The cutout genre is very popular in Vietnam Animation Studio's products, perhaps because it is suitable for the circumstances of a chronically poor society from the 1960s to 1990s. Even in the early 2000s, they still hadn't given up this habit and also reaped a number of art awards. An example : When I was a kid, I watched a behind-the-scenes video of film Bicycles and Cars, in which, director Phương Hoa only used a black table, then held a pair of tweezers to manipulate very small pieces of cardboard to create the story. Therefore, I also think that it is very possible that Vietnamese filmmakers must have seen The Wise Gudgeon, so the poetics have many similarities.
The basis of film Catfishes and Toads is an epic from the 19th century, when Vietnamese society was still relatively closed and backward. However, at the time of creating the project, director Ngô Mạnh Lân used the content of the comic book he composed, in which some details were added to make the story more modern.
This can be considered a rather strange film in 1993, when the Vietnamese government was aggressively enforcing the birth control law. It means that each family is only allowed to have a maximum of two children, unless one or both of them die, then they can have more children. This law was of course repealed in the early 2000s, when Vietnamese society was more prosperous, but in the 1990s it was quite harsh. In addition to encouraging parents to use contraceptives, the government will suspend the work of violators who are on the payroll of state agencies, and in rural areas, they will be fined with rice. However, this was a hardship for men who cannot give birth to sons, because the traditional concept of Vietnamese people was that they need someone to carry on the family line. Therefore, many persons have accepted all forms of punishment, and of course, in many places it was easy to bribe to have "unplanned" children. Therefore, the story of the Catfish family and even the Toad family really does not have a satisfactory ending.
In this film, only Cat - the character with the highest authority - is a mammal, the rest are all fish, amphibians and reptiles. Right like catfish and toad, which are animals that are very close to Vietnamese culture. Although, as I know, because of their habit of living in mud, catfish are slimy and very dirty, while toad skin also has toxins similar to snake venom, however, these are two delicious dishes and are also very valuable for persons who are sick or have rickets.
According to a Japanese folk legend, Japan lies on the back of a catfish, so earthquakes often occur. I think, it might be related to the image of the Buyan Island's whale in The Humpbacked Horse. About toad, it is virtually the protector of agriculture in Southeast Asia. The toad catches insects that are harmful to crops, and it also signals when a thunderstorm is coming (even though I'm quite scared of this animal, just imagining it makes me shudder). In business circles in South China and Southeast Asia, people sometimes display in the living room a statue of a toad holding a coin, this image is believed to be a wish for prosperity for the homeowner. Even when the French government established a protectorate in Indochina, French engineers invented statues of toads spraying rain in fountains.
I also added that in the past, rich Vietnamese people had the habit of adopting children. Although these adopted children are treated like biological children, but they are used for many purposes : Serving, worshiping, and even when they grow up, they will marry the homeowner's children or the homeowner themselves. In the 1990s, child smuggling across the Vietnam-China border was also a very painful problem. Therefore, Toad asked this question : "Hay là có đứa mẹ mìn nào bắt ?" (What if they were kidnapped by goblins ?). "Mẹ mìn" is a word that probably originated in Hong Kong, almost as a combination of English and local Chinese languages. It could be all of the following : Mama, mommy, mummy... This was the informal way prostitutes call their bosses, later, its meaning changed to refer to all women who specialize in selling children and young women. When I was a schoolboy, both my parents and teachers told us to be careful to avoid being kidnapped by "mẹ mìn" (in the Russian subtitles, I translated it as "kikimora"). :D This reflects an extremely difficult situation in the 1990s. In addition, Catfish also said an aphorism : "Xin quan lớn đèn giời soi xét cho !" (I take the liberty of request Your Excellency to enlighten us). If this sentence is translated word-by-word, it really is : "I request Your Excellency to hold the heavenly lantern to illuminate us". "The heavenly lantern" is an image representing the justice of the law. This sentence was usually said by commoners or low-ranking officials to high-ranking officials, but when Vietnamese society transitioned to democracy, it only existed in books or films.