Shinsetsu kachikachi yama (1936) watch online HD

One of the intellectual pleasures of looking at this early Kon Ichikawa cartoon -- it's the earliest credit for him on the IMDb, as writer and animator -- is trying to figure out what it means. It begins as a funny animal cartoon, with assorted beasts sitting in chairs, listening to a band shell concert. When a fat cat in samurai armor kidnaps a rabbit, humans who look like characters out of 19th century art rise to fight a war with the cat's army of kittens with swords and smoothbore cannon.

The piece shows a mixture of influences. While the backgrounds, humans and cats look like traditional Japanese works, the funny animals could have been lifted from Walt Disney and the band starts out playing Lehar's "Merry Widow Waltz". The effect is the sort of mishmosh of elements that a child might assemble. Clearly this cartoon was intended for children. Nonetheless, the fluidity of animation and the sheer bizarreness to an American whose knowledge of Japanese animaton in this period is severely limited makes it eminently watchable.