The first Japanese feature-length animated film — the first animé — doesn’t get much attention these days, even though it’s beautifully made, in a Disney-inspired style, because the film, Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, or Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors, was made for the the Japanese Naval Ministry in 1944 and released in 1945, a few months before Japan surrendered:
About 45 minutes in they start preparing for an airborne attack against a European colony.
The bumbling Brits who surrender to the Japanese are depicted…with a horn on their heads?
The Japanese did have marine paratroopers in World War II, by the way:
The troops were officially part of the Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF or Rikusentai).
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Paratroop units were only organized on the very eve of the war, beginning in September 1941.
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Two companies, numbering 849 paratroopers, from the 1st Yokosuka SNLF, carried out Japan’s first ever combat air drop, during the Battle of Menado, in the Netherlands East Indies, on January 11, 1942.