Momotarou's Sea Eagles is better than its extended sequel in two major ways. One that is it shorter, and two that it has a synchronized and concise narrative. The film is a Japanese propagandistic perspective of the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the offensive on the Pacific theatre of the Second World War. It makes for a curious contrast to American propagandistic films of the same time - a la popeye that dealt with the event in vastly contrasting terms. We already see the employment of non threatening anthropomorphic personifications standing in for the Japanese as opposed to the threatening demon like external existentialthreat from the opponent becoming a part Japanese animation lexicon and stylistic toolkit.

Once again, it is worth remembering that the director of this film was a known communist sympathizer at the time and opposed to Imperial Japan's expansionist policies. He had also previously been detained and tortured on occasion for his political sympathies. This made his participation in these propagandistic works reluctant at worst and self sabotaging at the best. Mitsuyo Seo went out of his way to portray the brutality of war with the prolonged live footage of the bombings inserted into his film, something that flew right past the naval supervisor censors who saw this as a victory lap of their strategic achievements at that point in the war.

As a piece of art, there's nothing really particularly of interest here beyond its historical nature as being the first real Japanese feature length work. It isn't particularly provocative but adds some context into how the Expansionists thought about the war effort.