Adult Auteur Animation: Cleopatra (1970) and A Thousand and One Nights (1969)

Anime and manga are an all-encompassing cultural force that’s reached nearly corner of the earth. Icon of both anime and manga, Tezuka Osamu, created classics like Astro Boy, Princess Knight, Kimba the White Lion, and once tapped into the then virtually nonexistant adult animation on the largest scale imaginable. The Animerama trilogy was born with the help of Yamamoto Eiichi. This was not only a massive endeavor but an incredibly ambitious one at that (I’ve already covered the trilogy’s swansong, Belladonna of Sadness review). It felt only natural to cover its forerunners.

1001 NIGHTS aka SENYA ICHIYA MONOGATARI: Aldin (Aoshima Yukio) wanders into Baghdad with hopes of making something of himself. He tries to buy a slave girl, Milliam (Kishida Kyoko), which leads into an epic adventure traversing the world. He goes from a peasant all the way to Caliph of Baghdad and back peasant by the end.

CLEOPATRA aka CLEOPATRA: QUEEN OF SEX aka KUREOPATORA: 3 humans from the future send their spirits back in time to inhabit 3 individuals in Cleopatra’s (Nakayama Chinatsu) time - Ionius - a Roman slave (Tsukamoto Nobuo), Libya - a female resistance fighter (Yoshimura Jitsuko), and Cleo’s pet leopard, Rupa (Yanagiya Tsubame). Their goal is to gather intel on an incoming attack on Earth called the Cleopatra Plan by spending time around Cleopatra. It delves into telling the epic tragedy of Cleopatra’s reign as Pharaoh, Julius Caesar (Hana Hajime), and Marcus Antonius (Nabe Osami).

The attitudes towards sex, music and score, psychedelic montages, and flat out radical approach to adapting foreign source material reek (in a good way) of the 1960s counter-culture movements. The attitude at the time in regards to manga and anime was firmly packaged into children's entertainment mindset. Yamamoto and Tezuka dreamt up the Animerama trilogy to directly combat this prevailing attitude. The Underground Comix movement in the United States, with the influx of talents like R. Crumb and Barbara Mendes or maybe everyone was drinking from the same fountain. These are relics of an era gone by.

Mushi Productions (or Mushi Pro) were already known for their highly popular TV series in the 1960s. Tezuka had the money and clout to pull off such a radical departure from what made him successful. He had already dipped his toe into more mature waters with Swallowing the Earth, but this was only the beginning. Tezuka and Yamamoto’s Animerama project isn’t merely adult-themed feature films. They are messy and experimental art films at their cores, with BELLADONNA OF SADNESS, being the undoubted magnum opus of the trilogy. It should be no surprise that each film did poorly in the box office. Apparently, Tezuka was consistently surprised at the box office reaction. He left in 1973 after filing bankruptcy because of BELLADONNA's massive production costs. Mushi Pro returned a few years later under new leadership and creative team.

1001 NIGHTS takes the classic literature and turns it into an avant-garde adventure, similar to what Bunuel was doing with THE MILKY WAY and THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY. Each episode either directly lifts or does variations on the stories from the 1001 Nights collection. The structure casually slips between segments with shifts in animation style, new characters, and brand new settings. As soon as you get used to the newest set of characters, they’re killed or not relevant anymore. A similar approach was used in CLEOPATRA with her own life, except with a big injection of comedy. The stories are simplistic and grand all at once. Each shows a giant adventure that's truly larger-than-life. These stories as told, could only be done with animation. Taking full advantage of the talent, experience, and endless creativity on the crews.

The new freedom to explore formerly taboo subjects is both a blessing and a curse. The gleeful approach to sex and violence in bursts reaches euphoric highs. Nearly every sex scene morphs into a psychedelic freak out . The style shifts into a more simplistic and abstract form. In particular, the sequence in CLEOPATRA when the women fuck the Roman soldiers into submission and the snake queen seduction of Aldin in 1001 NIGHTS take the established reality into a new realm. Sex jokes are aplenty. Some personal favorite jokes are Marcus Antonius’ insecurity of his size compared to Caesar, a guerilla testing Cleopatra to a hurt finger, Aldin getting out of rowing duty by telling the guard of his erotic adventures, and the married Imps obsessions with fucking humans. There is so much that it makes Russ Meyer look tame.

Tornado in Baghdad

Yamamoto and Tezuka are actively trying to break borders, it’s aggressively done with a leering male gaze. Both try to portray their lead females as equally strong and sexual but it varies scene to scene. At some points, Cleopatra is strong and in command of her choices but she’s instantly in love with the men she’s trying to undermine and can’t control the situation. 1001 NIGHTS has a similar issue with Madia. She's introduced as a badass bandit but once she’s in love with Aldin loses her edge. She’s not alone though, because of the structure no character gets any real arc or even sticks around for very long. It wildly fluctuates between middle-school hehehe and clever cultural satire. It's both funny and annoying, topical and evergreen. This yet another confounding layer onto this fun mess.

