Director Kenji Kamiyama
Staring Mitsuki Takahata, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Yôsuke Eguchi
Rated Recommended for all ages
Score 6/6

Kokone has university exams to prepare for, but instead she dozes off. Even when her father is unceremoniously arrested prior to the Tokyo Olympics and the family is hiding away a mystery or two she finds herself taking refuge in sleep where thrills await her. Could there be more to her dreams?

Okay, I was a good boy and reviewed all the other movies that I said I would for the Japanese Film Festival so now I get my treat and get to review anime (one of the two genres that I believe you should watch when you go to a Japanese Film Festival). For those of you might miss this at the Japanese Film Festival Ancien and the Magic Tablet is also known as Napping Princess: The Story of the Unknown Me. Now the artwork for this Anime might have been as luscious and beautiful as other anime that I have seen, but Ancien and the Magic Tablet still managed to give me the warm and fuzzy feelings that you would expect from a movie you should take the entire family to see.

I will admit that based on the couple of stills that I saw of Ancien and the Magic Tablet the beginning threw me a little, I wasn’t expecting the fantasy reality aspect of the movie. I thought it was an interesting by writer/director Kenji Kamiyama to use computing tablets as a method to cast magical spells. I also liked the giant robots known as Engineheads and the creative twist that Kamiyama brought to them was something that Sci-fi fans probably have not seen in recent years. I also enjoyed pantomime-esque quality that Ancien and the Magic Tablet seemed to have that took the edge off of some of the movie’s tenser moments and let Kokone be brave and goofy all at the same time.