The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (1963)

Original title

わんぱく王子の大蛇退治

Directed by

Yūgo Serikawa

Genre

fantasy film, children's film, adventure anime and manga

Country

Japan

Runtime

1h 26m

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 17 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young prince goes on a quest to defeat an eight-headed dragon. He receives help from gods and animals along the way.

whimsicaladventurousmythologicalclassiccolorfulspiritedfantastical

What happens

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (Japanese: わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, Hepburn: Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji; lit. 'The Naughty Prince's Slaying of Orochi') is a 1963 Japanese animated fantasy adventure film directed by Yūgo Serikawa and scripted by Ichirō Ikeda and Takashi Iijima. It is the sixth feature produced by Toei Animation (then Tōei Dōga), and was released in Japan on March 24, 1963. Multiple notable individuals worked on the film, including supervising animator Yasuji Mori, animators Yasuo Ōtsuka and Yōichi Kotabe (who made his debut as a key animator on the film, though he is inaccurately credited on screen as an in between artist) and assistant directors Isao Takahata and Kimio Yabuki. The score was composed by Akira Ifukube. It features distinctively modernist, abstracted character, background and color design. The film was well received and is considered one of the very best of the early Tōei Animation features, with praise for its music and visuals. It placed 10th in the list of the 150 best animated films and series of all time compiled by Tokyo's Laputa Animation Festival from an international survey of animation staff and critics in 2003. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• Magic Boy (1959)
• The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)
• Alakazam the Great (1960)
• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
• Guruvunu Minchina Sishyudu (1963)
• Doggie March (1963)
• Hong Kil-dong (1967)
• 旗本やくざ 五人のあばれ者 (1963)