Making of the anime Ramayana

I was at a special screening of ‘Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama’ in Bengaluru. The Indo-Japanese co-production made in 1993, was released in India last month.

As the end credits rolled, the movie hall erupted in chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. The majority of the audience were Japanese anime and manga fans from various clubs. 

Most of the viewers were perhaps not even born when the film was initially released in the pre-digital era. There were some fans wearing saffron scarves. Rani Burra, on a wheelchair, one of the screenwriters of the film, was an invitee, along with Uday Mathan, the original English voice actor for Ravan. Burra retorted ‘Jai Shri Ramayana bolo, Jai Shri Ram nahin’. 

This strange cocktail of liberal youth celebrating the coming together of Japanese animation and Indian stories and the others who see this as an expression of Hindu nationalism is a peculiar cultural phenomenon that this film has created. 

The restoration and re-release of the film is driven by the nostalgia of its audience who were mesmerised by its TV broadcasts in the ’90s and early 2000s. This re-release was preceded by Mugumu Ishiguro’s India tour. He is one of the key animators of the film. 

In 1983, Japanese filmmaker Yugo Sako came to India to work on the documentary ‘The Ramayana Relics’, which focussed on some archaeological digging of sites mentioned in the ‘Ramayana’. It was led by Prof Brij Basi Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). That was when Sako got interested in making an animated film of the ‘Ramayana’.

Lal was the Director General of the ASI from 1968-72. He has since proven to be ideologically aligned to the Hindu right, and the ASI has been appropriated into providing evidence to bolster the arguments of the Sangh Parivar regarding the glorious ‘Hindu’ past. Among them are ‘Rāma, His Historicity, Mandir, and Setu: Evidence of Literature, Archaeology, and Other Sciences’ (Aryan Books, 2008). His claims of evidence of a ‘grand temple’ under the Babri Masjid have found space in the ASI journal and have been contested by various archaeologists. 

This crossing of paths of Lal and Sako was the beginning of the animated ‘Ramayana’s’ fraught production history. It is therefore ironic that the VHP registered its objections to a newspaper article published in 1983 about Sako’s documentary. They were against the idea that a foreigner could interpret a sacred text like the ‘Ramayana’. Sako persevered and talked it out with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is hard to speculate on the nature of Sako’s interest in the epic. A biographical note online mentions the early childhood loss of his parents and the expectation that he would join the Buddhist priesthood. He grew up to become a TV producer-director for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) instead.

The aptly named Ram Mohan was approached to co-direct. Ram Mohan is a legend in Indian animation – a pioneer who started his career in Films Division’s Cartoon Films Unit. Burra, who had already written and directed her first animation short ‘Louse Story’ with Mohan, became scriptwriter on ‘Ramayana’. Burra tells me, at her home in Bengaluru, that Narendra Sharma, a lyricist and writer, offered advice on the content and produced the material that the script is based on. He was later an advisor on the TV ‘Mahabharata’ series as well. 

Sako proposed the animation project to the Indian government of the time. The film star and then Congress MP Sunil Dutt was involved in trying to get the government to fund it. The Rajiv Gandhi government dragged its feet. Eventually they did not fund the film. Ironically, both the VHP and the Congress-led Indian government had similar issues: How can a major Indian god be depicted in animated form without denigrating its sacred status? Burra tells me that Mohan was asked, “How can we have Rama look like Donald Duck?” 

The film was finally completed in Japan in 1992, with a Hindi and English dub. But 1992 was the year the Babri Masjid was brought down, and the film did not get the theatrical release it needed. 

Today, the transformation of Indian gods and goddesses into cartoon and animated figures is fully accepted. The irony is that this has happened at a time when Rama has an elevated political status. 

Also involved in pre-production work were the couple Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan, Pune-based architects and filmmakers. They were hired to provide concept sketches and character design ideas. I had the opportunity to see some of the sketches at their home in Pune. They are markedly different in their approach from how they finally turned out in the film. The designs seemed more in tune with experimental European animation than popular Japanese animation. The character designs and the overall setting of the film are an odd blend of Amar Chitra Katha and Japanese manga and anime conventions. Rama is pale-skinned, Sita is doll-like, Ravana dark, Hanuman has boyish charm and provides comic relief. Burra didn’t like the design too much. “Very Disney,” she tells me. 

The film conveniently glosses over sticky story events like Sita’s trial by fire. When I ask Burra about it, she says “It wouldn’t have been taken well, and anyway the film was too long already.”

The filmmakers have also been cautious not to include any obvious religious symbols. To me, what distinguishes the film are its battle scenes, some of which Burra says were added later. 

Some of the animators who worked on the film had also worked on Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Nausicaa’. Its influence is evident in these battle scenes, which showcase some of the best hand-drawn animation. 

The film owes its resurrection to the strange coming together of Japanese anime fandom and the political climate of Hindu nationalism. The Ram temple has now been built in Ayodhya. The cartoon Rama has finally found a home. 

(The author is a cartoonist and filmmaker)