This one wraps around you like a blanket and then quietly refuses to let go. It opens on Hamtaro haunted by the same dream night after night, a princess hamster crying for help, and the genius is that he carries it into his waking hours the way a kid carries a bad dream to breakfast. Then Laura drops the news that the whole family is heading to her dad's hometown for the winter, and Maxwell does the most Maxwell thing possible: hauls out the Ham-Ham source book and starts reading up on ancient hamster history until the words Hamja Kingdom fall out of it. That's the whole engine. No stakes that hurt, no lesson that stings, just tiny animals treating a legend like a research project. Watch it when the world is loud. The snow, the book, the dream, all of it lands soft.
Hamtaro's nights are filled with a recurring dream in which a lovely princess hamster, crying, begs for his help. He cannot stop thinking about her, even when awake. One winter day Laura tells him the family is heading to her father's hometown, and when Hamtaro passes the news to his friends, Maxwell brings out a book of old hamster history. It describes Hamja Kingdom, a homeland for hamsters. By building a sand castle and reciting a spell word for word from the book, the Ham-Hams are swept away to the busy kingdom, where King Hamja, the Mini-Hams and the jar spirits called Mo-Hams greet them with a festive parade. The celebration ends when Sabakunya, a wicked magic cat riding the huge sheep monster Mee Mee, storms through the town. The Ham-Hams learn that Sabakunya has seized Princess Shera, the king's daughter, and plans to force her into marriage on Founding Day, while also scheming to take over the country. Realizing she is the princess from his dreams, Hamtaro heads into the castle with his friends in a comic fantasy adventure.
