Movies for a Weekend Afternoon

[Check out that voice acting talent!]

I have written before about how, when I was but a tiny child, I would watch old (well, they weren’t so old then) Japanese animated movies sometimes during the long weekend afternoons. They would, of course, be cut and dubbed for Western audiences, and thus lost some of their art and charm when adapted by the distributers to what they considered something more appealing (and understandable) to American kids. I may have only watched Alakazam the Great or Panda and the Magic Serpent once or twice, but they sank deep into my mind, emerging now and then as fugitive, brightly-colored memories. I was able eventually to track them down and obtain copies; copies, of course, of the edited and dubbed versions I had watched in the old days, Panda in a copy that showed considerable wear of the print they were using. Recently there have been restorations of the original films, and now they are on Youtube. I can finally watch these old classics in the form they were designed to be seen. This includes an introduction in a completely different animation style to Hakujaden (Panda and the White Serpent) that I have never seen before. I include a link to Magic Boy (The Boy Sarutobi Sasuke) which, though I only found out about it lately, I consider a natural partner to these movies, almost the third in a trilogy. I am glad I now have the patience for subtitles, or even (knowing the gist of the tale) following along with the story as the original Japanese flows like water over my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydgTTsBixh4  Alakazam the Great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4ytPE0o28Q Saiyuki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBa2RRGDCg0 Hakujaden; or, The White Snake Enchantress (Panda and the White Serpent)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwbOjyhFOSc  Magic Boy (Original)