Renaissance Josei

The Animerama trilogy officially ended in 1973 with the failed release of Belladonna of Sadness and the closure of Mushi Productions.  That was far from the end for Osamu Tezuka and Eichi Yamamoto, the men who had helped bring that troubled trilogy into the world.   While both found success in their post-Mushi careers, that success took them down very different paths.   It wasn't even the end for Mushi Productions itself.   Meanwhile, the Animerama films themselves would linger in obscurity for decades, waiting for a time when the world would be more receptive to what they had to offer.

Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto, and the rest of the staff at Mushi Productions had nothing but high hopes for the Animerama film series when it started.  They believed they could produce a film as lavishly animated as anything that had come out of Toei with cutting-edge content to boot.  In some ways, it felt like a return to the early days of the studio.  Just as before, though, those hopes were dashed by the realities and complications of making a feature-length animated feature.   The production of A Thousand and One Nights was marked by uncertainty, experimentation, indulgence, and chaos.   Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the film isn’t how it looks or the story it tells, but that the end result turned out so well in spite of its origins.