Taro the Dragon Boy (Essay)

(Tatsu no ko Tarô)

Released 1979 (Japan); January 31, 2006 (US DVD)

Studio: Toei Animation Company

Directed by: Kiriro Urayama, Peter Fernandez (English cut)

Sticking to the theme of lifelong favorites from my childhood, especially those that feature dragons, I thought Taro would be a most fitting, if not completely unknown, addition. Easily as hard to find as Flight of Dragons, Taro doesn’t even have a Wiki page, so I will have to use my limited knowledge of Japanese folklore if I want to go in depth explaining the stories behind the story.

I should point out I have never watched the original Japanese dub of the movie. Apparently the English cut is vastly different. It doesn’t change the story but apparently lots of the dialogue is changed and in the US version there’s a lot more songs (well, one song sung a few times) that I guess they don’t use in the original. The songs were one of the reasons I liked it so much and why it’s so memorable for me (unlike the previous two films, Taro has never left my memory). Someday I probably will watch the Japanese version, but will quickly go back to the American one shortly after. I’m keeping the magic of my childhood alive.


Taro is the story of a young boy who has been orphaned. He lives in a poor village in the mountains with his grandmother. The people of the village spend their days trying to grow millet in their infertile lands. “Grow a thousand grains from one, grown ten thousand grains from two,” is their mantra. Taro is a lazy boy, who, even though he’s young and strong, spends most of his days asleep rather than helping the community or playing with the other boys. This causes the boys to give Taro the nickname “dragon boy”. Why, I do not know. My guess is it was a rumor that grew out of control. A rumor, Taro learns, is true.

One day Taro asks his grandmother about his mother. She tells him that yes, he is the son of a dragon, and that his mother gave her eyes to feed him when he was a baby (to substitute for milk), and blinded, flew to a lake high in the mountains. Taro promptly vows to find his mother and sets out the next day to do just that.

As per usual in adventure films, Taro meets all kinds of amazing characters on his way. Aya is a girl from the neighboring mountain, who plays the flute beautifully. The Wizard Tengu (who appears sometimes in Japanese fairy tales), wrestles Taro and gives him the strength of ten men, something that comes in handy when he meets the Red and Black Demons. Taro also is briefly employed by a farmer woman, who claims a dragon lives in the pond by her house. When this is proven a lie, Taro takes his pay for his work. The woman laughs and offers him all he can carry, which turns out is the entire crop. Taro begins then to redeem himself by doling out portions of the rice crop to other poor villagers throughout the mountains.


Eventually Taro reaches the lake, and finds his mother in one of the most tearful reunions ever in film. He learns the full story of how she became a dragon in the first place (punishment for selfishness), which cements Taro’s good deeds as self-redeeming. But he wasn’t done thinking of the people of the valley. He notices the lake could be drained which would get water to all the people and make their lands more fertile and they wouldn’t be so poor and hungry. The film climaxes with Taro and his dragon mother draining the lake in epic fashion.

Now when it comes to family dynamics in film, the father-son relationship is probably the most often represented. There’s a fair amount of mother-daughter, and even a few father-daughter. But the one least represented is the mother-son relationship. This is probably a reason the movie is so important to me. My mom was stay-at-home until after my brother was born so I’d spend a lot of time with her, reading books, going to the park, and watching movies. Movies like Taro. And invariably I’d end up walking around singing the song and carried the “dragon boy” nickname around for a while. So that’s a reason I hold it so dearly.

Something else I noticed when watching it shortly after I bought the DVD. Taro, along with other animated films I grew up with, allowed me to accept pretty much anything fantastical without questioning it (in stories at least, because I recognize them as stories *cough* creation stories *cough*). For example, when Taro defeats the Black Demon, he frees a horse the demon had captive. Later in the movie, the horse can fly. I never thought twice about this until my dad was like, “oh, yeah, that makes sense, flying horse.” Well, Aya explains the horse has gotten its strength back and now is its normal self and can fly again. This is a perfect explanation in the realm of this story, and it never occurred to me at age 3, 13, or 23 to question it.


Taro was also the first anime I ever saw, so the seeds of that love were planted quite early. You may also have noticed how absolutely beautiful the artwork is in the movie. That I think is something amazing: it’s not an "A" movie quality-wise by pretty much any standards, yet the art is still gorgeous.

I don’t expect anyone will be clamoring to tell me this is one they watched years ago and forgot, so I will say that you should do yourself a favor and seek Taro out.