新年快乐！蛇年开始了！ And that's all the Chinese I know lol

I was looking into something else when I found out the first ever color anime film, the first one produced by Toei Animation, and one of the first released in America was a film known as The White Snake Enchantress today. It also just so happened to be that this is a Chinese story about a snake and it's the snake year! So I decided, I had to watch it!

The film is an adaptation of a Chinese legend known as Legend of the White Snake or some variation. A few years ago it was the inspiration of a Chinese animated film simply called /anime/107371/white-snake that I think is well regarded. It is considered one of China's Four Great Folktales, with the others being Lady Meng Jian, Butterfly Lovers, and The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid. I'm not very familiar with what can be considered classical Chinese history and literature outside of /manga/30042/dragon-ball (which counts fr) and my recent flirtation with Three Kingdoms from the Japanese strategy game series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the anime /anime/141774/ya-boy-kongming so I chose to just watch the movie without doing much research.

The movie is about a young man named Xian Xu who as a child found a white snake, but was strongly discouraged from interacting with it for reasons he never understood. Now some amount older, he hears beautiful sounds coming from somewhere. The panda and red panda that live with him find the sound is coming from a string instrument I'm not familiar with, and Xu finds a beautiful young woman. Unfortunately, her appearance is fleeting. As the movie continues, Xu and the beautiful woman, Niang Bai, try to get together, but various things come between them. She is none other than the white snake from the beginning who's come back to be with Xu. Because she is a magical spirit in the form of a beautiful woman, a monk is concerned about what problems she could cause.

In concept, this movie isn't really that bad, and frankly I feel bad criticizing a folktale like this, but I didn't think the story was that good. Throughout the story, the couple being together is seemingly framed as being foolishness one commits when blinded by love. But maybe I was expecting something more serious when I really shouldn't have been. The children's media that I really like are things like more modern children's anime and Disney films, like Ghibli and Inside Out (2015), which have more involved stories and more intense messages. This film is not that. I would have liked it more if it did its simplicity with conviction. As the original English title (Panda and the Magic Serpent) implies, the pandas play large roles with about a third of the movie being entirely focused on a bunch of animals and not focused on the simple love story. I was falling asleep so hard by then. Personally I found most of the movie itself to be boring, but the animation was gorgeous, so I didn't really dislike any of it but the animal section. The animals existing wasn't a problem, but I think the film would have been better if it was shorter, even if that'd make it as long as a TV special.

I put off mentioning this, but like I said before, the animation was really nice. I don't remember seeing many cartoons this old except for maybe Cinderella (1950), but I did see Song of the South (1946) recently so I have some point of comparison. It is impressive that around this same time, when the Japanese cartoon industry had literally just begun, they could produce animation just as smooth, fluid, and expressive as the Disney giant it was inspired by. The animation was quite the joy to watch, even if I was mid on the story.

All in all, I'd say I only recommend this movie if you're particularly into the history of animation and film as a whole or just in Japan, or into Chinese folklore.