Hayao Miyazaki

Front matter

ANIMATION: KEY FILM/FILMMAKERS

Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator

Raz Greenberg

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Chapter 1 FROM FAN TO PROFESSIONAL 1 Chapter 2 TALL MOUNTAINS AND GREEN GABLES 31 Chapter 3 OUR MAN, LUPIN 51 Chapter 4 TO THE VALLEY BELOW 77 Chapter 5 BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: STUDIO GHIBLI 107 Chapter 6 GROWING OLD IN AN UNCERTAIN PRESENT 127 A Guide to Further Research 153 Bibliography 159

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book grew out of the many projects that I have been involved with over the last decade, and I would like to thank the many people who supported my work on these projects. First among them are Professor Paul Frosh and Dr. Shunit Porat, who both supported, encouraged, and greatly aided my study and research into Miyazaki’s films and Japanese animation. Further thanks also go to Professor Esther Schelly-Newman for her support and to Professor Aner Preminger, whose seminar on intertextuality in the cinema provided me with useful tools and a chance to examine the connection between Miyazaki and the works that inspired him.

Preface

The initial inspiration for the writing of this book came from a childhood memory—one that I share with many other children of the 1980s in my home country (Israel). Throughout that decade, there was only a single broadcast channel available for us to watch, a public channel whose children’s broadcasting hours’ content was dictated by an educational agenda. In accordance with this agenda, many of those hours were filled with long-running animated shows that adapted classics of children’s literature, among them The Adventures of Peter Pan by James Barrie, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and many others.

One of the earliest of such adaptations to appear on the screen of Israel's public channel, and definitely the most memorable, was Heart, based on the 1886 children’s novel Cuore by Italian author Edmondo De Amicis. De Amicis book followed the childhood of schoolchildren and the hardships they endure as their country becomes a modern nationstate. The animated show adapted and extended a short story from De Amicis book, about the courageous boy Marco and his journey from Italy to Argentina to find his missing mother. De Amicis’ novel had its share of fans among the previous generation of young Israelis who found the book’s patriotic spirit to be a good fit with their own country’s national mood in the 1950s and 1960s; by the time the show was broadcasted, many members of this generation had become parents themselves and they enjoyed rediscovering Marcos story alongside their own children, especially as it was given an excellent emotional Hebrew dub and its theme song was performed by one of the country’s most beloved singers. And yet, throughout the endless cycle of the show’s reruns (almost every summer vacation), there was an element that left both the show’s young and old viewers puzzled: why would a show about an Italian boy traveling to South America have Japanese-language credits at the end of each episode?

As subsequent animated shows that adapted classic children’s literature appeared on Israeli television screens, featuring a design style that was somewhat similar to that of Heart, their viewers became vaguely aware that these shows were produced in Japan; indeed, throughout the xii Preface

1980s, it was the main exposure (alongside very few science-fiction shows) of my generation to Japanese animation. What we did not realize, at the time, was just how significant these shows were—how, despite adapting western literature, they very much reflected Japanese culture - and, above all, the fact that the production of Heart employed the services of a man who at the time was already one of Japan’s most acclaimed animators, and who would go on to win an Academy Award in 2003 for his film Spirited Away: Hayao Miyazaki.

For me, this realization came toward the end of the previous millennium, when my interest in comics led me to the discovery of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation), further leading me to major in Japanese during my BA studies. It was during that time that I read and fell in love with Miyazaki’s manga masterpiece Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, shortly before being awed by his epic historical fantasy film Princess Mononoke (1997). I became a fan of Miyazakis works and, as I dug deeper into his filmography, I discovered that, along with his longtime partner Isao Takahata, he was indeed one of the people behind Heart - or 3,000 Leagues in Search of Mother, as the show was known in Japan upon its broadcast in 1976. The design similarities between the show and Miyazaki’s later acclaimed works were strong, but as I watched and read more of these works, which led me to write my MA thesis about him, I understood that the connection goes deeper into the thematic foundations upon which Miyazaki rose to his prestigious position as Japan's leading animator.

