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Hi! Welcome to my blog on animation history. Join me as I make my way through films from all over the globe.

鐵扇公主 (Princess Iron Fan)

14 in x of animated feature film history
Release: Jan. 1st, 1941
Country: China
Director: Wan Guichan, Wan Laiming

Princess Iron Fan is the first Chinese animated feature film. The film is based on an episode of the novel Journey to the West. It was directed in Shanghai under difficult conditions in the thick of World War II by the four Wan brothers, and was released on January 1, 1941.

While journeying to find sacred scriptures, four pilgrims are stopped by a ferocious wall of fire. The only way to remove the fire is to use a magical fan––which belongs to Princess Iron Fan, the wife of the Bull King. She refuses to hand over the fan. Sun Wukong (the monkey king) and Zhu Bajie (a pig monk) attempt all kinds of trickery to get the fan from her.

The Wan family twins Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan with their brothers Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan were the first animators in China. In the late 1930s, with Shanghai under Japanese occupation, they began work on China’s first feature-length animated film.

 In 1939 the Wan brothers saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and set the standard in attempting to create a film of equal quality for the nation’s honor.

The film took three years, 237 artists and 350,000 yuan to make. Rotoscoping was used extensively to save money, and the eyes of the live actors are often visible in the faces of the animated characters.

Upon completion the film was screened by the Chinese union film company. Its influences were far-reaching; it was swiftly exported to wartime Japan (in 1942), inspiring the 16-year-old Tezuka Osamu to become a comics artist and prompting the Japanese Navy to commission Japan’s own first feature-length animated film.”

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Princess Iron Fan is available on YouTube with English subtitles.

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