Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise

This movie is like a time portal, bringing you back to the days of Gainax before Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann , Before FLCL, and even before Neon Genesis Evangelion, back to 1987, when Gainax was still a fledgling corporation still struggling to make it in the emerging days of anime. After their first major debut work, "Otaku no Video" in 1985 and its sequel in 1986, comes the first full length movie to come out of the studio in 1987. Wings of Honneamise is a beautifully animated, 2 hour long movie that was and is hailed as a classic in the world of anime. Despite this, it is still largely unknown due to the more popular series that came out soon after such as "Gunbuster" and "The Secret of the Blue Water", which both experienced a great deal more of success.

The story starts with our protagonist, Shirotsugh Lhadatt, and his downhill life in the much maligned Japanese Space Force. The space force in the early parts of the movie is made up of nothing more than some lazy crew members and a few old men with seemingly hollow dreams and ideas about space. Shirotsugh ends up meeting a religious woman in town one day and developing a crush for her, which he pursues to varying degrees of success through the movie. In order to impress her, Shirotsugh voulenteers to be the first man to be put into orbit on an unmanned satellite, and while the movie had dragged for the last 30 minutes, it is at this point where it finally begins to take off, as he goes through rigorous training, gains national appeal and fame, and becomes involved with political scandal, and ends up finally having to realize who he really is.

The reason I even came across this movie is because it has been recently remastered and re released on Blu Ray in Japan, and if there's one word for it, it is "beautiful"Through the whole movie, everything you see is accompanied by beautiful landscapes, detailed action scenes and well drawn character models. If you would need a reference as to the style and amount of detail, the closest film that i can think of would have to be "Akira". Some of these scenes are so well done, i just paused the movie and stared for a minute before resuming the movie.

One thing i noticed as well was the distinct lack of sound effects due to the time when the film was made and the status of a production company doing something like this right out of the gate, it's not surprising that certain parts of production were cut back. The movie has a very basic and obvious theme, that applied more at the time in japan than it does now, but it can still be interpreted by all, which makes it very accessible.

The thing that makes this movie fairly inaccessible, however, and is most likely the reason that it did not do as well as the following endeavors by Gainax, is because of the pacing. When you're watching this, it will seem like the movie is over in the middle of the movie and before that, as well as sometimes after the middle, it just drags incessantly, and anyone who isn't conditioned to anime, I believe would have a hard time staying awake or staying focused on this entire movie.

Another thing to note is that this movie only has an end in the most basic of senses in that it completes the story. However, it doesn't resolve any of the questions or sub-points that the plot evokes throughout the movie. Instead, the last 5 minutes are a completely irrelevant acid trip that says nothing towards the rest of the movie. While many of these flaws are easily excused due to the conditions under which the movie was produced, i would really like to see Gainax go back and patch this one up.

My final thoughts on this are that you should give it a watch if you want to understand where anime was in the early days, and what founded a lot of what we have today.

EDIT: Also, for anyone who is thinking about watching this movie, while it is older, it is not family friendly, there is some brief violent nudity that is related to the story, but it's still there. So just fair warning for anyone who's gonna seek this one out.

This will most likely be my last review for about a week, but never fear, great things await!!!

~Black Macgyver~