3,000 Leagues in Search of Mother is discussed in the second chapter of this book. Like the other chapters, it examines an important stage in Miyazakis early career, showing how it inspired his later acclaimed works. Although several books and many articles have been written about Miyazaki in English (an annotated bibliography of recommended sources is included at the end of this book), this book aims to be the first that offers deep examination of his early career in film and television, alongside works of film, television, and literature that inspired him, shaping his style and themes.

But there is more to Miyazaki’s early career than mere hints of his future acclaimed works. Anime scholar Helen McCarthy has described her wonderful book Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation (published in 1999) as a “Miyazaki 101” introduction to the director and his works. This books aims at being “Miyazaki in context” in its reflection of how Miyazaki grew within the emerging post-World War II Japanese animation industry and how his rise within the same industry is a very

Preface xiii important part of his country becoming an animation superpower, a status that it maintains to this very day. The two stories - Miyazaki’s rise to prominence and the Japanese animation industry's rise to the same position - are inseparable; each completes the other in showing the richness of styles, narratives, and themes that dominate both Miyazaki’s works and the industry as a whole, and this richness strongly echoes throughout the chapters that comprise this book.

The first chapter, “From Fan to Professional} offers a brief examination of Miyazaki’s early life before moving on to analyze the many works he was involved with in Toei, the first animation studio that employed his talents, and the first big animation studio to emerge in post-war Japan. It is no coincidence that Miyazaki found his first job in Toei and worked on the studio’s projects for almost a decade; he fell in love with animation after watching the studio’s debut feature-length animated film, Panda and the Magic Serpent (1958). This film, other than being an impressive technical achievement, also shows the wide variety of artistic influences that its creative staff drew from many different sources—American, European, and Asian. These sources, alongside mentoring by the studio veterans, provided Miyazaki himself with strong stylistic and thematic inspiration that is evident in his works to this very day, as in his portrayal of strong female characters and a sense of commitment to social justice and solidarity.

The second chapter, “Tall Mountains and Green Gables,’ examines Miyazakis role in the abovementioned involvement with animated adaptations of classic children’s literature. It is here that Miyazaki, assisted by other former Toei employees, as well as new colleagues, began practicing a new form of storytelling: unlike the rockling adventure yarns that dominated the Toei productions, the literary adaptations were a slower affair, following the everyday lives of their young protagonists. More layers were added to Miyazaki’s style during the period in which he worked on the project’s shows, from his great love for European landscapes, through the familiar character design that is associated with his works, to the many stories he later told of children, their happy childhood, and the eventual need for them to grow up and leave their childhood behind.

The third chapter, “Our Man, Lupin,” focuses on Miyazaki’s first significant directorial job on the animated series Lupin the Third. This series, adapted from a successful manga, represented a first for both Miyazaki, alongside Takahata, and the anime industry as a whole: it was the first Japanese animated television series that attempted to appeal to xiv Preface an adult audience, and it featured elements that were new to both Miyazaki’s and Takahata’s work up to that point: not only a modern setting filled with vehicles and firearms, but also over the top violence and more than a hint of often humorous sexual innuendo, alongside something of an anti-social atmosphere. All these elements existed in the manga source material upon which the show was based, and Miyazaki and Takahata attempted to take things in their own direction, not always successfully. These early experiments have also led to Miyazaki’s further involvement with the titular character of Lupin the Third in both his debut feature film directorial job The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and in a new show in the franchise. In both cases, he managed to fit the protagonist within his own creative vision while at the same time remaining loyal to his roots in both the manga and its literary origins in European crime fiction.

The fourth chapter, “To the Valley Below,’ offers a study of the creation of Miyazaki’s biggest non-animated project—the abovementioned epic manga Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The chapter explores the many stylistic and literary influences behind the drawing of the series, from classic mythology and Japanese folktales, through works of European comics and animation to American science fiction literature and cinema. The chapter also discusses the feature-length animated adaptation of the manga, directed by Miyazaki in 1984, merely two years after he began drawing the manga and a decade before he concluded it, showing how his perception of the different themes presented in both the manga and the film—environmentalism, war and peace, world politics—have evolved greatly during this period.