The violence is treated in a few varieties. It’s either brutal, artistic, or Loony Tunes. The constant switching up between these just adds to the nearly chaotic feeling watching these films. It makes for a fun time, but makes the everything messier for both crazy fun and overall confusion. The meaning of the violence is what’s confounding to me. There are scenes of beautiful poetry like adopting Noh theatre traditions to the death of Caesar, cartoon zaniness in the Kijil gladiator fight, and brutal when the giant eats the pirates after crashing on an island. With the sex I understand what they were aiming for, but the violence is meaningless fluff. Fluff that is pretty to look at and required hours of sweat, blood, and tears to achieve. 

Caesar is green for some reason.

Caesar's death via Noh theatre

I’ll be real. As ridiculous, experimental, and goofy as these are, they don’t work for the same reasons. CLEOPATRA, especially, is a real mess, a fascinating mess but still a mess. The wrap-around makes no sense. By the time Cleo gets her face redone, the thread of the future scientists spiritually inhabiting Egyptians is completely ignored until the last 5 minutes. It’s just an anime retelling of the Cleopatra story, which I love, but they had far too many ideas and tried every single one. 1001 NIGHTS is a bit more focused but still is a wildly fun mess, jumping between several different stories with shifting approaches and techniques. Both are quilts made of pervy, immature, weird, beautiful, and kooky squares. None of the patterns remotely match which also makes it incredibly unique things to behold.

Aldin and Madia flying through the sky on a magic hobby horse.

The actual animation itself is wonderful. The Tezuka style has his typical charm and it needs to be seen in all its amazing glory. It’s not just the Tezuka house style though, Yamamoto takes it to another level. There are glorious, kaleidoscopic sequences (outside of the sex scenes) where colors, shapes, people and the world as you’ve been watching get warped into a mind-melting collage for a few minutes. These are a clear pre-cursor for the epic conclusion to Animerama, BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (which takes everything from the first 2 and smooths out the bumps). These bizarre sequences aren’t the only fun flare thrown in. Anachronistic details are frequent and funny. You get a pistol in ancient Egypt, Model T in Baghdad, the Mona Lisa in the ancient Rome, modern chemistry, the list goes on and on. The random nods to future history consistently add to the endlessly crazy worlds.

An island giant fights a giant bird.

These are not solely animation, both experiment with the full capabilities of what a film can do. There are elements of live action, miniatures, roto-scoping, and B roll. The mixture of these media merge into a wildly creative but uneven product. The film-making and production design feels low-budget next to the animation, though it has a delightful charm to it. The playful energy bounces off the screen and infects you. There are serious moments throughout but the overarching spirit of revolutionary and kooky art is always there. It never feels cheap or rushed. Not too many animators, worked on both, but several went onto work with Tezuka and Yamamoto on future projects (and worked on Astro Boy).

Since these are products of the turbulent events of the 1960s, that rebellious vigor is deeply infused into their DNA. Government corruption, foreign invaders, and uprisings are major parts of these stories. The federal body is never portrayed cleanly or positively. Leaders are always punished via uprisings, rebels are hunted and killed, and governments always crumble under corruption. The spirit of the student protests are alive. Reflections of a changing world shine bright through the pile-up of insanity. These are not Astro Boy, although Astro Boy does make a cameo. The target audience is the rebellious youth. These were made for the youth that grew up on Tezuka’s work. 
 

One of the cameos in CLEOPATRA

Astro Boy to the Rescue!

The Animerama project was an admirable attempt but not surprisingly these were not successful. Commerce killed what could have been a daring new stage Tezuka and Yamamoto for their careers. These were shipped to the USA (and unsuccessful and currently those dubbed and edited  versions are considered lost) and set the stage for Ralph Bakshi’s rise in adult commercially viable animation a few years later.

Bandits' treasure found by Aldin

CLEOPATRA and 1001 NIGHTS are very messy films that try way too much and destined to be cult films. The ambition and skill are very high and could have only been made at that particular moment. I love the wild swings, translating foreign source material into anime, and rebellious spirit but these are not accessible films for a mainstream audience. If you are into the wilder, stranger side of anime then check these out. 

These 2 films are available on DVD and Blu-Ray through Third Window Films, http://thirdwindowfilms.com/films/animerama-1001-nights-cleopatra/

Cleopatra's tomb during a sandstorm