This one lowers your heart rate in about ninety seconds. Nothing is at stake: the rabbits turn a jump rope, the polar bear and the tanuki play leapfrog, the frog and the monkey race a car against a bicycle like it's the most urgent business in the world. Then school starts, the monkey drills arithmetic at the board, and the pig is dead asleep through all of it, which is the single funniest gag in the whole thing because it needs no dialogue to land. The real flex is the pivot at the river, where the old black cat doing laundry spots a peach drifting down, and you feel the Momotaro of it click into place without a word of setup. It's a spring sketchbook that trusts animals and weather to carry the whole runtime. Watch it once and the leapfrog stays with you.

Spring comes, and the animals wake from hibernation. Rabbits jump rope while a polar bear and a raccoon dog play leapfrog. A frog and a monkey race each other, one in a car and one on a bicycle. School begins for the animal pupils. A monkey teaches arithmetic while a pig sleeps soundly, and the class later exercises in the schoolyard as birds sing in the trees. Elsewhere, an old goat heads to the mountain to clear land while an old black cat does laundry by the river. When a peach floats by, she pulls it out expecting Momotaro, but an ogre is inside instead. At the pond, a carefree polar bear goes fishing just as a chain of fish swallow one another, each eaten by a bigger one. This lighthearted short film strings together springtime vignettes and was originally set to an elementary school song.