Senya Ichiya Monogatari

Summary:

An ambitious, sophisticated and lavish but now forgotten seminal experiment in adult anime moviemaking by Osamu Tezuka, this was "The world's first animated feature film for adults". The key animator list in this film reads like a roll-call of giants in the industry: The golden pair of Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino need no introduction; Gisaburo Sugii directed A Night on the Galactic Railroad, Nihon Mukashibanashi, Tezuka's Dororo, Touch and many other famous works; Kazuo Fukazawa wrote the Takahata-Miyazaki TV series Marco; Toshio Hirata directed the Unico Pilot and was animation director of many other works; Murano Yoshimi directed the second Unico movie; Mikiharu Akabori, Maya Matsuyama and Masami Hata went on work at Sanrio, Akabori and Matsuyama as animation directors and Hata as director, in such films as The Sea Prince and the Fire Child, A Journey Through Fairyland and Ringing Bell; Teruto Kamiguchi and Kitano Hideaki were the animation directors of Dororo; etc. This film was followed, at a quick clip, a year later, by the next large Mushi Production 'Animerama' film: Cleopatra. Production took approximately 1 year and 5 months, and the final cel count was 70,000 cels.

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