The fifth chapter, “Bringing it All Together: Studio Ghibli,’ explores the beginning of Miyazaki’ directorial career in his own studio, showing how the early films he made in this studio are in many ways rooted in the projects he worked on in the two previous decades, projects that have been discussed in the preceding chapters: Castle in the Sky (1986) owes much to the adventure films that Miyazaki worked on as an animator during his period in Toei, but also to the European backdrop of the adaptations of children’s literature; My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) both go deeper in adopting the themes of growing up from good childhood to good adulthood from the literary adaptations that Miyazaki worked on a decade earlier. The chapter demonstrates how Miyazaki’s career as a feature-film director was built on the solid foundations of his earlier career as an animator in the early decades of Japan's post-war animation industry.

Preface xv

The sixth and final chapter, “Growing Up in an Uncertain Present,” is devoted to Miyazaki’s films between the beginning of the 1990s and the conclusion of the first decade of the twenty-first century. As in the earlier Ghibli productions, these films draw influence and elements from projects he was involved with during his early career; but unlike the optimistic atmosphere of the early Ghibli productions, they give these elements bitter twists, inspired by the political and social uncertainty that accompanied Japan as the twentieth century came to a close. Ironically, the films produced during this era have gained unprecedented financial and critical success, even though most of them portray a dark vision of Japan as a country that cannot find a proper path, a vision that is very dominant in both Miyazaki’s acclaimed Academy Award winner Spirited Away and his final film, The Wind Rises (2013).

Many creative elements, as these chapters show, repeated themselves and evolved as Miyazaki’s career progressed, but one element is perhaps the most prominent: from the very beginning of his career Miyazaki has brought together narratives and styles from his own country’s culture and from foreign cultures; Japanese folk tales and literature inspired him every bit as did foreign children’s literature and comics; he was inspired to seek a career in animation after he watched Panda and the Magic Serpent, but drew equal inspiration from Soviet, European, and American animated productions; his film Princess Mononoke, a great fantasyhistorical epic about his country’s past, began as an attempt to create a Japanese version of the famous Beauty and the Beast legend. The puzzlement that many people in my country’s audience felt about Heart being a Japanese production telling the story of an Italian boy in South America is actually the greatest strength behind Miyazaki’s work: it is undoubtedly very Japanese but at the same time very cosmopolitan. Miyazaki, as I have learned while writing this book, is an expert in recognizing the best storytelling elements from each culture he encounters, bringing these elements together to create a strong crosscultural appeal. The voyage thorough the different works that shaped this appeal has been a fascinating one, and I hope the readers of this book will enjoy it too.

Chapter 1

In 1958, at the age of 17, Hayao Miyazaki saw the film that changed his life. It was the film that led him to a career in animation, a career that would make him Japans (and one of the world’s) most acclaimed and influential animators, known as the director of such classics as My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and the Academy Award winner Spirited Away (2001), as well as a source of inspiration for leading animation studios all over the world, such as the American studio Pixar and the British studio Aardman, among many others. The film that set Miyazaki on this path was Hakujaden (literally translated as Legend of the White Serpent and later distributed in English-speaking territories under the title Panda and the Magic Serpent).

Miyazaki was not, by any means, the only spectator on whom Panda and the Magic Serpent has left such a deep impression. The film was the first Japanese feature-length animated color film, and its commercial success hinted of Japans future as an animation superpower. Yet the great influence that the film had on Miyazaki is noteworthy, especially since it was hardly his first exposure to animation or popular illustrations.

Born in 1941 to a well-to-do family that owned an airplane-rudders factory that thrived both during and after the war, Miyazaki had developed his passion for flight and airplanes from an early age, a passion evident in almost all of his films. Another significant childhood experience that influenced Miyazaki was his mother falling ill with spinal tuberculosis, and the threat of orphanhood became an important theme in his later work. Above all, Miyazakis formative years were marked by the flourishing of Japan’s manga (comics) industry, which offered a cheap and accessible form of entertainment for Japan’s young readers in the difficult early years of the post-war era.!

The artist whose success has become synonymous with the rise of the manga industry is Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). Tezuka, who had had a passion for comics, animation, and drawing since he was a child, began his professional career as a manga artist after the war ended while studying medicine at Osaka University. Though he completed his studies, it was obvious that he was destined for a manga artist’s career: in 1947 his book Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island), a graphic novel inspired by western adventure novels and films, sold an unprecedented number of 400,000 copies, and became the first of many classic titles Tezuka would produce in the following four decades.’ Characters created by Tezuka, such as the boy-robot Tetsuwan Atom (known in English-speaking countries as Astro Boy) and the brave lion Leo (known in English-speaking countries as Kimba the White Lion), remain leading figures in Japanese popular culture to this day, and they were also the first protagonists of Japanese comics to find an audience in the west through the animated adaptations of their adventures.

