Wow. Im really surprised. They are both very good animations. I wouldnt call them Anime, though they would certainly be called that in Japan.

The Rankin & Bass animations include a lot of the songs from the books. My favorite being, 'Where there's a whip, there's a way."

If you have not seen them, I highly suggest it. I first saw the Bakshi animation in a theater back in 1978. The Rankin & Bass animations were routinely aired on television in the 80's and early 90's.

I am not familiar with the letter you are referring to, but the directors of the movies were Bakshi and Rankin & Bass. The Bakshi movie was released in theaters the Rankin & Bass animations were made for television. All three were released in the late 70s, so I doubt that Tolkien had the opportunity to see them, though I can't say that for certain since the rights for the animations could only come through Tolkien or Tolkien Enterprises.

I can't be the only one in the forum who has seen these animations. That would be weird.

-- Edited by Celethil at 22:06, 2006-09-24

I haven't seen the Rankin and Bass ones, though I have heard of them several times and want to watch them whenever I get the chance. Another thing I had to say about the Bakshi one was that for some reason, I lost interest. It actually wasn't as bad in the beginning, despite my fairly negative outlook on the film as a whole. Perhaps it was because the animation took a bit of a downturn later on, but I just wasn't held. And I can happily listen to the books on tape or the Radio 4 adaptation, unlike some fans I know, but there you go.

-- Edited by Lady Yavanna at 20:38, 2006-09-26

I've seen some stills, I know. I actually don't mind what they did to Elrond, that animation's not too bad, though yes they just got it, ah, a bit wrong. I have to say, I prefer him to the hobbit actually. Thranduil... I won't go there, I'll just laugh because he looks like he belongs on 'My Little Pony ME style' (I don't think Legolas would be such a popular film character if we took our images from that take on Tolkien though!) They must be kiddy films, so I suppose they're not worth taking too seriously.
I don't truly vehemently hate anything, just some of it is annoying and the rest that I don't like, I find amusing. It's so far from what I imagine when I read the books it doesn't affect me too much, though if I'd seen those films first.. *shiver*

Ereinion- Try Google images. There may be some stills there.

Lady Yavanna - Trust me, seeing the Ranking & Bass animations did very little to change the images I had in my head. They were made for children and they were fairly accurate as well.

Personally I've always liked the dream sequence when Sam takes the ring.
Hail! Samwise the Strong!!

So I guess you have seen the animation now.

I may not be talking about the same animations but there was a recent show on TV on how was the Return of the King made thanks to the latest technology.
Peter asked the help of some computer animator (or it was something like that) and what he did was to introduce digital horses and men in the battle. When he got back to Peter the animations were so good, that he coulnd't make the difference betwen the real and the fictive horses. All horses and men that have been killed or involved in violent combats on the battle of the White City were in fact animations but so perfect and well designed, that mostly of the people (and among them myself also) thought seriously of this particular subject. Everything was very real with one exception: the scene when Legolas kills the oliphaunt. The scene does not fit at all and it's obviously so easy to observ that the whole picture is a bad cartoon.