Legend of the Forest (1987)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

LEGEND OF THE FOREST (like ASTRO BOY and KIMBA and a great deal of what Tezuka did) gives us someone else's perspective on things- and it's STILL a timely message (more so than ever, actually, with corporations clogging and poisoning our waterways and bringing the world itself to the very edge of Extinction). The fluidity of the animation here is to be envied- especially when one takes into account the fact that this is a film animated by HAND (as opposed to being cranked out on a computer). Says Tezuka himself: "... the joy of creating a film by hand cannot be beaten. Computer graphics makes working today in film very easy, but it also makes the end product cold and banal." (In this, he echoes the sentiments of Ray Harryhausen, who said in one NPR interview that "The magic is gone from animation.") There's form with computer animation, but it's often without substance. Tezuka: "I really wanted to keep the preciousness of the hand animation in the work. But I never want to make this type of film again." (It ain't easy, folks: I once did an animated sequence for a now-defunct website; it wasn't easy.) "Even the large epic animations made by Automation if they lack passion will not be evaluated well," Tezuka pointed out. "I never make work that is careless."

I used to have mixed feelings about this animated short: On one side, I admired the unique use of different animation styles and the great homage done to the history of animation, but on the other side, I didn't know what to think the heavy-handed story and the preachy last segment. However, now I consider that, even with a flawed plot, this short deserves to be recognized as an incredible effort that was ahead of its time. Done as an homage to "Bambi" and "Fantasia" this movie uses different animation styles, but instead of using those styles in different segments (Like most of anthology animated movies tend to do) this movie follows a single storyline, something that was done several years later by anime movies such as "Mind Game" and ""Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic".Several references are made here, from the early animated shorts done Émile Cohl and Gertie the Dinosaur to the classic animated films done by Disney...And the result is really impressive: While this kind of experimental anime is nothing unusual in the recent years, in the time where this made (1987) it was something incredibly risky and rare. I'm not even sure if modern animators will take the risk to do something so ambitious as this.Now, the dark thing about this fascinating short is the story: While at first it looks like it was something borrowed from Disney, several darker elements are shown, such as death and tragedy. But also, there is some certain level of cynicism in the story: While there are indeed some degree of demonization in the portrayal of the human beings (Especially in the last part) the animals from the forest aren't innocent creatures either, being shown to be arrogant, violent and vengeful. From a certain point of view, it could be a deconstruction of how other animated movies with ecological themes tend to portray the animals as completely innocent characters. Sadly, at the ending, the demonization of humans is played straight and that affects the overall content of this short. However, this doesn't make it any less interesting. Similar themes are explored in the movie "Princess Mononoke" from Hayao Miyazaki.

I don't know much about Osamu Tezuka, but he must have been interested in animation's history because he walks through a series of styles here, from stick drawings and repetitive loops reminiscent of the earliest works in the early 20th century, through a progression of Disney and anime styles, and even one section that reminded me of the Flintstones.The storytelling itself follows along in the style of the animations, the types of stories that were told at the time. Simple slapstick at the beginning, some parts very similar to fantasia, and an anime-style ending where rapidly-growing plants kill and smother an entire tree-cutting colony.The overall theme is obviously environmental but with a definite dark angle to it, and it gives this animation a bit of a kick.

At times, THE LEGEND OF THE FOREST is a lovely film technically. However, at the same time, the anti-human race/pro-nature message sure seemed heavy-handed and ridiculous--ruining the film for me.The film is unusual in that it has different animation styles in each of the movements of a piece of music by Tchaikovsky. It's a very interesting idea, though the quality is wildly uneven. The first segment is done as a slide show and although the drawings are nice, it's still like a slide show. Later, some of the sequences are very cartoony (almost like an episode of "The Smurfs") and some are lovely and quite artistic. So the animation is a real mixed bag.As for the story, there is no dialog--just music. Each of the sequences consist of evil humans plundering the forests and the adorable humanized animals fighting back for the forces of niceness. But, with such blatant propaganda, the message seems to be less to conserve and manage our resources but that people and progress are evil! This proselytizing became so bad that towards the end, the leader of the humans looked like the spitting image of Hitler!!! I am NOT kidding about this and it took a lovely idea for a film and turned it into irresponsible propaganda--sort of like a higher quality version of "Captain Planet" that showed that the world is threatened by the evil corporations! My advice is to try to find one of the director's less preachy films such as JUMPING or BROKEN DOWN FILM. Otherwise, you might become a mind-numbed nature worshiping idiot who sees humans as expendable.