'Ancien and the Magic Tablet' Latest News: Film by Kenji Kamiyama Wows at Japanese Festival in Netherlands; Blu-ray/DVD Now Available
The 2017 Japanese anime movie, "Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari (Napping Princess: The Story of the Unknown Me)," also known as "Ancien and the Magic Tablet," was released on home video last month and still continues to amaze audiences the world over.
The movie is about a high school student named Kokone Morikawa, who lives in two very different worlds. One world is a near-future Japan where she lives with her father and attends school like any normal kid. The other is a fantastical realm known as Heartland, which appears in her dreams whenever she falls asleep at the most inappropriate times.
In Heartland, Kokone appears as a younger version of herself and is named Ancien, the daughter of the King. As Ancien, she possesses a magic tablet computer that she uses to bring machinery to life in order to defend the kingdom against the threat of Colossus, a gigantic monster of molten metal.
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Kokone's life in the real world will soon be under a new conflict when her father is arrested for suspicion of software theft. Kokone herself is threatened by an attempted kidnapping that she narrowly escapes. Drawing courage and inspiration from her dreams, she will set out together with her father's semi-sentient motorcycle to find proof of her family's innocence.
The movie was recently shown at the Camera Japan Festival Rotterdam and has been given a favorable review by ScreenAnarchy, calling it a spectacular film that entertains despite its various genre-bending themes that included and was not limited to fantasy, sentimentality, pirates, sentient toys, giant robots, and monsters.
"Ancient and the Magic Tablet" was produced by Signal.MD and was written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Warner Bros. Pictures released the movie in Japan last March 18, and an English dubbed version was later released in the United Kingdom and the in the United States in August and September, respectively. Blu-ray and DVD copies of the movie went on sale on Sept. 13.
