Hakujaden

I haven't seen this yet, but I want to, and I've seen really small snippets of it. I'm not a very big fan of anime, but I like old japanese animations, and this movie looks really cool. I might update my review once I see this film.

As many of the anime fans know, Japanese movie studio, Toei, revolutionized animation with its numerous excellent animation movies. One of the first full-length color animation from Toei is "Hakuja-den," an excellent movie from 1958. Even though some of the scenes look primitive when compared to much later Japanese animations like "Akira" or "Cowboy Beebop," almost everything in the movie is superbly done. The story of the movie was a rather sentimental and highly romanticized but good adaptation of a Chinese folklore. (This folklore was used by classical Beijing opera dramatists.) The scenes were superbly drawn with tremendous care. The artists behind this movie created excellent animal characters like Panda, Mimi and White pig. (These are obviously influenced by excellent Disney animal characters.) The music was superbly composed by Chuji Kinoshita (brother of the famed Japanese movie director Keisuke Kinoshita). Kinoshita superbly weaved actual Chinese melodies--similar to the ones used by Puccini in his opera Turandot--into a symphonic movie music. An excellent combination of music, story and animation. These are what Toei producers learned from the Disney studio. Toei producers from the 1950's wanted to outdo Disney with their "Hakuja-den."

There were some obvious inaccuracies in the movie. Even though the lead male character, Shu-sheng, and lead female character, Bai-nyang, are wearing clothing similar to those from Tang dynasty era (7th to 10th century), many of the other character are wearing clothing and head gears which weren't worn until Ching dynasty era (17th to early 20th century).

Also, the prints, on which the VHS and DVD versions of this movie were made, were not in a very good condition. Even on the VHS and DVD versions of the movie, I could see huge number of scratches. (I wonder why the producers of the VHS and DVD did not clean-up the scratches with modern digital technology. They could have easily done that. Are they too cheap to do that?)

In spite of these shortcomings, this is a superb animation movie. Kudos to the producers of this movie. I highly recommend every fan of animation to see this movie. If you are too poor to rent this movie, in many parts of the United States this movie is available as a $1 DVD "Panda and the White Serpent" at the local WalMart.

I first came across this title reading an Wikipedia article about the history of anime, as well as an Animatorium article on "The 15 Best Animations You've Never Heard Of". It took some time before I finally checked it out online just a few months ago in March and I saw it again only last month. I saw and heard only the original Japanese version, and plan to see the English dub as well eventually. Before discovering this, I had never heard of the Chinese folktale under its original title, "Hakujaden: Tale of the White Serpent", so this adaptation is the first one I've seen. But it's one of the hallmarks of color anime films.

Prior to the modern anime that followed from the late 1960s onward, it's enchanting how those are worlds apart from the more Disney-esque anime of the formative decades and had yet to find their own distinctive identity that set it apart from Western animation. As for the technical aspects of this, they're almost perfect. Particularly I'm talking about the animation, and even more specially, when the characters speak. It seems that, at times, when they're heard speaking, there's no mouth/lip movement. Aside from one instance in which one character's lines are heard but there's no mouth movement possibly because there's an instance of thinking involved instead, it could've been done better. Next thing to mention, the characters. I enjoyed all of them: The two heroes, Xu Xian and Bai Niang, Bai Niang's mistress, Shao-Chin, Panda and Mimi the Red Panda, all of them. Then the music, as nice as the Chinese-style songs are, what caught me the most was the tune that one of the pigs plays. It sounded familiar to me and I might have heard it before, but I can't think of the artist who originally performed it at the moment. The colors, the backgrounds, everything else about it is great. Since the previous, two, other reviewers went over the plot of this, I'll just talk a little about what's included in it and one of my favorite parts. One aspect of it features the supernatural, as in the case of Bai Niang and her powers. There are plenty of good and funny moments, like when a drunk guy sees Bai Niang in her snake form and he thinks she's a hallucination.

I won't say anymore about it than what has already been said. I'll just let all those who haven't already seen it, watch it for themselves. It's well worth it and not to be skipped, love it.