ANI-MOVIES, *The Great Adventure Of Horus, Prince Of The Sun

Way back in 1968, Studio Ghibli founder Isao Takahata worked on his first full-length movie as a director. Also called Horus, Prince Of The Sun, the Toei anime film was brought over to America by Fred Ladd who had already westernized Astro Boy, Gigantor, and Kimba. Ladd released it in English as The Little Norse Prince, and sometimes with the name "Valiant" added to the title in some releases which must have been confusing to a bunch of comic strip fans. This movie marks the first time that Takahata collaborated with Hayao Miyazaki on a movie which eventually led into their forming Studio Ghibli, making Horus the first unofficial Ghibli production. Takahata specialized in character designs, although a good portion of the animation was handled by Yasuo Otsuka who went on to work on Toei Animation's headliner version of Puss N' Boots. It took about three years to finally complete this feature, something that shows as there is at least one major battle scene is done all in still shots, but there are some amazing sequences of humans fighting beasts.

Centuries ago in Norway, lone young warrior Horus is chased by silver wolves which wakes up a sleeping stone giant. Horus pulls a stone sword out of the big boulder man's shoulder that gives him the title of "Prince of the Sun". The new prince returns home to his father as he is about to pass away in his sleep, but parts the true origins of their family to his son that they escaped from a village that was decimated by the evil sorcerer Grunwald. Horus sets out with his talking bear to find his old village, and then confronts Grunwald who wants to make him his ward which is rejected. Horus comes across the current village that he pledges to defend as it is facing Grunwald's wrath with his nearly endless army of wolves. The valiant prince visits his old village and meets another survivor, the mysterious but beautiful Hilda. The strange girl is secretly Grunwald's sister sent to lull the villagers into being more placid with the power of her enchanted singing. A good portion of the rest of the film contends with Hilda's conflict between being a good person or living up to her evil brother's expectations. This does turn the second half into a tale of morality slowing down the action, at least until Grunwald finally attacks the village with a giant mammoth where the rock monster returns to help in one of the first kaiju fights in an anime movie.

Horus, Prince Of The Sun managed to get made despite the animators' strike that plagued the film's production. Takahata wanted the story to originally be set in northern Japan, but that wasn't permitted at the time, so the plot was instead changed into a Viking epic. Toei wasn't pleased with how the film finally turned out, and only ran it in for ten days in Japanese theaters. Fortunately, Fred Ladd's American distribution helped make it a cult hit among mid-20th Century animation fans. The designs made for this greatly show up again in future Ghibli animation, especially in Hilda's inner struggle. Horus is claimed as being one of the first "adult" anime movies, even though that correctly goes to A Thousand And One Nights which was released a year later. The movie is considered part of the criterion that classic anime is founded by, despite the number of notable flaws its production had.