A beloved folk hero gets dropped into the modern world and everything becomes absurd. The clash between timeless mythology and 1930s politics creates comedy that lands because it refuses to pick a side, treating both with equal deadpan sincerity. This film vanished from memory for decades. That was a mistake.

Momotaro, the hero of a classic Japanese folktale, steps into a contemporary adventure. Rather than setting out for Onigashima, he is called on to drive off a menacing Wild Eagle that has abruptly appeared, and he heads for the Antarctic. He takes to the sky in his airplane with a dog, a monkey and a pheasant, bound for an island roughly 10,000 kilometers away. The long flight means two refueling stops along the route, arranged by one of the islanders: the first on the shell of a giant tortoise, the second at a station set on the back of a whale that surfaces to meet the plane. An adventure comedy film, it arrived around the time of the Manchurian and Shanghai Incidents and soon grew popular. A sequel, Umi no Momotarou, came out shortly afterward.