Anime is much more than what today's market offers. To truly know it, you need to travel in time, study earlier works, understand the limitations that animators of that era faced, and trace its first steps as an experimental medium. Anime is turning one hundred years old, and as a celebration, the National Museum of Art of Japan has published online a total of 64 shorts created between 1917 and 1941. Some of them received a complete digital restoration, and others were discovered under very curious circumstances.
My retirement from anime remains intact, and one of the reasons is that new works aren't as attractive. Original content doesn't have the substance needed to become a "classic", and the nostalgic factor (say, the returns of Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and the "retcon number 63" of Evangelion) has its limits despite the initial commercial advantages. Personally, I feel a bit empty toward current anime, and after reading some comments on the web, it's clear that many fans out there feel the same way. Perhaps we are in a transitional stage for anime, which doesn't sound so far-fetched if we consider that it's is turning one hundred years old. Where does that age come from? As with traditional cinema, anime has several "lost shorts", but historians agree that the medium "exploded" during 1917, and the oldest existing film, Namakura Gatana, belongs to that year. Do you want to see it?
If the answer is yes, then you should know that the National Museum of Art of Japan has published online a total of 64 anime shorts, and all interested people can access them free of charge until the end of the year. Namakura Gatana (translated as "The Dull Sword", meaning "The Sword Without an Edge") appears at the top of the list alongside Urashima Taro from 1918. The most striking thing about these shorts is that both were rediscovered in March 2008, in an antique shop in Osaka. Both received the corresponding digital restoration, and we also find English subtitles.
We definitely celebrate this decision to publish the material, as it allows us to understand the evolution that anime underwent in just 24 years. To watch the videos you don't need anything special. Click on the short you want to open, and next to its description you'll find a big button that says "Watch". That's all.
