Review of The Fox and the Hound (1981)
Seen in 2019.
It’s got plenty of problems, such as the musical theatre, the immortal caterpillar, and most importantly, the evil fur trapper and his comeuppance. However, this is Disney applying their excellent craftsmanship to a simple, coherent story, well told, without star-crossed love, fairy dust, artistocratic privilege or other narcissistic fairy-tale tropes. It gives me a sense of what the animators were trying to do with their endless anthropomorphic designs in previous decades, when the Disney brothers kept them down.
References here: The Black Cauldron (1985), The Lion King (1994).