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Napping Princess Released Monday

On Monday March 19, Anime Limited will release Kenji Kamiyama's feature film Napping Princess, released on Blu-ray, DVD and as a Blu-ray/DVD combo edition. (The combo edition includes a 40-page booklet and an art card.)The New York International Children's Film Festival describes the film's 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.

Anime Limited will also release Durarara!!×2 Ketsu, the last part of the Duarara!!×2 trilogy featuring the denizens of Ikebukuro in Tokyo. It will be released both as a standard DVD and a Collector's Blu-ray; the Blu-ray includes a booklet and art cards. In the series, a group of individuals, each carrying the weight of their own past, gathers at Shinra's apartment, while in the city the Dollars, Yellow Scarves, and Saika contend for power. However, the situation takes a turn that no one could expect when Celty's head is revealed to the public, as this tale approaches its conclusion.

Anime Limited is also releasing a DVD of the 2003 series Kino's Journey (not to be confused with 2017's Kino's Journey - The Beautiful World). The story follows the travels of Kino, a young adventurer who rides a talking motorcycle named Hermes. They explore the people and cultures of different places throughout their adventures, spending only three days at each location. Based on a series of books by Keiichi Sigsawa, the series was animated by Studio Wombat.

Anime Limited's final release this week is a standard Blu-ray edition of Persona 3 the Movie #1 Spring of Birth, with a Limited Edition Box.