I’m not much of an anime fan. Actually, I actively dislike the bulk of the anime I’ve seen. Movies by Hayao Miyazaki get my attention (there’s an argument to be made that, thanks to different sensibilities when building story and character, Miyazaki’s movies are not anime at all) and so do features by Satoshi Kon. His films are always interesting, even when they don’t work, and since the combo of Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers I’ve perked up every time he gets a new project going.

He’s been working on The Dream Machine (or The Dreaming Machine, as I’ve seen it translated occasionally) for some time, and now we’ve got the first images from the kid-friendly movie. Check ‘em out, after the break.

Twitch points to the official site, from which these pics hail. We don’t know much about the story at this point, and the site currently features only Japanese text. But there’s this vague promise, from an interview Kon did last year:

On the surface, it’s going to be a fantasy-adventure targeted at younger audiences. However, it will also be a film that people who have seen our films up to this point will be able to enjoy. So it will be an adventure that even older audiences can appreciate. There will be no human characters in the film; only robots. It’ll be like a “robot movie” for robots.

On its own, not so much to go on. With the new images, I can start to assemble a picture of what this might be like. Far more gentle than much of Kon’s work, for one, which is something I can deal with. The images make this look quite glossy and kid-friendly, which is an interesting change. But I have a hard time believing that Kon can make a film that is all light and airy, so I’d expect a few robotic breakdowns along the line.