Tezuka’s success inspired many imitators, and his style soon became recognized as the one many people associate with “manga” to this very day: cinematic storytelling, featuring the breaking of single actions into several panels, successive pages that focused on visual storytelling that feature little or no text, and most notably the characters’ design—round, “cute” characters with big saucer-eyes. One didn't have to look very far to find Tezuka’s sources of inspiration for this design: a fan of the animated films by Walt Disney and his greatest competitors, brothers Max and David Fleischer, Tezuka’s models for drawing characters were Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop.*

Tezuka was not the first Japanese artist to draw in this style either: during the war, Japanese animators drew in a style that closely mimicked the work of American animation studios—especially Disney’s and the Fleischers —aware of the popularity of this style among the Japanese audience. Japan's most ambitious propaganda epics produced during the war directed by Mitsuyo Seo (1911-2010), Momotarō no Umiwashi (released 1943, the official English title of the 2008 release by Zakka films is Momotaro’s Sea Eagle) and Japan's first feature-length animated film Momotar6 no Umi no Shinpei (released in 1945, the official English title of the 2017 release by Funimation is Momotaro: Sacred Sailors), also show the strong influence of American animated productions. Both films carried a strong nationalistic anti-western sentiment: the titular character, a brave demon-fighting boy from one of Japan’s most beloved children’s fables, was presented in the film as a sponsor of Japan’s colonialism in east-Asia, who both leads Japans animal army in war against the hated western superpowers and protects the native animal inhabitants of an Asian jungle from the greedy ambitions of the same superpowers, also educating these inhabitants in the ways of Japan’s modern achievements. But it was impossible to mistake the inspiration for both films’ character designs for anything other than American animation—Momotards Sea Eagle even featured Bluto from the Fleischer brothers’ Popeye cartoons as the useless commander of Pearl Harbor, and the character also had a small cameo in Momotaré: Sacred Sailors. Tezuka claimed that watching Momotaro: Sacred Sailors was a major source of inspiration for his own work.’

Through Tezuka’s works, Miyazaki experienced his first anxiety of influence. His first attempts of drawing manga, at the age of 18, were compared by people who saw them to Tezuka’ style. Miyazaki, who at first denied any such influence, eventually realized that his early works were indeed inspired by Tezuka, and this realization was somewhat traumatic: he collected all of his initial sketches, and burned them.’ This incident started a rivalry of sorts between Tezuka and Miyazaki—a one-sided rivalry, for the most part,° which focused on Miyazaki’s attempts to shake off Tezuka’s influence, find other sources of inspiration, and develop his own style.

Miyazaki found an alternative to Tezuka’s influence in another manga artist, Tetsuji Fukushima (1914-1992).’? All but forgotten today, Fukushima was a successful artist in the 1950s, whose flagship series Sabaku no Mao (Devil of the Desert) was an epic swashbuckling adventure with an Arabian Nights flavor set in a modern environment, spreading across no fewer than nine volumes. Like Tezuka, Fukushima found most of his inspiration in American illustrations, but he turned his creative attention to the less cartoony and more serious works on the other side of the Pacific: his realistic style bore more resemblance to Milton Caniff’s newspaper adventure strips than it did to Walt Disney’s cartoons. The epic scope of the story along with the richly detailed designs of exotic landscapes and especially vehicles (cars, tanks, and airplanes) have been noted by Miyazaki as a long-standing influence on his own work, one that surpassed that of Tezuka.

