The Bear Dodger

My main issue with this short film from 1948 is how terrible it looks. Yes, it is from the 1940s, but films such as Tora-Chan from the previous year, Ari-chan from 1941 or Ahiru Rikusentai from 1940 all have much better, smoother and more expressive animation - and that’s not even mentioning the nicer-looking animations made in the 30s and 20s. This film’s animation is straight-up bad for its time, which is not helped by the genuinely unpleasant, grotesque character designs. The falling leaves are at least nicely animated. The story is not without its merits, with a couple of funny moments with the bear chasingone of the human characters. However, even for its meager length of 10 minutes it feels overlong and boring, in part due to the glacial animation. The sound at least is entirely fine. If you’re looking to watch old anime movies, skip this one.