A fake-out opening establishes the twinned realms through which Kenji Kamiyama’s midlist anime meanders: patriarchal kingdom Heartland is revealed as the recurring dreamscape of somnolent schoolgirl Kokone, who is trapped at home with a grief-stricken mechanic father in a town some distance from Tokyo.
Toggling between the two realms, Kamiyama demonstrates a pleasing, Kore-eda-like eye for suburban specifics, but the charm diminishes upon the segue into corporate conspiracy involving missing tablets and giant robots. There are some fun satiric footnotes early on – Heartland’s compulsory auto industry employment leaves it gridlocked for days – but it starts feeling fairly mechanised itself, every clank of those boysy Transformer knock-offs further drowning out its wistful
heroine.
