For two reasons, this somewhat unremarkable and highly uneven little Toei film from 1965 stands out in animation history. Firstly, it signalled the failure of Toei to break America, flopping upon its 1966 release even though it was the first of their films to be based on an English story, and led to no more Japanese animated films appearing in US cinemas until 1978.
More interesting for me, though, is its place at the beginning of the somewhat mythologised story of Miyazaki Hayao, now-legendary Ghibli figurehead. In his own accounts, Miyazaki talks of his work as an inbetweener, his work scrutinised and usually heavily edited before it even reached the eyes of a key animator. Two years into his career, he worked on this film, and proposed a change to the ending. Apparently, in the original screenplay, the inhabitants of the ‘Hope Star’ were all robotic, and Gulliver and Ricky/Ted merely battled to fend off evil robots in order to save the good ones. But Miyazaki suggested that there be a twist at the end, the Hope Star refugees being revealed to be not robots but cyborgs of a kind, humans wrapped in robot skins.
I can’t help but feel the story may be exaggerated a little. Unless somehow major changes were made in the translation (for the only version I could track down was the English dub, which is actually quite pleasant, if frequently awkward), it is clear for most of the part of the story in question that the robots were at the very least once human. The antagonists are machines they created to keep them comfortable, which wouldn’t make sense if they were robots in the first place. When asked about water, they say that they gave it up long ago, which heavily hints that they are not wholly robotic. The baddies also sing about superiority to man, not other robots. So it seems either changes were made to the backstory to suit Miyazaki’s suggestion, or what he was really responsible for was the presentation of that scene, the way it unfolds like a twist even though it isn’t really. Whatever the case, the result was one that changed the course of animation in the decades to come: Miyazaki had gained the attention of his superiors, was soon working on key animation, and eventually became the world-renown director he is today.
For all its significance, though, Gulliver’s Space Travels is not a particularly good example of golden-age Toei animation. Toei in the mid-60s were still trying to imitate Disney, with talking dogs and a forest full of cutesy friends for the aging Gulliver, somewhat hallucinogenic musical numbers and yet nothing like the budget or capability to make something as slick or smoothly-animated as The Jungle Book or even The Sword in the Stone, roughly contemporaneous Disney films. The feature was also written by Sekizawa Shin’ichi, the man behind Mothra and several Gojira films, so perhaps it would be a bit much to expect a film about the day being won by a pure heart or strong will, or even the sort of silly and exciting chase capers of later, more charming Toei films. Instead, there’s a full-on war with an army of evil robots with laser beams, combatted by our heroes with water pistols and giant water balloons. It at least makes you feel the Disney influence has been left behind, and that few things could be more typical of Japanese anime, but it really lacks the charm of later Toei, and all feels very crass, to the extent that not even Miyazaki’s poignant climactic scenes can make for a satisfying ending – and that’s without the truly cheesy final stinger that people have griped about since Alice in Wonderland.
Additionally, the presence of Gulliver seems an entirely random gimmick designed purely to rope in an audience. Young Ricky, dreaming of a more thrilling life, befriends a toy soldier and a talking dog, before meeting an aging Gulliver in the forest and travelling into space with him, where they are first abducted and then befriended by people who look and act like robots. Is there any Swiftian satire? Any real link with the Gulliver of his stories? No, he’s just a peripheral figure who happened to have a rocket ship. Ultimately, this is something of a mess, but harmless and fun, with one or two inspired moments.
And of course, well worth watching for its place in the history of animation.
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