Horus: Prince of the Sun

Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968) is a Japanese animated fantasy you can watch online on iFILM. It unfolds in a mythical Iron Age north, where the demon Grunwald sends frost mammoths, spectral wolves and shape-shifters to grind the villages down one by one until the whole land bends to his will.

Into that cold walks a brave boy named Horus. He pulls an ancient blade, the Sword of the Sun, from the shoulder of a rock giant, only to learn its power sleeps until the weapon is forged anew. His road carries him toward the land of his ancestors and to Hilda, a girl with a heavenly singing voice and a secret she can barely admit to herself. The villagers swing between hailing Horus as their protector and turning on him when fear and rumor take hold.

This was the directing debut of Isao Takahata, the future Studio Ghibli co-founder, made at Toei Animation with a young Hayao Miyazaki driving much of the key animation and design. It flopped on release, then came to be seen as a turning point for Japanese animation, the first time a children's adventure took community, fear and betrayal seriously. If you love early Ghibli, this is where the lineage begins. Stream Horus: Prince of the Sun (1968) online on iFILM.