The Tale of the White Serpent was the first color Japanese anime, released in 1958. It was also the first known Japanese anime released in America, under the title Panda and the Magic Serpent. It has also been released under the titles "Legend of the White Snake", "The Great White Snake", "The White Snake Enchantress".
The film is essentially an adapted version of China's Song dynasty folklore Madame White Snake. The writer Shin Uehara made the adaptation, and kept the oriental styled characters and names. The decision of a Chinese story being used as the concept blueprint came from Toei president Hiroshi Ôkawa, who wanted to strike a tone of reconciliation with the Asian neighbors. Given the point in time, this film pushed Japanese animation technology to the limit, making this a large scale major project involving a total of 13,590 staff during the 2 year production period. And while the film received honors at the Venice Children's Film Festival in Italy in 1959, it was regarded as a disappointment when released to the US in March 15, 1961 by Global Pictures. The US version made changes such as interpreting the small red panda, Mimi, as a cat. In addition all traces of the Japanese production teams were removed from the US version. Time wise, Tale of the White Serpent was Toei Doga's first attempt at becoming the Disney of the east.
Xu-Xian, a young boy, once owned a pet snake in West Lake. His parents force him to put the pet back in the fields. Years would pass and the snake magically transformed to a beautiful princess Bai-Niang. She would search for her long lost love until local monk Fa-Hai discovered the ordeal thinking Bai-Niang was a vampire. He would banish Xu-Xian from the village, while Xu-Xian's two Panda pets, Panda and Mimi try to bring him back. In the end, Bia-Niang gave up her magical powers and remained in human form to prove that their love was genuine.
The film is essentially an adapted version of China's Song dynasty folklore Madame White Snake. The writer Shin Uehara made the adaptation, and kept the oriental styled characters and names. The decision of a Chinese story being used as the concept blueprint came from Toei president Hiroshi Ôkawa, who wanted to strike a tone of reconciliation with the Asian neighbors. Given the point in time, this film pushed Japanese animation technology to the limit, making this a large scale major project involving a total of 13,590 staff during the 2 year production period. And while the film received honors at the Venice Children's Film Festival in Italy in 1959, it was regarded as a disappointment when released to the US in March 15, 1961 by Global Pictures. The US version made changes such as interpreting the small red panda, Mimi, as a cat. In addition all traces of the Japanese production teams were removed from the US version. Time wise, Tale of the White Serpent was Toei Doga's first attempt at becoming the Disney of the east.
Xu-Xian, a young boy, once owned a pet snake in West Lake. His parents force him to put the pet back in the fields. Years would pass and the snake magically transformed to a beautiful princess Bai-Niang. She would search for her long lost love until local monk Fa-Hai discovered the ordeal thinking Bai-Niang was a vampire. He would banish Xu-Xian from the village, while Xu-Xian's two Panda pets, Panda and Mimi try to bring him back. In the end, Bia-Niang gave up her magical powers and remained in human form to prove that their love was genuine.
