Torachan and the Bride

A lost Japanese animated film noted for being one of the earliest to feature voice acting. The story is about a working family man who has an affair with a coworker. She finds out about the affair through him talking in his sleep.

A baseball game among the animals of the forest. In the middle of the match, the fox transforms into a princess and the raccoon into a servant, turning the scene into a kabuki-style performance. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Betty Boop also make appearances. The assistant director was Kenzo Masaoka, often referred to as “the father of Japanese animation,” who also provided the voice for the raccoon.

Jesuit priests in Japan during the 17th century are persecuted by the shogunate to for trying to spread Christianity.

Chestnuts, bees, and a mortar join forces to punish a villainous monkey.

A spider attempts to lure a ladybug into his web. When she manages to escape and hide in a tulip, a storm comes that batters the spider, while the ladybug remains safe.

Tora-chan and Miike are working on the side of a tuna steamship and manage to run afoul of the short-tempered captain. But the captain makes plenty of trouble on his own!

Before Masaoka Kenzō became one of Japan’s main animation pioneers, he directed two live-action featurettes full of special effects, both considered lost. Until this abridged version of the children’s fairy tale Sea Palace was found, now restored by the Kobe Planet Film Archive with the support of IFFR. A sensation for animation lovers.

A rare glimpse of early Japanese sound anime and prewar Japanese culture, The Roots of Japanese Anime features the masterworks of such pioneers of Japanese animation as Noburo Ofuji, Yasuji Murata, and Kenzo Masaoka, in addition to Mitsuyo Seo’s Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, the notorious war cartoon billed as Japan’s first feature anime. These movies represent the brilliance and variety of anime, ranging from beautiful Japanese paper animation to powerful multiplane cel cartoons. They also evoke the fascinating complexity of Japan, a nation that is then both marching towards war, enlisting kids in militarist nationalism, yet also delighting in a mixture of modern popular culture, ancient folk tales, irreverent comedy, and the everyday life of prewar Japanese children.