西遊記 鉄扇公主の巻

"Princess Iron Fan" is the first Chinese and also the first Asian feature-length animated film. It was produced in Shanghai during the difficult times of the Sino-Japanese War by the Wan brothers, Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan, and was released on January 1, 1941. The film is adapted from the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West" and tells the story of Sun Wukong borrowing the Palm Leaf Fan from Princess Iron Fan to extinguish the flames of the Flaming Mountains. The film's production methods were innovative for its time, using hand-drawn animation and some rotoscoping techniques. Despite the challenging production conditions, the film was a great success and had a profound impact on later Chinese animation. It was released in Japan in 1942, and a restored version was screened at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art Film Center in 2005. This animation is not only a representative work of early Chinese animation but also a significant work in the history of world animation.