Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips is a 1944 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The cartoon, released on April 22, 1944, features Bugs Bunny. The film depicts Bugs fighting against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific War. The film is considered controversial for caricaturing the Japanese enemy, and expressing anti-Japanese sentiment. Plot Somewhere in the Pacific, Bugs is floating in a box, singing to himself, when "the island that inevitably turns up in this kind of picture" turns up. Bugs swims towards it, admiring the peace and quiet, when bombs start going off ("The Storm" from the William Tell Overture is also heard in the background). Bugs ducks into a haystack, and soon comes face-to-face with a Japanese soldier: a short, buck-toothed, bare-footed Japanese man who pronounces "L" as "R", and who might be rapidly stating the names of Japanese cities whenever he moves. The soldier chases Bugs into a rabbit hole, where the soldier dumps a bomb inside. However, Bugs manages to blow up the soldier with the bomb. When the soldier tries to swing a sword at Bugs, Bugs appears as a Japanese general (presumably Hideki Tojo), but is soon recognized by his trademark carrot-eating, prompting the soldier (who says that he had seen Bugs in the "Warner Bros. Leon Schlesinger Merrie Melodies cartoon pictures", referring to the fact that Bugs was originally exclusive to that series) to ask him, "What's up, Honorable Doc?" Bugs then jumps into a plane (which looks like a Mitsubishi A6M Zero); the soldier also jumps into a plane (also looks like a Zero). However, Bugs ties the soldier's plane to a tree, causing the plane to be yanked out from under him. The soldier parachutes down, but is met in mid-air by Bugs, who hands "Moto" (cf. Mr. Moto) some "scrap iron" (an anvil), causing the soldier to fall. Painting a Japanese flag on a tree to denote one soldier down, Bugs runs into a sumo wrestler, against whom he confidently faces off (cockily marking a second and bigger flag on the tree). After being temporarily beaten by the sumo wrestler (and, to be fair, wiping the second mark off the tree before collapsing), Bugs dresses as a geisha and knocks out the wrestler, who repaints the second flag on the tree before passing out. Seeing a group of Japanese landing craft making their way toward the island (and exclaiming