Poster - Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (Gulliver's Space Travels)

Here is an American movie poster for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon, the 1965 Toei Doga animation feature. I finally got around to watching this tonight (Saturday), and I had a really great time. Of course, I would prefer to see the original Toei movie, in pristine condition, and the original soundtrack, instead of an old VHS rip of the US dubbed version. But that option simply isn't available right now.

It's safe to say this movie is more famous for Hayao Miyazaki's changed ending, where the robot princess is revealed to be human inside her shell, and that's really unfair, because this is an excellent movie in its own right, and another feather in the cap of Toei. I've really grown to love their classic movies, from 1958's Hakujaden to 1971's Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. They were the forebearers to Studio Ghibli, yes. But they were also a great animation studio in their own right, and the modern anime era ushered in by 1968's Horus, Prince of the Sun (how is that for cruel irony?) rendered this classic, Disney-esque era obsolete.

That's really unfortunate. Toei Doga made some great movies, some great classics. I'd certainly put Hakujaden and Little Prince & the Magic Serpent up against anything from the West. And, of course, there's Miyazaki, Takahata, and the rest of the crew who gave us Puss in Boots and Animal Treasure Island and Ali Baba....and Horus, the greatest and most revolutionary of them all.

Anime fansubbers and Ghibli Freaks must make it their goal to catalog and share the classic Toei films with the world. It's really quite impossible to fully appreciate anime's rich history without them.