Miyazaki also had first-hand access to foreign animation and comics—of the American kind that influenced Tezuka and Fukushima, at least. American comics were regularly brought into post-war Japan by American soldiers, and with the re-opening of the Japanese film market to American films, American animation—especially Disney features— literally flooded the theatres. And although by the late 1940s the Fleischer brothers were no longer running their studio (it was taken over by their main financier, Paramount, and produced inferior works under the new name Famous Studios), a new generation of young Japanese was just discovering their work; their 1939 feature-length adaptation of Jonathan Swifts satire Gullivers Travels became the first foreign animated feature screened in Japanese theatres after the war* and a large volume of their short films—Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman cartoons—was sold for broadcast on Japanese television in the mid-1950s.? The Fleischer brothers have been another strong influence on Miyazaki, and he seems to have aspired to draw influence from the essence and themes of their work, while avoiding superficial design similarities to their films of the kind that typified Tezuka’s manga.

Then came Panda and the Magic Serpent. Like Tezuka’s and Fukushima’s work, it did not come out of nowhere; in fact, the film’s roots in the history of Japanese animation and Japan's visual tradition go far deeper than the works of both artists. Panda and the Magic Serpent was produced by Toei Animation, a studio established in 1948 under the name Nihon Doga (Japan Animation) by some of Japan’s veteran animators, including Kenzo Masaoka (1898-1988) who pioneered the

Attending a screening of Hakujaden (titled Panda and the Magic Serpent in English) at the age of 17 left a deep impression on Miyazaki, inspiring him later to seek a career in animation. He was especially impressed with the film’s portrayal of a strong woman as the protagonist.

use of synchronized sound in Japanese animated productions in the mid-1930s, and especially Sanae Yamamoto (1898-1981).!° Yamamoto, who by the late 1940s was Japan's oldest practicing animator, started his career in 1924, directing the first Japanese animated adaptation of a western story, the Aesop fable Tortoise and the Hare. From there he moved on to a highly eclectic career that included folktale adaptations, educational films for schools, and wartime propaganda.'! Yamamoto works as an animator show a strong influence from traditional Japanese painting and European animation, notably the work of German cutout animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981), renowned for the silhouette-aesthetic of her films. By the time Nihon Doga was founded, Yamamoto had largely left the creative side of animation production to focus on his administrative duties, but his high-brow artistic approach is definitely felt in the studio’s early productions.

As production in Nihon Doga grew, younger talent was recruited. Two rising stars in the studio, Yasuji Mori and Yasuo Otsuka, would become Miyazaki’s mentors, and in many respects it can be argued that they have shaped his ideal perception of animation. Mori (1925-1992), a graduate of design studies, was drawn to animation after being impressed with Masaoka’s 1943 musical animated short The Spider and the Tulip. He began his career at Nihon Doga while still working as a commercial artist designing stores, trained under Masaoka himself, and held both jobs until the studio was bought by Toei and could provide him with a steady income—by which point he was considered one of its top animators, in charge of training new recruits.” His style, especially when it comes to character design, was a radical departure from the popular round look that dominated the works of Tezuka and his imitators: while keeping the western-looking big eyes, Mori’s work features a greater variety of geometrical shapes—not necessarily in accordance with realistic body proportions—when illustrating bodies and heads, with the result reminiscent of the stylized works of the American UPA animation studio or east-European animation. Despite his great influence on the studio productions, most of Mori’s animation duties were in the design and animation departments, and he has directed only two short films. Koneko no Rakugaki (The Kitten’s Graffiti) from 1957 is a tale of a little kitten, whose wall-paintings are coming to life. Cleverly playing with tones in its black-and-white palette, and seamlessly combining sketchy and detailed illustrations, drawing compliments for its ability to convey strong emotions on behalf of the characters through animation with no dialogue,” this heartwarming 13-minute film also touched upon the conflict between the imaginative playfulness of childhood and the strict discipline of adulthood—a conflict that would also find its way into Miyazaki’s works. Moris second directorial effort, Koneko no Studio (‘The Kittens Studio), released two years later, was a loose sequel to the previous movie, now following the kitten’s misadventures in a film studio. Produced in color, this slick film has its share of hilarious slapstick moments, but it lacks the depth of its predecessor.

Otsuka (born 1931) was another animator who came to prominence in the studio, and whose influence can be found in Miyazakis works— in fact, in 2004, Miyazakis Studio Ghibli produced a 107-minute documentary about Otsuka’s work, titled Otsuka Yasuo no Ugokasu Yorokobi. The film opens with a statement by Miyazaki on the deep influence that Otsuka had on his work as an animator. Born in 1931, Otsuka’s childhood was dominated by his love for locomotives and military vehicles and his talent for illustrating them in loving detail. After a short career as an officer with the Japanese drug-enforcement authorities, Otsuka joined Nihon Doga, trained under Mori, and quickly gained a reputation for his ability to animate dynamic scenes that reflect personality through action.

