Sen'ya ichiya monogatari

This movie is completely wacky. Completely. Wacky. It concerns the story of a poor water seller in Baghdad who stumbles his way through ali baba and his 40 thieves, the tower of Babel, sinbad the sailor, the island of the sirens and many others stories that either i didn't recognise from the 1001 nights stories or were just made up by the animation team on one of what must have been many acid binges. The film was made in 1969 with a crew of about 15 animators and others (the same names pop up in multiple roles) and is thus forced to employ a number of techniques to cheapen the animation, using still frames incorporating live action shots (for such hard to animate things as the ocean) and shooting live action footage of miniature models for the landscape shots. Despite this there is a great deal of skill in the animation, especially in the number of things the morph into other things. Some scenes in this film are intensely erotic blending abstract and direct representations of sex scenes and orgies. The abstract sex scenes was some of the weirdest animation i've ever scene, essentially an undulating mass of pink springing forth the occasional phallus or feminine curve. It is interesting that although this movie does not conform to the styles and convention of Japanese anime there is visible in some characters prototypes of what would become staple anime genre identities. The mecha/ monster, the naive Kawaii girl, the gritty needs-no-man woman. However all in all this film is totally totally one hundred percent wacky. If a festival near you has got its hands on the only surviving print in the world, take advantage of the opportunity, go see it and take a tape recorder in with you and record the soundtrack, some classic psychedelic sixties music is attached to this movie.