjoyable little short film that ends up being kind of average even for the time period, but still worth a watch if you're curious and have a few minutes to spare.

Rate a 5
English Subtitled

Story
Bland with a touch of action. Jumps straight to the action. Introduction was covered nicely. Not quite the ending i was expecting. I was expecting more of a reward outlook. Perhaps it was cut short? Was it a friendly game? Intro wise no questions but ending leaves me puzzled. However, the reason could be during the last blog of text the version i watched did not have that part translated either due to lack of time/interest or deciphering was too hard.

Art
Clear, you can make out what is what. Not bad for an old anime. Just using black and white is fine ... for the piece. I don't think if color was added it would have added anything to this film.

Sound
No animations just a background sound. Which worked with the slight paced show.

Character
This part could have used some work. We have the two teams but being able to root for a team you need to know something about them. This animation did not really cover any reason why that i noticed to vote for a particular team.

Enjoyment
A nice laid back short action piece. I suppose if you wanted to you could place a little wager on who will win since you are not guided by the film on the turnout. Normally in films once the main character is known the movie will tend to favor in their favor. Now, that i think of it maybe that is why the character information was light. If that was the case then good for the show.