Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (1945)
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Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors Movie Review
Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors is a 1945 anime film directed by Mitsuyo Seyo that is the first ever anime feature. It is technically fine, yet troublesome in plot.
Yes, the plot here is very problematic and not just for the obvious reasons. But let’s state the obvious. This is a shameless propaganda movie and its anti-American and anti-west sentiments are so emphasized that it was painful to watch. It was just straight propaganda. The ending in particular is just unbelievable. How they depicted and drew Americans is so crazy and offensive, but having in mind the bad state between the two countries at the time, it is understandable. But still, this was too much.
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“Tomorrow, the final page will be turned in our fight against the enemy“
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However, an even bigger problem for me was its lack of a clear structure. The story is just non-existent and the majority of it is very poorly and oddly edited and structured. When you read the plot afterwards, you realize that the movie does have one. But that isn’t clear while watching it, again owing to that mediocre structure. The entire first half for instance consists of just the scenes of animals being taught how to read and work. It’s only in the second half that the film starts to have a more defined storyline.
The lack of character development also bothered me and none of these characters is remotely memorable or even developed in the slightest. Momotaro himself is such a typical hero type and all of the animals don’t get much to do and they all blend in together as they’re so similar.
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The score is also solid and the one song that we have here is pretty good and catchy. But the editing is so troublesome, the film is dull and slow, even for its slight running time, and I just found its political aspect overly emphasized and the lack of characterization and strong plot troublesome. It is historically significant, but there isn’t much more to it other than that.
Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors is historically significant as the first ever anime film with very good animation and pretty good score, but it is otherwise weak as the plot is lacking, the structure is odd, the character development is very weak and its propaganda approach is overly emphasized.
My Rating – 3
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