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NEWS: Oldest Surviving Japanese TV Anime's Film Discovered

man, it is quite amazing at how much art has been lost due to time. If I remember right, roughly 70%+ of all films made before 1960 are gone. That is kind of terrifying.

For those clamoring about fansubs, do you go out of your way to regularly watch ancient anime? Beyond historical appreciation, I find it kind of hard to really care about the stories and characters, it's just more about "wow, this was made in X year", which was most of what I got out of Hakujaden. Then again, 9 minutes is a small pill to swallow.

man, it is quite amazing at how much art has been lost due to time. If I remember right, roughly 70%+ of all films made before 1960 are gone. That is kind of terrifying.

I'm just interested in seeing it from a historical perspective.

For the record, pretty much all American films made after the silent era still exist, with some exceptions, but it's rare for a US film made after 1930 to be completely lost (a few early talkies are gone though, notably some Spanish-language ones). Now US silent films however...you'd be surprised at how few survive.

Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used for nearly all 35 mm negatives and prints made before 1952 is highly flammable. When in very badly deteriorated condition and improperly stored (e.g., in a sun-baked shed), it can even spontaneously combust. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films. For example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed all the original negatives of Fox Pictures' pre-1935 films. A 1967 MGM Vault fire resulted in the loss of hundreds more silent films and early talkies. Nitrate film is chemically unstable and over time can decay into a sticky mass or a powder akin to gunpowder. This process can be very unpredictable: some nitrate film from the 1890s is still in good condition today, while some much later nitrate had to be scrapped as unsalvageable when it was barely twenty years old. Much depends on the environment in which it is stored. Ideal conditions of low temperature, low humidity and adequate ventilation can preserve nitrate film for centuries, but in practice the storage conditions were usually far from ideal.

Before the eras of television and later home video, films were viewed as having little future value when their theatrical runs ended. Thus, again, many were deliberately destroyed to save the space and cost of storage; many were recycled for their silver content. Many Technicolor two-color negatives from the 1920s and 1930s were thrown out when the studios refused to reclaim their films, still being held by Technicolor in its vaults. Some prints were sold either intact or broken into short clips to individuals who bought early novelty home projection machines and wanted scenes from their favorite movies to play for guests or family members.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

For those clamoring about fansubs, do you go out of your way to regularly watch ancient anime? Beyond historical appreciation, I find it kind of hard to really care about the stories and characters, it's just more about "wow, this was made in X year", which was most of what I got out of Hakujaden. Then again, 9 minutes is a small pill to swallow.

What should we consider ancient? This kind of short film with historical value? If this, its more historical appreciation. I am positve you are referring to this.

Or ancient as in anime from them 60s, 70s, 80s? If this, then I love older anime, not because I was born in those eras thou, because I genuinely love them, my favorite anime from the 80s without doubt.

I regularly watch as much older anime as I can and as time permits, I have watched quite a lot actually, starting indeed with the very same Atom series mentioned all they way back in the early 60s, and then to todays anime, even moe for good measure .... .... .... ....

The good thing is I don't need fansubs yes or yes, I can manage ok, so that helps to not skip lot of amazing anime, mainly older, that is not fansubbed, not even mentioning released outside Japan.