William L
Talk about humble beginnings. Horus is remembered today predominantly as the first major credit of animator Hayao Miyazaki and an early directoral work from Isao Takahata, whose legendary partnership would blossom into Studio Ghibli, and to a lesser extent, for creating a Norse setting where people apparently don't wear pants. However, this 1968 film predates the start of Miyazaki's canon of major works by more than 15 years, and can hardly be judged on equal footing with those later classics. There are elements of the fanciful imagination that would come to rank the pair among the greatest creative minds in the history of animation, but they are few and far between, and the actual quality of the animation is just so poor by comparison that it's really hard to derive much enjoyment from the experience. Sure, compared to Hanna-Barbera's cost-cutting methods of reusing stock assets and only aiming for the bare minimum, this Toei work must have compared favorably, but many of the so-called action scenes aren't even animated, they're just a collection of stills with audio added on top, plus the characters lack depth and the dialogue is rough. It has value from a historical perspective, but it's a difficult experience to get through. (2/5)
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/18/21
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s r
Many half baked ideas trying to show the Nordic mythology and it's fantastic nature, all with a Japanese twist. There's good stuff here, maybe it should be remade?
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
A vintage classic of Japanese animation, HORUS PRINCE OF THE SUN (released in America on TV as "Little Norse Prince Valiant" for some reason) was the directorial debut of Isao Takahata, the man who would go on to create classics such as GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS, and his recent swan song THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA. At the time of its release (1968), this was the most expensive animated film from Japan -- and it took longer to create than the average feature at the time, and unfortunately for Takahata it would be his only film as a director for his company, Toei Studios. The box office failure of this film caused Takahata to be demoted -- a rather undeserving fate for such a daring, dramatic tale. Also noteworthy is that it was the first time that another auteur, a then young Hayao Miyazaki would make his first collaboration with Takahata that would later lead to a successful partnership. Because this is a much older film, the artwork may seem a bit primitive to today's films. That said, HORUS still looks quite lavish and richly detailed for a film dating from such an era. The animation is quite fluid for the most part, save for the occasional bits of still frame panning (the only minor false note of the film). But what earns this film my highest rating is its complex, dark plot and rich characters -- a trademark of later films these two artists would display. Indeed, this tale of a Scandinavian boy who draws a powerful sword from a stone giant and matches wits against an evil ice warlord has a surprisingly unpredictable and mature edge. Action-packed, occasionally violent, but always engrossing, this is a movie that I highly recommend not only to ardent fans of Miyazaki and Takahata, but to anyone interested in "epic" folktales.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/19/23
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Audience Member
Takahata's first film is certainly a good note to start on. The story is actually deceptively interesting, though the animation is very dated. Overall, it has plenty of flaws, but you can see the early hallmarks of his unique style sprinkled throughout. Definitely worth at least one watch.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
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Audience Member
Taiyou no Ouji Horusu no Daibouken (The Little Norse Prince) (Isao Takahata, 1968)
In 1968, Isao Takahata was an unknown animator who'd done a bit of TV work. He'd been approached to do a film for Japanese production giant Toei, but things had gone off the rails pretty much from the beginning; Toei and the crew working on the film, anecdotally, had an adversarial working relationship, leading to the film being released very late, being kept in theaters for just ten days, and bombing. But that aside, the film's importance cannot be understated-it was while working on The Little Norse Prince (which, despite the name, is actually based on an Ainu legend) that Takahata met an interstitial animator named Hayao Miyazaki; when Toei threw Takahata out on his ear, he took Miyazaki with him, and the two of them founded a new, independent animation company called Studio Ghibli. The rest is history.
The story centers on Hols, a young lad who comes home from a hunting trip to discover that has village has been destroyed; after the death of his father, he heads north with his best friend, a talking bear named Coro. Hols is destined for great things; in the opening scene, he met Rockoar, one of the land's gods, and pulled a sword-from-the-stone kinda deal that draws the attention of Grunwald, the god of ice, who kidnaps Hols on his journey and offers him an ultimatum: become Grunwald's ward or risk his enmity forever. Hols chooses the latter and continues journeying until he comes to another village, where he is welcomed and grows to young manhood. While out on another hunting trip, he comes upon Hilda, a homeless bard who tells Hols that her village, too, was destroyed; he brings her back to the village, and everything seems to be going along swimmingly, but soon, Grunwald starts putting the pieces into place to eliminate Hols before he can fulfill his destiny...
This is not the quality of work Takahata quickly became known for once he and Miyazaki founded Ghibli in the seventies, but the keystones of Takahata's eye for animation are all there, if not honed yet. (One also assumes there was some studio interference.) This is good stuff, cute in all the right parts, thrilling everywhere it's supposed to be, etc. It's a must-see for Takahata fans, for obvious reasons, but others who are interested in animated films (but who don't consider themselves anime fans) might want to check it out; it's another of those movies (like Hakuja Den, viz. review Feb. '13) that shows the way Hollywood and Tokyo intertwined during the early days of feature-length Japanese animation; interesting stuff, and fun to watch. *** 1/2
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The natural process of aging in animation does little to tarnish this milestone in anime history. The story follows the simple (universal, archetipic) path of fable, with a firm grip on its legendary bases: yet even today what shines is the complex depiction of Hilda, a female figure far away from the princess in distress, showing lot of ambiguities (human and social, given the time): half mortal and half spirit, half good and half evil, half child and half woman: in that only resides a lot of the fascination of yesterady and today anime.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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