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10th One Piece Film, Summer Wars to Compete at Annecy

France's Annecy, the world's largest animation film festival, has announced on Wednesday that Munehisa Sakai's One Piece Film Strong World (pictured at right) and Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars (pictured below) will compete in the Feature Film category of the June 7-12 event. Unlike the nine previous One Piece films, original manga creator Eiichiro Oda had personally overseen the new film's production. Summer Wars is Mad House's latest award-winning film from the team behind The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, including screenwriter Satoko Okudera and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.

The festival will also screen Hideaki Anno's Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Ha), Sunao Katabuchi's Mai Mai Miracle, Takeshi Koike's Redline, and Rintaro's Yona Yona Penguin out of competition. Evangelion:2.0 is the second film in Anno and Khara's four-part theatrical remake of Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion television anime series. After directing Black Lagoon, Sunao adapted Nobuko Takagi's Mai Mai Miracle (Mai Mai Shinko to Sennen no Mahō) novel about a nine-year girl and a new transfer student embarking on a magical adventure.

Mad House's Redline film, which follows the deadliest car-racing game in the world, was supposed to compete in last year's Annecy, but production delays led to its release this year. Mad House also produced Yona Yona Penguin, an adventure story in which a penguin-cosplaying girl named Coco gets sucked into a fantasy world — which is populated by goblins who believe that their savior will be a penguin.

Annecy had already announced in March the animated works that it will screen in the other categories besides the Feature Film ones.

Images © Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha, Fuji TV, Toei Animation
© A-1 Pictures