But he also did character designs for Mamoru Hosoda's extremely well-received film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and also for Hosoda's follow-up, the recently-released anime film Summer Wars.
Comic Natalie reports that Sadamoto will be releasing a collection of his rough design sketches for the film on August 20th. For a mere ¥2415 ($25.39 USD, not including shipping of course), you can pick up a copy of the book, which reportedly contains all of the characters and settings from the film. (Or you can view a preview of the book.)
Of course, we have yet to hear any inklings of the movie making it to the west (though it only just opened in Japan on August 1st). I haven't heard as much buzz about it as I did for Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, but Bandai Entertainment's release for Hosoda's earlier film seems to have done okay (the theater I saw it in was decently full), so I'm crossing my fingers that Summer Wars gets a chance as well.
The story of Summer Wars, by the way, revolves around a boy named Kenji who gets a summer job at his crush's home helping out with her grandmother's 90th birthday-- and the job is to pretend to be the girl's fiance.
That may sound like just enough plot to get Owen Wilson attached to some terrible rom-com, but throw in a sci-fi twist: Kenji solves a strange math problem on his cell phone that results in a collision between Earth and a parallel universe. D'oh!
What do you think? Wanna see it?
Seriously, what?
I'm hoping NYAF might be able to slip this movie into their sked in September.