Studio Ponoc has announced that they are producing an anime film based on the book “The Imaginary”.
The announcement came alongside a brand new teaser trailer providing a first look at the upcoming film as well as its key art. The movie will see its release in Japan in the winter of 2023. The teaser trailer for The Imaginary lives up to that teaser moniker as the 30 second trailer shows very little.
It has a voice over talking about a number of certain things that no one has ever seen. A specific bird that no one has ever seen; a flower, a breeze, with the voice saying how wonderful these imaginary things are. The trailer also shows a brief shot of Rudger, a boy that no one can see who was created by the imagination of a young girl named Amanda.
The film will be an adaptation of the 2014 English children’s novel of the same name which was written by A.F. Harrold with illustrations done by Emily Gravett.
The film will be the latest project from Studio Ponoc, following Mary and the Witch’s Flower and the Modest Heroes anthology film in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The Tokyo-based animation company was founded in 2015 by former Studio Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura, who produced both of the studio’s previous works and will be serving as a producer once again on The Imaginary.
The director of The Imaginary is Yoshiyuki Momose, who was the director on the “Life Ain’t Gonna Lose” short in the Modest Heroes film as well as the animation director for the PlayStation 3 game Ki no Kuni.
