MACHI ICHIBAN NO KECHINBOU

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  TheRealKyuubey

  50/100
  The Ghost of Dickens Past

  Merry Christmas, everyone! Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Merry Crimbus, I wish you joy in whatever you celebrate. At the time that I’m writing this, we’re only a few days out from the most popular holiday of the year, and while it’s not going to be happy or magical for everyone, there are countless ways to find joy in it as long as you put forth the effort to look. Personally, this coming Christmas might not be all that merry, since my family has scattered with the wind, I have to work the day before, and I’m basically going to be alone all day with my cat. Also there was a family tragedy back in November that has inevitably colored the season a little darker than usual, adult life can be a bitch sometimes.

  Having said all of that, one thing that always picks me up around this time of year is looking up nostalgic Christmas themed media, and every year, I try to write at least one Christmas themed anime review, so I can share my joy with all of you. In my ongoing campaign to put off reviewing Itsudatte my Santa for as many years as possible, I got a little desperate this year, and just typed “Christmas” into the Anilist search bar to see what kind of titles popped up... And to my great surprise, one of the first things I found was The Stingiest Man in Town, a Rankin/Bass retelling of A Christmas Carol that came out about eight years before I was born.

  Now, for those of you aren’t familiar with Rankin/Bass, yes you are, they made Rudolph. Unlike The Grinch, I don’t have to specify which Rudolph, because there are only two Rudolphs, and only one of them is actually remembered by literally anyone. Rankin/Bass were basically the Hanna-Barbera of stop motion animation for a few generations. A few of their productions have become holiday classics, most notably Rudolph and a few Santa Claus backstory movies, but they’ve made far more TV specials than you might realize, and some of their shit has been unbelievably weird.

  Personally speaking, I have complicated thoughts about stop motion animation, especially when it’s aimed at children. It’s an incredibly expensive and time consuming form of animation, the craft of which is mind-boggling, and on far too many occasions, people tend to look past weaknesses in the writing and story because of this. This might be why so many of Rankin/Bass’s traditionally animated specials aren’t well remembered, because they didn’t have the magic of stop motion to prop them up.

  As for The Stingiest Man in Town, it has a pretty interesting history. It wasn’t just created because Rankin/Bass wanted to try their hand at a Christmas Carol movie, they did it because they were hired to remake a production of the same name that had aired nearly thirty years prior as an episode of a variety show in the fifties called The Alcoa Hour. That production was considered lost media at the time, so this animated feature was created to preserve the writing, story and music of it. New actors were hired, and the screenplay was recycled to recreate the production for a new late seventies audience.

  Now, does that make this the first ever animated version of A Christmas Carol? I don’t know, but it might be. It’s hard to tell, because there are so, so many versions of this story out there, and it’s not hard to see why. A Christmas Carol is easily one of the most appealing stories ever told. Everyone knows the tropes by heart, and you can adapt the structure of the story to basically any cast of characters, new or pre-existing. Fucking ERB did this story with celebrities. It’s in the public domain, meaning there are no copyright issues to deal with. It has literary legitimacy to back it up, belonging to one of the greatest authors of all time. It’s simple enough for kids, but deep enough for adults, so it’s a sure bet that families will tune in to see your version of it.

  Why is this one an anime? I don’t fucking know. Some Japanese names are in the credits, and it aired in Japan, I guess. The same reason Cyber 6 is considered an anime. Are there any other Rankin/Bass anime out there? I don’t know that either, but if you find any, send them my way.

  Before I get into this particular incarnation, there are a few caveats we need to go over. I am an adult. I didn't watch this as a kid, so I have no nostalgic attachment or bias towards it. I have also been spoiled by some of the best versions of this story to ever be told, like the universally beloved Muppet version, and my personal favorite, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, which aired the year I was born and brought Mickey Mouse out of a thirty year soft retirement. I can not help but compare this version to those, even though I can appreciate what it might have meant to people at the time.

  Interestingly enough, while it uses the overall aesthetic of Rankin/Bass, which is fairly unique and easily recognizable, the animation was produced primarily by a company called Topcraft, a former anime production company that would later become a part of Studio Ghibli. Back in the day, they produced several classic anime titles to some degree, along with certain American cartoons like the animated Lord of the Rings movies, even though they’re somehow not listed here. In any case, with those two specific fingers in its pie, and this special coming out in the seventies, you can probably guess what it looks like.

