gizmomogwai The featured article (article on Wikipedia's main page) for July 12, 2016 is the anime short film Katsudô shashin (1907?), a video of which is available in the article. I'd never heard about it before, but it's so remarkable to think of what a discovery it would be to come across the earliest known piece of anime in Kyoto in 2004. This is archaeoanime, a treasure find for film history.Katsudô shashin runs at three seconds and features a boy in a sailor suit writing "moving picture" on a board in Japanese characters. It's extremely short by today's standards, but groundbreaking and, in its own right, is still adorable and good-natured.A number of people here on IMDb have given Katsudô shashin low ratings, but I believe that's failing to take into account what the film is and what it's trying to do. As the late Roger Ebert said, "the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher." So, discover the joys in moving pictures.

Rectangular_businessman This is probably the shortest animated short that I've seen in my life (It only last 4 seconds) It didn't have a real plot or anything like that, being mostly something experimental, pretty much like most of the short films done at the beginning of the story of cinema. (Think about Roundhay Garden Scene) Considering how old is this (Being probably the oldest animation ever done in Japan) I must say that the result is quite impressive, being pretty advanced for the time when it was made.I guess that didn't have very much to offer besides of the historical value, but at least it's an early effort worth of recognition. Also, being too short, it won't take that much of your time, anyway.

boblipton A boy in a cadet's uniform paints a statement on the top of the frame and then tips his cap to the audience.This is the earliest known surviving bit of Japanese animation, discovered in Osaka in 2005. Where it had been hiding is not clear. Whether there were earlier efforts is unknown -- certainly the earliest efforts at moving drawings unmixed with live action was not known to have begun until Emile Cohl started producing animation in 1909. In fact, this looks like almost purely a test piece, just a few seconds to see if the techniques will work: far too expensive to produce regularly and matters would remain so for another decade everywhere. But by the 1930s Japan movie studios would produce a lot of cartoons.So this is a historical artifact and its interest derives solely from that.