Tokio Jokio

Tokio Jokio
Looney Tunes series
Original black and white title cards & film frame
Directed by	Norman McCabe
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Story by	Don Christensen
Voices by	Mel Blanc
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Izzy Ellis
Studio	Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s)	May 15, 1943
Color process	Black-and-white
Running time	7 minutes
Language	English

Tokio Jokio is a 1943 Looney Tunes short directed by Norman McCabe (Cpl. was added after the film finished production, as McCabe was drafted into the Armed Forces before its release). It is a propaganda film made during World War II mocking Japan in the style of a supposed Japanese film journal broadcast. Mel Blanc supplied all the voices. As with most of the Looney Tunes shorts produced during World War II, the film consists of a series of rapid-fire, short gag vignettes.

The cartoon begins with a voiceover saying that a film captured from the Japanese, a typical example of vicious "Japanazi" propaganda, is now about to be released publicly. The film begins with a rooster who is about to crow. When he does, however, he changes into a vulture with glasses and buck teeth, while rubbing his hands. Behind him, the rising sun of the Japanese Rising Sun Flag appears. The voiceover says: "Ohh, cock-a-doodle-doo, Prease!", in a further emphasis that this vulture is Japanese.

The first segment is "Civilian Defense". The voiceover proudly presents the Japanese air raid siren system, which turns out to be two Japanese wearing kimonos taking turns in pricking each other in the with a needle. Then a listening post is shown, which is literally a pole with key holes in it, and an aircraft spotter, which is literally someone painting spots on a plane. The camera then moves to the fire prevention headquarters which has burned down to the ground.

Then a lesson about incendiary bombs is given. The text states that one should never approach incendiary bombs for the first five seconds. A small Japanese man with an umbrella appears, reads the text, checks his watch (which is decorated with Nazi swastikas) to count the seconds and then roasts a sausage above the dynamite stick. Then he explodes; emerging from the blast, he is headless, but his glasses and hat are still in the same place. The figure then says "Oh, rosing face, prease! Rosing face!" as a pun on the Asian concept of "losing face" or shaming oneself in public.