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Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter Meets Goal in Less Than a Day
posted on by Emma Hanashiro
Within one day of launching the Kickstarter campaign for Sunao Katabuchi's anime film Mai Mai Miracle, British distributor Anime Limited met its US$30,000 goal on Thursday for an English-subtitled release in the United States and United Kingdom. As of 11:00 a.m. ET, the campaign has raised over $33,700 and will continue to run until March 7.
Anime Limited President Andrew Partridge is planning the first stretch goal for an English dub. After confirming that the US$30,000 goal has been met, the company will announce the level of the first stretch goal, which will "pretty likely" be about US$60,000. For other goals, the company is "talking to Katabuchi-san directly about two options — which we'll open up to backers over a day to vote on." The company is starting to approach Avex about including a soundtrack, but cautioned that this would be complicated.
Anime Limited describes the story:
Shinko, is a third grade elementary school student with a magically active imagination. She spends a lot of her time listening to her grandfather's history lessons, imagining what her town was like 1,000 years earlier. One day, a sad and sombre girl called Kiiko transfers to Shinko's school from Tokyo. A strong friendship soon grows between the two girls as Shinko helps Kiiko come out of her shell and deal with her loss - all thanks to their adventures, both imagined and real.
Katabuchi and MADHOUSE's anime film of Nobuko Takagi's Mai Mai Miracle (Mai Mai Shinko to Sennen no Mahō) novel opened in Japan in 2009 and premiered in the U.S. in 2010. It won the Audience Award for the Best Animated Feature for adults at Belgium's Brussels Animation Film Festival, Best Animated Feature Film at Montreal's Fantasia Festival, and the Excellence Prize at the 14th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards.
