A kid walks into a fairy tale and discovers the quest is real the moment the snake won't stay dead. The Water of Life isn't a macguffin, it's the thing that forces Tarou to keep fighting even when winning seems impossible. This 1979 special moves with the rhythm of an oral story told around a fire, where the hero's job isn't to be clever but to refuse to break.

Maegami Tarou is a spirited young boy with a simple mission: save his village. When he learns that the Water of Life is needed to bring happiness to his home, he sets out on a quest to find it, meeting gods and demons along the way. He soon discovers that an evil snake has stolen the water and taken it to its palace, and he heads there to confront it. Beating the snake proves hard, because the Water of Life lets it revive itself. Undaunted, Tarou presses on, joining forces with the gods and a range of creatures in a folk-tale-style adventure special.