‘Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama’ and its fraught history of birth and rebirth
Few pop-cultural artifacts possess the cross-cultural resonance of Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama.
The Sanskrit epic Ramayana has long served as the country’s guiding star, endlessly reinterpreted to suit the shifting tides of its storytellers. But for millennials and Gen Xers, whose moral compasses got shaped by Sunday mornings spent glued to Cartoon Network and the last gasps of Doordarshan reruns, Yugo Sako’s animated adaptation occupies an entirely different space, slotted neatly in between Scooby-Doo mysteries, Shaktimaan episodes and other figments of childhood nostalgia.

The Indo-Japanese anime collaboration that first graced Indian screens in the early 1990s has lingered in the collective consciousness, partly for just how pretty it looks and partly for the sheer audacity of its creation. It has since weathered storms of misunderstanding, political controversy, and technological evolution to reemerge three decades later in dazzling 4K glory on Indian screens. For a story that traverses cosmic battles and moral dilemmas, the film’s own journey back to the Indian box office has been no less epic.
You must rewind to the film’s inception to understand why The Legend of Prince Rama still commands reverence. In the early 1980s, Japanese filmmaker Yugo Sako stumbled upon the Ramayana while working on a documentary about archaeological excavations in Uttar Pradesh by former ASI Director General B.B. Lal called The Ramayana Relics.
Enchanted by the breathtaking depth of the story, Sako read ten versions of the Ramayana in Japanese, convinced that only animation could do justice to its divine, mythic scale. Live-action, he argued, could never capture the essence of the titular god without succumbing to the limitations of mere mortal actors.
It’s a strange, almost poetic irony that B.B. Lal’s legacy intertwines so profoundly with The Legend of Prince Ram. Lal’s archaeological work on Ramayana sites captivated Sako and planted the seeds for his animated adaptation. But it was also Lal’s later controversial claims about discovering pillar bases beneath the Babri Masjid that would go on to stoke the fires of the Ayodhya dispute that culminated in the mosque’s destruction in 1992. The once-celebrated archaeologist with a Padma Vibhushan to his name found himself recast in history as both a chronicler of Ramayana’s mythic past and a polarising figure in its very real, modern upheavals. The fact that Sako’s animated vision of the Ramayana should share its origins with the political tensions that unraveled in Ayodhya lingers uncomfortably. It feels like a disconcerting commentary on how mythology can simultaneously be wielded as art and weapon.

But in India, Sako’s ambitions were unsurprisingly still met with skepticism.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) protested the idea of a “foreigner” adapting the epic, misinterpreting his intent as sacrilegious. The Indian government, wary of political sensitivities during the height of the Ayodhya dispute, declined to collaborate on the project.

A still from ‘Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama’
Undeterred, Sako took the project to Japan, where he secured the funding and forged a unique production partnership. Indian animators like Ram Mohan worked alongside Japanese studios, bridging two distinct storytelling traditions. Cultural accuracy was paramount — Indian animators taught their Japanese counterparts the finer points of draping dhotis and performing namaskars.
By 1993, the film had premiered at the International Film Festival of India and later at festivals in Vancouver and Tokyo to critical acclaim. Yet, its theatrical prospects were stymied by the political turmoils of the time. Its limited distribution meant that for most Indian audiences, the film existed primarily as a fleeting memory from TV reruns on Cartoon Network or worn-out DVD copies. It languished thereafter in relative obscurity, surfacing sporadically on television and YouTube.

This tempestuous journey is part of what makes The Legend of Prince Ram so compelling. The animation itself remains stunning, even by today’s standards. The meticulous hand-drawn frames imbue the story with a timeless quality, far removed from the clunky CGI abominations of recent reinterpretations like 2010’s Ramayana: The Epic or 2023’s Adipurush. Every scene feels crafted with a love for the art, whether it’s Ram and Lakshman’s quieter moments of exile or the grandeur of battle in Lanka.
But the film’s true triumph, beyond its Ghibli-esque charm, has always been in its ability to distill the essence of the Ramayana without diluting its spiritual gravity. The characters may appear slightly pale (which is likely a stylistic concession to Japanese anime norms), but the depth of its characters is unmistakable. Sako’s approach also eschews bombast for subtlety and balances moral dilemmas and divine destinies of its storied mythology with the intimacy of what makes it so human.

A still from ‘Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama’
The 4K re-release of Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Ram offers a chance to see this animated gem as it was meant to be seen — crisp, vibrant, and heartbreakingly sans the original Hindi dub. Yes, the dub that boasted Bollywood icons like Shatrughan Sinha and Amrish Puri has vanished into the ether, a casualty of time and, perhaps, cultural amnesia. For those flocking to cinemas, whether to recapture childhoods long past or to indoctrinate their offspring into the gospel of Rama, Yugo Sako’s adaptation exemplifies the undying influence of anime on an Indian audience.
As India and Japan celebrated 70 years of diplomatic ties in 2022, the long-delayed return of this cult classic to the big screen feels like a ceremonious nod to that partnership. Yet, after mysteriously missing its slated release last September, the timing of its reappearance may raise some eyebrows given its alignment with the first anniversary of the Ram Mandir’s consecration in Ayodhya this month.
Even so, the anime is a quiet corrective to recent misfires of overwrought spectacles and cringe-inducing attempts to remix the Ramayana for TikTok sensibilities. The Legend of Prince Ram is what a respectful adaptation looks like. It neither pander nor pontificates; it simply tells the story with sincerity and grace.
Published – January 25, 2025 03:22 pm IST
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