Ben Ettinger on Hakujaden

I'm reading this essential essay about Toei Doga by Anipages' Ben Ettinger, to gain some understanding, and I thought you ought to read his thoughts on Japan's first color animated feature, Hakujaden:

"What makes the first full-length color anime feature great? Besides the fact that it works as a movie after all these years, the animation is thoroughly engaging and well-crafted, the atmosphere is beguiling, the characters are interesting, and the story is universal (Romeo & Juliet), the ambition with which it was made still comes through loud and clear. To strike a tone of reconciliation with the Asian neighbors Japan had so brutally treated in the recent past, Toei president Hiroshi Okawa decided on a Chinese story for this film, the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of Japan, the historic implications of which he fully understood.

"Starting with this film Okawa set out to make Toei Doga the Disney of the East, but what impresses is that he really understood what that meant; that it meant not just copying Disney, but beginning from scratch as Disney had done and building up a store of animation knowhow from which to build a legacy upon. That meant hiring real animators who knew their craft, having these animators transmit their knowhow to newcomers, and continuing this process in order to discover new techniques and continuously improve their films. And that, ultimately, is the legacy that comes down to us to this day in the form of the films of Studio Ghibli.

"Though the animation is understandably lacking in the refinement and detail that would come bit by bit with the films that immediately followed, it should be remembered that all of the key animation here was drawn by TWO PEOPLE, the two main animators from Nichido: Yasuji Mori, who did the animals, and Akira Daikubara, who did the humans. Lest one think that asking two people to provide all the ideas for a film's movement would result in a thinness of ideas, I need merely point to the fight scene, animated entirely by Yasuji Mori, which is quite possibly the single best piece he ever did, and in my opinion the best in the film; and to any number of other scenes like the part where the wooden dragon takes off, and the fight in mid-air, which are breathtakingly beautiful to behold even after all these years.

"I've seen both the dub and the original for this one, and the dub is pretty good, as I recall. The original is impressive because two voice-actors provided all of the voices. It's part of the mystique of the original: All these twos."