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Ancien and the Magic Tablet Anime Film's Clip Shows Demon Attacking Heartland

The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper's MAiDiGiTV YouTube channel began streaming a new 45-second clip on Thursday for Ancien and the Magic Tablet (Hirune Hime ~Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari~), the new anime film by director Kenji Kamiyama. The video depicts a demon attacking the Heartland Kingdom, the world that appears in Kokone's dreams.

The film opened in Japan on March 18 in 232 theaters nationwide, and ranked #9 in the Japanese box office in its opening weekend. The film will screen in 40 countries and regions worldwide. The New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF) screened the film on March 19 in Japanese with English subtitles.

NYICFF describes the story:

This fender and genre-bending film takes us into the not-too-distant machine-driven future. Kokone should be diligently studying for her university entrance exams, but she just can't seem to stay awake. Aside from stealing precious study time, her napping is even more distracting, as it brings on strange dreams with warring machines that hint at family secrets that have been dormant for years. She can't ask her father, a hipster mechanic more talented and artful than his job requires, as he's always busy modifying motorcycles and cars in flights of fancy. What are these visions that lead Kokone at once closer to and farther away from her family? Like all the best anime, the film revels in multilayered fantasy to show how sometimes opposites—waking and dreaming, the past and the future—are far more intertwined than they appear.

I.G Port's new anime studio subsidiary Signal.MD (Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, Anime Tamago's "Colorful Ninja Iromaki" short) animated the film as its first anime film project. Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit, Eden of the East) directed the film and penned the script. Satoko Morikawa (The Cat Returns, Eden of the East, Xi Avant) designed the characters, and Shigeto Koyama (Michiko & Hatchin, Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit, Heroman) was charge of mechanical design. Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XV) composed the music for the film.

Lead actress Mitsuki Takahata performed the film's theme song, a cover of The Monkees' "Daydream Believer" song.

The film stars:

• Mitsuki Takahata as Kokone Morikawa/Ancien
• Arata Furuta as Ichirō Watanabe
• Hideki Takahashi as Isshin Shijima/King Heartland
• Shinnosuke Mitsushima as Morio Sawatari
• Tomoya Maeno as Kijita/Takiiji
• Yosuke Eguchi as Momotarō Morikawa/Pōchi
• Rie Kugimiya as Joy
• Wataru Takagi as Sawatari/Ukkii
• Risa Shimizu as Ikumi Morikawa

Yen Press is publishing Hana Ichika's Napping Princess: The Story of the Unknown Me manga adaptation simultaneously with Japan.

The film also received a two-part anime short. The first part debuted on March 10 on Hulu Japan, and the second part debuted on March 17.

Source: The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web