At the top of this post, you can watch 1941’s Super­man, a short nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award and (accord­ing to 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als) the 33rd great­est car­toon of all time. When you’ve done that, how about eight more of the Man of Steel’s most aes­thet­i­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive, pristine­ly restored ani­mat­ed adven­tures? Warn­er Broth­ers has just post­ed them, free for the watch­ing, to their YouTube chan­nel. They orig­i­nal­ly came out of Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios, which ani­ma­tion buffs will know meant a true mark of qual­i­ty back then. “Then,” in this case, means the ear­ly 1940s, and these Fleis­ch­er-pro­duced Super­man shorts brazen­ly bear the styl­is­tic mark of that era. But if their rich, clean-lined look burst­ing with Tech­ni­col­or strikes our eyes today as vin­tage, it also has a cer­tain retro time­less­ness — if that does­n’t sound like too much of a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. No won­der they call this the Gold­en Age of Ani­ma­tion.

Just below, you’ll find Fleis­cher’s sec­ond Super­man short, Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters, in which our hero bat­tles exact­ly those. After it came Bil­lion Dol­lar Lim­it­ed, The Arc­tic Giant, The Bul­leteers, The Mag­net­ic Tele­cope, Elec­tric Earth­quake, Vol­cano, and Ter­ror On The Mid­way and more— all with­in a span of under two years.

After 1942, Para­mount hand­ed the Super­man con­tract to Famous Stu­dios, which rose out of Fleis­cher’s dis­so­lu­tion. Eight addi­tion­al shorts emerged, none now held in regard near­ly as high as any of the Fleis­ch­er pro­duc­tions.

Where Fleis­ch­er pos­sessed a sur­feit of imag­i­na­tion, Famous seemed to suf­fer a deficit. (Their Sec­ond World War-themed Super­man debut was titled Japo­teurs.) But those first eight have enjoyed a long lifes­pan, par­tic­u­lar­ly as high-pro­file influ­ences. The Super­man ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series of the 1990s owes them a debt, as does even that same decade’s Bat­man series. Fans of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion will rec­og­nize the lar­ce­nous robots of Mechan­i­cal Mon­sters in Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s series Lupin III and fea­ture Cas­tle in the Sky, and even the thor­ough­ly irrev­er­ent Fox car­toon The Tick paid them homage. So, Hol­ly­wood types strain­ing to dream up the next Super­man fran­chise reboot: spend time with these still-enter­tain­ing, still-impres­sive pieces of ani­ma­tion, Hol­ly­wood car­toons like noth­ing Hol­ly­wood has put out since.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Car­toon Brew

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

When Super Heroes Get Old and Retire to Mia­mi

Free Gold­en Age Comics

Free Vin­tage Car­toons: Bugs Bun­ny, Bet­ty Boop and More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Those who have become inter­est­ed in Japan in the past twen­ty years have done so, like­ly as not, because of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, best known by the Japan­ese term “ani­me.” And why not? Japan’s take on the car­toon has at this point evolved so high and so dis­tant from its west­ern coun­ter­parts that you some­times can’t help star­ing, trans­fixed. Even the word “car­toon” now seems too friv­o­lous to apply. Roll the clock back eighty or nine­ty years, and Japan­ese ani­ma­tion looks decid­ed­ly more… car­toon­ish. But even then, you can eas­i­ly see an excit­ing­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic in play. First behold the short above, which since its 1933 pro­duc­tion has become a sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar watch on Youtube. Seem­ing­ly influ­enced by the Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion of the time, this fable of fox ver­sus rac­coon still gar­ners acclaim with its craft. Acclaim from com­menters, any­way: “Much smoother than the cur­rent ani­mes,” writes one. “Not only the qual­i­ty. Sto­ry is also fun­ny and peace­ful.”

Go back a few years fur­ther, to 1929, and you find a strik­ing­ly more for­eign view­ing expe­ri­ence in The Stolen Lump. Tak­ing the form of a stan­dard live-action silent pic­ture, with inter­ti­tles and every­thing, the film adapts a fairy tale about an old man who hap­pens upon a pack of ten­gu. He asks these super­nat­ur­al crea­tures to remove what looks like a goi­ter from his face, but when they do, he inspires jeal­ousy in his vil­lage. Final­ly, for an offer­ing that will seem mod­ern by com­par­i­son, watch Pri­vate Norakuro, from 1935, below. It orig­i­nal­ly appeared as just one sto­ry, in one medi­um of sev­er­al, of the prat­fall-heavy mil­i­tary adven­tures of the tit­u­lar anthro­po­mor­phic pup­py. Cre­ator  Sui­hō Tagawa drew the humor from his own time in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army, to the delight of Japan­ese read­ers and view­ers. The delight last­ed up until World War II, any­way, when the coun­try stopped look­ing so kind­ly on mil­i­tary satire. But Norakuro would soon emerge from retire­ment, going on to star in major ani­mat­ed films and serve as a mas­cot of the Japan Self Defense Force.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ear­ly Days of Ani­ma­tion Pre­served in UCLA’s Video Archive

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Lots of Free Ani­mat­ed Films in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.