Pelleas.net | Masami Hata Filmography

Hata's only TV special. Tezuka Osamu was on his deathbed at the time this was in production. He died before it was released, making this one of his posthumous works. A series called "Love will save the Earth" showed Tezuka TV specials regularly for over a decade, and this was last of them. The first half of this film tells the story of how Tezuka saw a Chinese animation of "Journey to the West" and gained an interest in animation from it. The first half ends with Tezuka meeting the director of this movie many years later in China, then launching into Tezuka's own animated sci-fi version of this story. Shiozawa Kaneto (Sanzô) and Koyama Mami (Rura) deliver delightful performances in this half, and Tezuka's humor is captured in several instances. The first half was directed by Rin Tarô and produced by Madhouse, and is characterized by its ultra-clean look, which was apparently acheived by doing all the animation on some special kind of cel. The second half was directed by Hata and produced by Grouper Pro, the studio created in the wake of the closing of Sanrio Films. Animated in a more conventional manner, it suffers in contrast to the visually polished first half, but despite the low production quality and undistinguished story, the light-hearted atmosphere and memorable characters in the second half make it a peculiarly irresistible gem. The contrast in directing styles could not be more striking. Rintarô is all about framing, strange camera angles and special effects, the narrative focused on the "now", the animation being more realistic and alternating between highly fluid and large swaths of still frames, while Hata is all about character animation and linear dramatic flow, distribution of animation being more even and the characters more 'cartoony'. Along with SUGII Gisaburô and YAMAMOTO Eiichi, both Rin and Hata were higher-ranking directors in the heydey of Mushi Pro back in the 60s, and each of these directors established his own style in the various TV series he directed there, with Gokû representing the Sugii style, Kimba the Yamamoto Eiichi style, Sabu to Ichi Torimonohikae the Rin style, and Andersen the Hata style. The effect of the dual structure of the film is to make it feel like an overt homage to these directors' days at Mushi Pro; indeed, the second half by Hata is something of a throwback to the style of the old Gokû, which Hata put his own stamp on in the episodes he directed. Twenty years after these two directors were given their first job in anime under Tezuka, they returned to co-direct this film on the occasion of Tezuka's death. It's a fitting homage. Worthy of note is the fact that Hata's longtime Sanrio associates Mikiharu Akabori and Maya Matsuyama were the animation directors for his portion of the film. Akabori's last co-credit with Hata is in Fairy Dick (1992), produced a year after he and Hata left Sanrio (?) following the third and last of the Summertime "Sanrio World Masterpiece Movie Theater" triple features released 1989-1991.