For many people, it isn't Christmas until they've sat down and watched one of Rankin/Bass' holiday specials. Many of Rankin/Bass' specials, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, are stop-motion animated. However, Rankin/Bass did make some traditionally-animated Christmas specials, and one of them is connected to a legendary anime studio.
The Stingiest Man in Town was released in 1978. As is apparent from the title, it is based on Charles Dickens' perennial Christmas favorite, A Christmas Carol. However, it is actually an adaptation of a 1956 live-action musical of the same name. The film follows the story everyone knows and loves, with Scrooge the miser being visited by three ghosts. These ghosts attempt to change Scrooge's life by getting him to change his ways and be more generous to the poor and oppressed.
However, Rankin/Bass didn't handle the film's animation. As they did with most of their traditionally animated projects, Rankin/Bass hired Japanese studios to create the animations for them. For instance, 1966's The King Kong Show and several other projects saw Rankin/Bass work with a then up-and-coming studio called Toei Animation.
In 1971, Toru Hara, one of Toei animation's producers, left the studio and founded his own, called Topcraft. This studio worked with Rankin/Bass on several projects, including animating their cartoons based on The Jackson Five and The Osmonds. Topcraft would also animate Rankin/Bass' version of the classic novel, The Hobbit. So, naturally, Rankin/Bass hired Topcraft to animate The Stingiest Man in Town. While many people today likely haven't heard of Topcraft, they're probably familiar with the studio's work. In 1984, the studio would release its magnum opus, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a movie that is rightfully considered a classic today.
In fact, the credits for The Stingiest Man in Town feature some anime royalty. Its layout artist, Ikkô Kobayashi, would go on to work on Nausicaä, as well as going on to become the key animator for One Piece Film Z and the animation director for Yu-Gi-Oh! Bonds Beyond Time. Tsuguyuki Kubo, the animation supervisor, would later work as the assistant animation director on both Boruto: Naruto the Movie and The Last: Naruto the Movie. Katsuhisa Yamada, the film's animation director, would work on many projects in the future, including Devil Hunter Yohko, Record of the Lodoss War and the legendary Genesis Climber Mospeada.
The Stingiest Man in Town was a moderate success for Rankin/Bass in both America and Japan. Part of the deal between Rankin/Bass and Topcraft was that the show could be dubbed and shown on Japanese TV. It was broadcast in Japan on Christmas Eve, 1978, the day after it was shown on American television.
What makes this story even more fascinating is what would happen to Topcraft in the years after Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was released. In 1985, Topcraft went bankrupt and the studio split into two. One half formed Pacific Animation Corporation, a company that continued to work on Rankin/Bass productions like ThunderCats and Silverhawks until Disney bought the studio in 1988 and turned it into Walt Disney Animation Japan. The other half became core members of a then-new studio called Studio Ghibli. The founder of Topcraft, Toru Hara, became Studio Ghibli's first manager and would act as a producer on classic films like Kiki's Delivery Service, Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro.
The Stingiest Man in Town is an enthralling piece of anime history. It gives us a fascinating glimpse into an era where it was not uncommon for American studios to outsource their animation to Japan. And so many Japanese studios would use these foreign jobs to fund their domestic projects. In the days before easily accessible home media, their core audience would be unlikely to see these American-produced projects unless they also got dubbed for the Japanese market. So, without The Stingiest Man in Town, we likely would never have got Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. And, without Nausicaä, Studio Ghibli may never have formed. So, if you're looking for something different this year, give The Stingiest Man in Town a try and see a surprisingly unique take on an old tale that is packed full of anime history.