All the studio’s talents, old and new, were put to work on a highly ambitious project once Nihon Doga was bought by the film production company Toei in 1956 (the studio subsequently changed its name to Toei Animation)—the production of the first Japanese animated color theatrical feature. Released two years later, Panda and the Magic Serpent was the film that made Miyazaki decide that he was destined to become an animator.

The film’s plot follows the love story of Xu-Xian, a young scholar, and Bai-Niang, a mysterious beautiful woman. Love blooms between the two, but once it is revealed that Bai-Niang is actually a demon, an aging Buddhist priest named Fa-Hai vows to put an end to the forbidden romance. A series of tragic events follows, ending with both lovers in exile and separated from one another. Xu-Xian’s loyal followers—a pair of resourceful pandas—along with Bai-Niang’s loyal handmaiden Xiao Qing, take upon themselves the task of bringing the two lovers back together.

Panda and the Magic Serpent is a fascinating mix of different visual and narrative styles. Adapting a classic Chinese legend about the forbidden love of a scholar and a female snake-demon, the film's initial production reflected the studio’s new owners’ wishes to become “Disney of the East”: it follows the basic Disney formula of adapting classic legends into a family-oriented musical, in which brave heroes save delicate princesses, assisted by cute animal sidekicks, all the way to the happy ending. Yet the production took extra care to give the film a distinctive look, one that could not be mistaken for a western production: Xu-Xian and Bai-Niang, with their traditional clothes and gentle facial design feature a strong Asian appearance, as different as one can imagine from either the fashion-magazine look of Disney features’ protagonists or the cartoony design common to comic-relief characters in American animation. The fat, menacing character of Fa-Hai also owes its appearance to the representation of religious figures in traditional Asian art rather than to the stereotypical villains of western culture. The surroundings—from a silent temple to a busy port city—are again the hallmarks of Asian architecture and landscapes. Panda and the Magic Serpent is not devoid of western influences: The design of Bai-Niang’s handmaiden, Xiao Qing, features the western-inspired big eyes that would be more familiar to today’s audience of Japanese animation, and a sub-plot in the film about a criminal gang of animals led by a greedy pig bears strong resemblance (in both look and narrative) to characters from the 1954 animated adaptation of George Orwells Animal Farm, directed by veteran British animators John Halas and Joy Batchelor. The seamless weaving of visual and narrative elements from the east and the west can be considered the film’s greatest achievement.

An even greater appeal, however, can be found in the film's portrayal of the struggle between society and the individual, and the latter’s ultimate victory. Love blooms between the film’s leads against all odds and against any acceptable social norm; Fa-Hai attempts to keep the two apart not because of a vicious nature or jealousy—he truly believes that the affair will have personal and social tragic consequences. The rebellion against this world of harsh norms, a world that keeps lovers apart, comes not from the male lead Xu-Xian, but from the female lead Bai-Niang: while Xu-Xian is sent to exile and does nothing but suffer, Bai-Niang confronts Fa-Hai and struggles for her right to be loved and be a part of the human world. She even goes as far as sacrificing her immortal identity, agreeing to live as a mortal woman, for the sake of her love—the film’s happy ending comes at a price. The characters of Bai-Niang and her handmaiden Xiao Qing present surprisingly strong and independent female rolemodels for the film's young audience—sadly missing from the studio’s subsequent film productions—and Miyazaki confessed that watching the film made him fall in love with Bai-Niang’s animated character."

Panda and the Magic Serpent is a magnificent film, but it failed to make the studio owners’ dream of becoming a world leader in the animation industry come true. It did not find markets in Asia, and the limited American release failed to leave an impression of any kind." Still, success within Japan itself was phenomenal, and the studio settled into a routine of producing family-oriented animated features. The studio’s early films followed the same formula set by Panda and the Magic Serpent—an animated musical, very much in the Disney mold, but with a look and narrative inspired by Asian culture.