This early Japanese animated short is about a foot soldier walking a long distance to deliver a letter to his lord. He sees a hunter about to kill a couple of monkeys and fights to stop him. When the gun goes off with the soldier laying down, the hunter runs away thinking he killed him. The monkeys come down from their tree and bow to him. The soldier accepts their thanks but instead of leaving them, the monkeys take the stick with the letter forcing the soldier to follow them to their place of operations. He drinks their wine and accepts their gift of a sword. After a hunter (perhaps the same one?) attempts to shoot a boar and misses, that boar runs after him and encounters the soldier with the monkeys and gets himself cut in half by that soldier's sword. The hunter with his life saved now bows to the soldier as they all take him to his mission. At the end, after his mission is completed, the soldier becomes a samurai and is given back his sword which is named "Monkey Sword Masamune". The end. Supervised by the writer Chuzo Aoji with animation by Yasuji Murata and music (as I heard on YouTube) by Joichi Yuasa, this nine-minute early animated Japanese short was pretty good for a late silent from this era. Perhaps a little primitive compared to today but still entertaining nonetheless. Worth seeking for animation buffs wanting something from a different period and country.
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