 By borrowing elements from Hans Christian Andersen, Jonathan Swift and science fiction, it was hoped that this film would attract a large international audience.However it proved to be no more popular than Toei's previous, Asian-themed films.After the failure in the U.S. of this and Toei's previous animated feature, this was the last Japanese animated feature to be released in the United States for over a decade, until Sanrio's "Metamorphoses" and "The Mouse and His Child", both of which were released in the U.S. in 1978.