Napping Princess

A Japanese teenager's recurring dreams, where a rebellious princess's magic powers holds the key to a futuristic kingdom's very survival, prompt her to trace her own troubled family history in this Japanese animated feature. Indeed, the film's on-screen English alternative title Ancien and the Magic Tablet, more accurately reflects its ambitious blend of technology and magic, since the dreamworld princess Ancien's talismanic handheld device also turns up in reality as a scruffy-looking tablet, belonging to the heroine's car-mechanic dad and holds secrets to a complex backstory. Writer/director Kenji Kamiyama takes on a bit too much in keeping both plot strands running, eventually reaching overload in an over-extended finale. Still, he does manage to pack in an underlying message about Japan's need to blend engineering heritage with modern computer technology, and it's hard to resist a movie that packs in battling giant robots, a perky schoolgirl protagonist, self-driving cars, Japan's bullet-train and even the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Phew!