History of Animation: Wartime Japanese Cartoon: Omochabako Series

The purpose of propaganda animation is to enforce a biased social perception towards certain group of people by showing the audience the bad side of those people which makes them fear and want to ostracise them. In most cases, characters represent a collective group of people such as in the Japanese propaganda series titled Omochabako where the evil Mickey Mouse is used to symbolises Americans. Aside of telling the audience that the Americans are evil, this animation reflects how the cartoonist looks down on the uniformity of the popular culture in America while comparing it to the richness of the Japanese culture. This can be implied from the use of forms in the character design; the Japanese are represented by diverse characters from folktales while the characters that represents Americans follows the form of Mickey. I think that there is a lot more information that can be inferred from suggestive propaganda animations like this depending on the audience's intellectual capability. While innocent children will only be able to see the entertainment value in them, educated people will be able to assimilate the message that the film is trying to convey by analysing the details being put in the film.