  It is archaic. It doesn’t look like straight up dogshit, don’t get me wrong, but it clearly was not made on a very big budget, and it was clearly limited by the technology of the time. I personally like the overall aesthetic... It’s a lot grittier looking and more detailed than, say, the Frosty cartoon, and Topcraft were at least trying with the animation. Character movement is limited, but it is put to good use, or at least just enough for the characters to feel an acceptable level of aliveness. For the time, it looks okay. It’s not going to impress you in any way, but it’s also not going to distract from the story.

  How is that story? Honestly, it’s pretty bare bones. If it wasn’t for all the songs... There’s at least a dozen of them... This movie would drop from an hour long to fifteen minutes long. This is a very simple, beat by beat retelling of the Christmas Carol story, with no depth or complexity to it, and look, for 1978, that was probably perfectly fine. It’s a cautionary tale about greed and selfishness, which kids do need when they’re developing, so they can grow some kind of moral backbone before they grow up and enter our capitalist society that’s built on rewarding greed and selfishness.

  There’s no real depth or complexity to it other than that, but honestly, a functional Christmas Carol story doesn’t need depth or complexity. Even today, if you sit a very small child down to watch it, they’d probably like it. The narrative mentions death a few times, but aside from that it’s safe and entertaining enough for children. That is, any child that hasn’t been spoiled by the Disney, Muppets or even Jim Carrey versions of the story, all of which are just objectively superior.

  On its own merits, this special is fine. The problem is, there have been countless retellings of this story since then, and so many of them have done it so much better that I can’t think of a legitimate reason to show any child this version instead of one the other versions. Other versions take their time to humanize Scrooge, presenting him not just as a strawman to learn an obvious lesson, but a relatable human being who’s done terrible things and gone way too far down the wrong path. They develop the world, letting you care more about the villagers who suffer while Scrooge refuses to help them.

  And the songs, I’m just gonna say it, they’re not Rankin/Bass’s best work. They sound nice, but most of them are just filler, and while I might have developed an emotional attachment to them if this special were part of my childhood, I barely remember any of them. The only one that really sticks out to me is one where B.A.H Humbug... Who is basically just a wholesale rip-off of Jiminy Cricket, which kinda foreshadows his role in the Mickey version... Actually brings the nativity into the story. He compares Scrooge’s hunger for gold with the gold that was brought to “The King,” being careful to not actually use the name Jesus, and then ties this into Tiny Tim because he’s the child who really needs that gold right now. It’s a clever idea, but with pretty clunky execution IMO.

  I’ll give them credit that they didn’t pussy out about the darker moments of the story, but other versions have gone way darker, and the emotions just weren’t there. Scrooge reacting to Tiny Tim's upcoming death was given the time it deserved, but it didn’t hit as hard as it should have. Scrooge discovering his own death as shown to him by The Ghost of Future had a nice added touch with his grave turning into Satan, but the whole sequence barely lasts thirty seconds. I did think it was clever that he transitioned away from the Ghost of Christmas Past by snuffing out his candle though.

  But over-all, this is not one of the better Christmas Carol adaptations. I don’t think it’s bad by any means, I think it was perfectly fine for the time, and could even be seen as perfectly serviceable today, but it just falls flat when compared to all of the more powerful and emotionally potent adaptations that we’ve been given since then. Scrooge himself should be a far more complex character than this, and he has been. The tragedy of Tiny Tim’s passing should hit like way more of a gut punch, and it has been. Scrooge’s redemption should be far more triumphant, should fill you with impossible joy, and give you hope for your own future, and guess what, it has been. Hell, Mickey’s Christmas Carol tells a far more memorable and powerful story despite being fifteen minutes shorter than this version!

  Again, this is by no means a bad Christmas special, but there’s a reason nobody remembers it. If there’s any reason to seek it out, it would have to be Walther Mathau’s performance as Scrooge. I know Matthau primarily as Mr. Wilson from the live action Dennis the Menace, but he is easily one of the most underappreciated actors of all time, and his performance does a lot of heavy-lifting for Scrooge as a character where the writing may have let him down. Other than that, I wouldn’t outright condemn this version, but you can do better.

  I give The Stingiest Man in Town a 5/10

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