Kyoto Animation revealed a new “Meiji Era” commercial (CM), featuring scenes from their Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku unpublished work. The video, uploaded on the official KyoAni YouTube channel, has the slogan “moving towards the future” in the description.
The Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku (20th Century Electricity Catalog) novel won an honorable mention in the full-length novel category at the 8th Kyoto Animation Awards in 2017, and its anime adaptation was announced a year later. However, after the arson attack in 2019, the status of the project became unknown. KyoAni turned the work done so far into a short CM:
Tatsuya Ishihara (Dragon Maid S) directed the KyoAni CM and did the storyboard, while Aya Hikita did character designs. In addition, Hikita was also an animation director for the short.
Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku’s plot is set in the Meiji era, more precisely in 1907. A 15-year-old Inako Momokawa lives with her family near Kyoto, but her father is not very pleasant. One day she meets Kihachi, a free-spirited scientist who doesn’t believe in things he can’t see. He denies gods and awaits the upcoming “time of electricity”.
However, Inako’s father decides it’s time for her to marry. She begins to accept her fate, but Kihachi encourages her to run away with him. He plans to find a strange book about electricity, that he wrote as a child. His brother took the book, so he and Inako now must run all over Kyoto to find it. What secrets does the book hold?
There is still no information about the potential full adaptation of the story. However, KyoAni is slowly making a comeback and indeed “moving towards the future”. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S, which is their first TV anime project since the attack, is airing this season.
Source: Official Website, Nijuuseiki Denki Mokuroku Website
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