Kurosawa's first work in color is a stylized, experimental work produced independently on a very small budget, necessitating a number of economies which contribute to the personal feeling of the overall work. For example, Kurosawa himself not only designed but painted the sets. Mixing reality and fantasy, Kurosawa weaves together the lives of a group of Tokyo slum dwellers; in its semi-allegorical narrative, Dodes'ka den offers an impassioned affirmation to life and to man's overcoming all adversities through hope and dreams. Dodes'ka den may strike some as simplistic and naively un-political in its social optimism, but there is no doubting its author's sincerity, or the creative imagination underlying the film's stunningly colorful surface.