The story was liberally adapted from a short sequence in the popular Chinese folk tale Journey to the West. Princess Iron Fan is a main character. Specifically, the film focused on the duel between the Monkey King and a vengeful princess, whose fan is desperately needed to quench the flames that surround a peasant village.
Tie shan gong zhu, Tiě shàn gōngzhǔ, 鐵扇公主, Tieshan gongzhu, 西遊記 鉄扇公主の巻, Saiyuki - tessen koshu no maki, Die Prinzessin mit dem Eisenfächer, La princesse à l'éventail de fer, La principessa dal ventaglio di ferro, 철선공주
South KoreaALL Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 
China 
Japan China Japan South Korea 
I know the main inspiration for making the first Chinese feature length animation film was Disney, but I got such a heavy Fleischer Studios vibe from this! They actually used Fleischer's Rotoscope technique and it was almost like watching Koko the Clown the way natural way they were moving about. Not to mention the bouncing ball for the screen song effect. Ton of cartoon world mayhem, again closer to the Fleischer sense of humor than Disney.
The story and design however is unmistakably Asian. A little unstructured to a non-Chinese eye, but I'm sure it's original target audience were more familiar with these characters and their antics than what I was. They didn't reach the level of either Disney or the Fleischer Brothers, but this was a respectable attempt, ambitious and, most of all, a surprise considering the time it's made.
2nd Wan Guchang, 2nd Wan Laiming (after Uproar in Heaven)
Possibly the first Asian animated feature, Princess Iron Fan is an experience like no other. Rotoscoping was used extensively to speed up the process of making the film, but that also leads to very strange pans and tilts in the camera during scenes to make sure all the actors are in the frame at once. Add to this the accidentally uncanny nature of the animation, especially around the faces of characters like The Monkey King, and you have a recipe for complete spacial disorientation. There is a lot of fun in recognising the bits that are clearly rotoscoped and the bits that are static backgrounds and hand-drawn cells. It does…
Features one of the earliest animated vore scenes.
Some of the animation style was really interesting; particularly the humans and their movement. The fire monster would have given me nightmares as a child. The story itself is fine.
I can’t say that I really enjoyed the feature though. While there was some great there was a lot of dull. Often the animation was jarring.
princess iron fan are you free this saturday
The Wan Brothers, struck with inspiration by seeing Snow White, set out to make Princess Iron Fan in what was a heavily ambitious project of nearly three years to make and cost about 350,000 yuan to make (which considering the circumstance of a Japanese-occupied China is a miracle) that was made as the intent of having as much of a milestone pride as Snow White was for China. This film does use a lot of rotoscoping admittedly, which was used as a cost-save measure to not inflate an already large budget and saw a strong success domestically and across the East Asian country as the first feature length Asian film ever produced. The stories of the movie itself are pretty…
The film begins like "the story is pure, untainted by fantasy" and then proceeds to be 1 hour and 12 minutes of psychedelic Disney inspired and pre-anime tomfoolery with the most avant garde, bass boosted, horrifying sound design imaginable.
The animation is incredible for a feature length cartoon made during the second sino-japanese war but it's so bizarre and unstable that's its quite uncomfortable at times.
Had me from the moment it said "This is not a fantasy" and an anthropomorphic pig removed its own ear to fan itself.
Well, its certianly not something you'll see everyday.
China's first animated film tells a fable about three characters trying to get a magical fan from a princess. It is interesting to see the differences in animation style; everything seems to be much more fluid with the way characters move and their changing expressions. However, I found the characters to be a little obnoxious, mean, and a little bit weird in their design (I imagine kids might have gotten nightmares from this). I mean, there is even a scene where a character shrinks down, enters the inside of someone's body and tortures them until they submit. Also, there are these obnoxious sound effects that play over basically everything. There doesn't seem to be any rules to this story since…
I enjoyed this more as a study of animation history than as a film watching experience, but I think in part that’s due to the fact that I saw a pretty rough version on YouTube. (Gah the sound design!!) The fire demon was incredible though - that, the rotoscoping, and the surreal possibilities of animation gave me some Fleischer vibes. There’s some eye popping moments, some disturbing ones (the monkey king turning into a bug!! And going into the princess’s mouth!!) and some nice sing-alongs! You can see there’s still a lot to be learned and I’m not sure it holds up well, but it’s certainly an admirable effort. Would strongly recommend Wan Laiming’s Monkey King take 20 years later.
Totally an underrated film.
The first attempt to a feature animation film by an asian country (China) is extraordinary well made, expecially for the particular historical period it was made.
Clearly they learned the use of rotoscope by Fleischer brothers and the magistral use of cel animation from Walt Disney.
Inspired by these american authors, Wan Laiming craft a original and personal chinese film.
For the technique I enjoyed particularly when Wukong meets the Fire Demon.
The narration is also great, from a chinese tale it has a fast rythmn, like a modern film. The characters are very well defined and Iron Fan is a great heroine, her psychology is explored (I'm thinking at her song for example), making her a very deep character for a 1hr animation film of this age.
It is a very mature film for a mature audience.
A suggestion: watch it, there is on youtube.
