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.

  A Thousand and One Nights didn’t come together quite as smoothly as Osamu Tezuka and Eiichi Yamamoto hoped, but they did manage to make a commercially successful film that captured some of the rebellious, experimental spirit of Mushi Production’s early days.  That experience meant that things could only improve for their next Animerama feature.  After all, they had an absolute slam dunk of a premise: the story of Cleopatra and her infamous affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.  With Tezuka at the helm and an experienced crew behind him, there was no way this could fail! Yet Cleopatra  would fail, due to factors both within and outside of Tezuka’s control.   Its failure marked the beginning of the end for both the Animerama project and Mushi Productions, and it would coincide with the lowest point in Tezuka’s animation career. ________________________ While Tezuka was generally pleased with how A Thousand and One Nights turned out, he was stil...