India's highest-rated animated film, made with 100000 hand-drawings, completed in 1993, never released in cinemas, now..

The late Japanese film director Yugo Sako once collaborated with India and gave his interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana with his anime, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama. The film was co-produced by India and Japan and it was completed in 1993. However, the film never saw a theatrical release but earned a cult following among the moviegoers. 

Today, this film is among India's highest-rated movies on IMDb and is regarded as the best cinematic adaptation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Yes, we are talking about the anime film, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama. 

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, conceived by Yugo Sako and directed by Koichi Sasaki and Ram Mohan, was completed in 1993, and is recognized as one of the earliest anime adaptations of an Indian epic. Yugo Sako’s journey to creating Ramayana was fueled by his deep admiration for Indian culture. 

While working on a documentary film on archaeological excavations in India, he made several visits to the country and found the perfect story to adapt into an animated feature, leading to the birth of Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama. 

Ramayana was made with over 1 lakh hand drawings? 

With a team of 450 artists, the film was animated using nearly 100,000 hand-drawn cells. Sako chose traditional hand-drawn animation over computer animation because he believed it best captured the warmth and humanity of the Ramayana. His team’s dedication to this labour-intensive process gave the film an emotional depth that resonated universally. Many of the animators who worked on the project later contributed to iconic productions such as Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, and Doraemon.

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama will finally released in cinemas

Now remastered in 4K, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama is set to see its first-ever pan-India release in four languages—English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu—during the Indian festive season of Dussehra and Diwali. The movie will be released in the cinemas on October 18.