Momotarou: Umi no Shinpei

Yes it's a wartime propaganda film, but one that spends as much time with cute animal soldiers packing and eating their bento lunches as it does with any fighting. It's only in the last fifteen minutes of runtime that there's any War at all. There are also extended scenes of singing alphabet songs, hanging laundry and feeding birds.

The animation is amazing, of course continuity is a little jumpy which considering the conditions of it being made make sense, so a lot of the scenes have little jumps and skips in the motion. Still the movement is remarkably three dimensional, and the characters have very expressive ... facial expressions.

When compared to the Disney wartime movies, these one lacks the coherent plots and punchy action and quick gags. It's all rather hallucinatory, slow moving and brilliant in its own way, but definitely not one for all tastes.

I can't rightfully support this film in any genuine manner, it's wartime propaganda at its finest. But viewing this as a piece of history, both in terms of Japanese history and animation history is incredibly interesting, and I will rate it based purely on how well I feel it's made, not what it represents.

For allegedly being the first feature length Japanese animation, it's animated surprisingly well, with adorable characters to boot, which is very evidently on purpose as it's trying to sell the idea of joining the military to kids. It's showing that it's an honorable decision that'll leave you with love and respect from ... all those around you. This is also shown in the scenes highlighting the beautiful nature of Japan, and the heroics displayed by the squad of Sacred Sailors. And I will say, the scenes of farms with Mt. Fuji looming over the horizon do look good. Where Momotaro drops the ball (other than the obvious), is both the scenes where characters go completely off model, looking genuinely horrendous in certain scenes, as well as the music. Music and sound effects that sound like they were lifted from a Creative Commons library. During the final third is where we get the meat and potatoes of the propaganda, and while this is obviously wholly disagreeable in every manner, it's also poorly animated and the style clashes heavily with the rest of the film. With the changes in animation style and long stretches filled with seemingly nonsensical shots, it feels undercooked for the most part.

Despite that, there's genuine thought put into this propaganda-piece which is as impressive as it is worrying.

Overview:

I have a new laptop and now I'm back to befoul MAL with more silly reviews of bad, obscure anime that nobody asked to be reviewed. Let the universe howl in despair for I have returned! Time to review Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors!

Background:

The year is 1945 and Japan is very rapidly losing the war in the Pacific. The Japanese navy has been utterly decimated and is simply unable to keep up with America's manufacturing strength and output. Japan's resources are running bone dry and most of the Japanese merchant fleet has been sunk by American submarines. All of Japan's best pilots were trained in ... Germany and now virtually all are dead. Germany has been knocked out of the war, so no new quality pilots can be trained. The Soviet Red Army is now steamrolling Japan's Army in China and Korea. By the summer of 1945, all Japan can do is try make the predicted American invasion as slow and painful as possible. Hopefully, the Americans will accept something slightly less than absolute surrender so Japan can lose the war with some honor intact.

With all this going on, a branch of the Imperial Japanese Navy decided to force a Japanese Communist to make a propaganda cartoon against his will in which a bunch of furries conquer America! This...is that story.

Plot:

Hey kids! Did you know the Imperial Japanese Navy is awesome? It's true! They are all very handsome and dashing and have HUGE cocks. My big brother is in the navy and he says they have the best ships EVER! Seriously, the first 30 minutes of this film are a bunch of woodland creatures endlessly praising the navy. We're off to a great start when I'm immediately reminded of Brazil's Ratatooing, where the CGI abominations won't stop praising the food. I love that at no point in the movie does it say anything positive about the Japanese Army. Fuck those guys! They can make their own stinking movie!

Part 2 of the film is where the little animals decide to sing the Hirigana alphabet...for 10 minutes. This segment is the direct Japanese equivalent of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz6OGVCdov8

Now we enter the final act and it's FINALLY time to wipe out the American Navy located at the "Devil Islands". The Japanese forces are all drawn as furry animals besides the folktale character of Momotaro, who is leading the Japanese forces for some reason. The American troops are all portrayed as humans and have no folktale characters like Paul Bunyan fighting for them, so they have no chance! The Japanese Furry forces slowly parachute down onto American ships, which don't fire at them for...reasons. The Americans at Devil Island surrender immediately without a fight and this causes the entire country of America to surrender right away. Some animal school children play games and the movie ends.

Art:

This was filmed in black and white despite most animated feature films being in color by 1945. I'll give this movie a LOT of slack though because Japan couldn't afford to waste a lot of money on this film. It's a miracle that it turned out looking as good as it did. I can only imagine the horrible working hours and conditions that went into the making of this film. What's interesting is that it doesn't look anything like American cartoon films of the 40s like Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Song of the South, etc. Instead it resembles Max Fleischer cartoons from the 1920s. In case you don't know your animation history, that's the guy who inspired all the art from Cuphead.

Sound:

Screaming children and one of the most annoying songs I've heard in a children's movie. One thing I will say is that the English used by the Americans is shockingly some of the best English I've heard in an anime! That's because they used Japanese ambassdors that actually spoke English instead of professional voice actors who are sounding out their lines phonetically. Amusingly, most seemed to have learned English with a British accent. So you have American characters voiced by Japanese who sound like Brits.

Overall:

I'm not just giving this a low score because it's Axis propaganda. I'm giving it a low score because this is one of slowest, most joyless children's films I've ever sat through. When I found out the director really didnt want to make this film and was forced, it made perfect sense. That's exactly what it feels like. The best part of this film is seeing the ending credits roll. At least Japan can rest easy that their Axis partners Italy and Germany have both made even worse cartoons. Italy made all the animated Titanic films, while Germany has Dingo Pictures. That's one of the nicest things I can say about Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors. At least it isn't a Dingo cartoon. Although now I really want to see an edit where the Japanese Furry Force is visited by their ally Obersturmbannführer Wabuu!