Ari-Chan 1941 & Momtaro Sea Eagle 1943

Let’s start with one of the relatives and earliest I can find with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s animator, Tadahito Mochinaga. It all starts in Japan 1941, as he started his first animation with a black and white silent short cartoon with Ari-Chan. I do mean short for Ari-chan, meaning it’s never enough to talk anything that’s a short silent black and white film that would past the 450 words limit. So I’ll pair it with Tadahito’s second film he animated with Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, which is mostly silent aside from Momotaro and some grunts.

A little ant named Ari-Chan wants to help the worker ants, but he’s small and weak. He found a violin, as he plays with it, along with other insects, but he stumble a band of grasshoppers all playing violins. Ari-Chan joins the band in harmony, then everything changes when the fire nation attack!

OK, I’m kidding on that. I was a simple human, but judging the hand, it looks like an infant or toddler.

“No! Bad Fire Nation baby!”

-         Sokka said to Tom-Tom from Avatar, the Last Airbender. Episode: Return to Omashu.

That’s mostly about it for Ari-chan. I could say its reverse Grasshopper and Ants, but I never see the Grasshopper dies at the end of any of the animated versions. It’s just a peaceful short kid’s film. Momotaro’s Sea Eagles on the other hand is the opposite tone for Ari-Chan.

A naval ship of bunny, dog, and monkey, woodpecker, rooster, and rats are led by assuming Momotaro. Their allies is the Sea Eagles, and their enemy is (by the sound of the music) Hawaii. Yeah, this won’t fly today! The animals attack the American Navy led by Bluto from Popeye?

Momotaro has one the case of bad lips continuity I’ve seen since that Columbia’s rip-off of Paramount’s Song of the Birds; the lips are either lined lips or detailed lips. Nothing happens for about 15 minutes in a 30 minutes cartoon. Part of the film is damaged, as you can see scenes with the edge of the paper crinkle, scenes really drag out with the animals such as the monkey drags, and Momotaro and the Sea Eagles aren't the main focus. Though Momotaro has more than one appearance as his own series at the time, so I'm mostly judging it on its own. The Sea Eagle are probably on par with J.R.R Tolkien's Eagles in usefulness; always around to save despite they could of used them this entire adventure. It’s Momotaro’s army that’s the focus, more on the monkey and dog, which is happy, yet serious. The target audience can vary, but a little higher than little kids. I could say this is offensive, but America has made many WWII propaganda cartoons aiming at German, Italy, and Japan, so the countries they were fighting against making their own propaganda cartoons is about even, but I’m not touching the issue with a 77 feet pole. The only theory on why this film was made that would make some sense is that they made it in revenge against Popeye’s WWII cartoons that was made at the same time that they actually see somehow. Popeye has done the propaganda, but Bluto was in only one out of 3 or 4 of them. Thus is why Bluto is there in the navy. Made worse if Michael Bay put Bluto there in Pearl Harbor.

Bottom line, neither film has much happening in their film in terms of plot, moments, and emotions. Though this was the limitation for Japan at the time, since their animations wasn’t as up to date as Americans or other countries by that timing. Neither of these films is good. If I had to choose which is better, it’s Ari-Chan with some emotions, atmosphere, and some creative ways for different insects to play the guitar or violin. I could say propaganda films like Momotaro’s Sea Eagle would damage the resume, but if Der Fuhrer’s Face and Looney Tunes’ WW2 cartoon gave their directors a continuing career, surely anything is possible to some accept or overlook the past to give them a chance for the animator to be animation director and then to animate Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Suddenly the “There’s Always Tomorrow” and the rabbits in that song gave a new meaning relating this review.

“We all pretend the rain would never end, and you’ll be there my friend, someday…”

-         -The rabbits and raccoons in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

If you’re interested to see old Japanese cartoons or what previous films Tadahito did before Rudolph, give it a watch. If you want to see something exciting or funny, please register to a different class than this one.