Sankichi the Monkey: The Storm Troopers

There's very little context here. We are directly placed into what appears to be a battlefront theatre between Bears (ostensibly representing pre soviet Russia) and the monkeys ( whom the title suggests were storm troopers from Imperial Germany). These storm troops were trained as shock infantry who employed precision infiltration tactics that seems visually representative of what happened in the movie. I suspect that this short film was extremely anti-war in its message. In an environment of the world still suffering from the consequences of the first world war, we have a short that describes the eastern front of trench warfare between the the Russian Empireand the Austro-Hungarian empire. The constant refrain I got from the film was how entrenched warfare was prolonged, surreal and ultimately meaningless - with bloodshed and loss of life being a hallmark on both sides. Knowing Mitsuyo Seo's political inclinations makes this all more salient and kind of tragic that he was later coerced into making propaganda films for a state that eventually turned into a war engine.