Disney's magic!

See the video for yourself. For some people it is cutting corners, for some it is called smart cost cutting. But it is interesting to compare.

anime

Senkou no Night Raid / 閃光のナイトレイド

"The story is set in Shanghai in 1931, when the Imperial Japanese Army has been dispatched to mainland China due to the relatively recent First Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, and World War I. In this cosmopolitan city of intrigue, there is a special military spy organization called "Sakurai Kikan" that has since been buried in history."

Basically it is an espionage drama during interwar years (1919-1939) situated in what then cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. During that period, spies from various Great Powers came and doing intrigue (cloak and dagger stuff) against each other since China was a failed state with bountiful resources. Usually a favourite epoch/genre for many Chinese dramas from Hong Kong, it is rather unusual for anime to do a story from this era of this genre.

Now though question is how Imperial Japan will portrayed in the series. They are not nice bunch of people during those years in reality so I assume the anime will somewhat tone it down and make them the good guys who scheming against voracious Western Powers especially Russia. Or even the treatment of Chinese in the story going to matter or not.

Jun Matsumoto (Persona -trinity soul-) is the director with A-1 Pictures funding on this series. Shinsuke Onishi (The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye, New Getter Robo, 009-1) is supervising the scripts.Staff wise it looks pretty ok but what I wondering if it will be historically fair or not. But again, if Hollywood can make historically biased movies, I am not counting too much on Japanese anime to give it an even tone. Soon to be aired in 2010 spring.

Source

anime