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Nerawareta Gakuen Anime's Hybrid Disc Video Previews PlayView Features

Namco Bandai Games began streaming a promotional video to showcase the PlayView feature on its "Hybrid Disc" release of Sunrise's anime film Nerawareta Gakuen.

While the Hybrid Disc will play the film itself on any Blu-ray player, it will also offer an extended, interactive "PlayView" of film's production materials via a PlayStation 3 console. About 2,000 pages of designs and documents are included for viewing, including background art, 931 pages of storyboards, chief animation director's correction sheets, promotional illustrations, over 120 pages of character designs, a guide to the anime by critic Ryūsuke Nagakawa, a digest version of the film's program book, and press materials. Some of the background art comes with the photos of the real-life locations that inspired them.

On Monday, Namco Bandai also began streaming another promotional video for the Hybrid Disc, but it was mostly the same one streamed for the theatrical release last November with the Hybrid Disc's June 6 release date added at the end.

Sunrise's Studio 8 (My-HiME, Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, Accel World) animated Taku Mayumura's science-fiction children's novel with director Ryosuke Nakamura (Mōryō no Hako, Aoi Bungaku Series). AKB48 member Mayu Watanabe ("Mayuyu") and voice actor Yūtarō Honjō (Eureka 7: Astral Ocean's Ao Fukai) co-star as childhood friends Natsuki and Kenji Seki.

Scotland Loves Animation event, which screened the film last year, describes the "new interpretation" of Mayumura's novel:

Spring marks the start of another new school year at a junior high school in Kamakura. A new transfer student, Ryoichi Kyogoku (Daisuke Ono) joins the 8th grade. Kyogoku has a very special proficiency in telepathy and has been ordered by his father to use this ability to scan other people's minds and take over the school.

He instantly gains popularity at school from his good looks and charisma and he sets about taking control of the school. As people begin to fall under Kyogoku's spell, he covertly manipulates his followers and pushes aside anyone who gets in his way.

With the school almost completely under the control of Kyogoku, only one boy seems unaffected – Seki. Does Seki have what it takes to save everyone from the clutches of mind control?