Nutcracker Fantasy

Nutcracker Fantasy (くるみ割り人形, Kurumiwari Ningyō; lit. 'The Nutcracker') is a Japanese-American stop motion animated film produced by Sanrio, very loosely based on Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It is directed by Takeo Nakamura and written by Shintaro Tsuji, Eugene A. Fournier and Thomas Joachim. It was officially released in Japan on March 3, 1979 and later in the United States on July 6, 1979. The film was nominated for the 1980 Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Motion Picture featuring youth and won the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Musical Entertainment.

Nutcracker Fantasy was the first stop-motion project by Sanrio. The film's overall animation style is reminiscent of all the original Rankin/Bass "Animagic" productions, shot at Tadahito Mochinaga's MOM Production (later renamed Video Tokyo Production) in which Nakamura had previously worked for. A remastered version of the film was announced by Sanrio, with an advanced screening at the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival on October 29, 2014 and released formally in theaters on November 29, 2014 as part of Hello Kitty's 40th anniversary given the character makes a cameo appearance during the climactic musical fantasy sequence.