The Wings of Honneamise

1987. Movie. 120 min. Science fiction/drama. dir Hiroyuki Yamaga. scr Hiroyuki Yamaga. mus Ryuichi Sakamoto. des Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Hiromasa Ogura. -bc

Bankrolled by Bandai, this was the first major production from fan-created animation studio Gainax. The story of a young cadet on a retro alternate universe Earth who volunteers to pilot the first manned flight into space, it represents a triumph of production design over narrative, with an entire imagined society making quite a clever spectacle.

In the monarchy of Honneamise on an alternate history Earth, set at a time vaguely paralleling the 1950s, young Shiro is a cadet whose grades aren’t good enough to get him into the navy, where he dreams of piloting fighter jets, so he is assigned to the Royal Space Force. He is startled to find a bureaucratic boondoggle with no real long-term vision and a corps made up of unmotivated misfits. When the first manned flight into space is announced and seeks a pilot, Shiro volunteers, to the derision of his fellow cadets. Shiro trains diligently, not knowing that the flight is to be staged near the border with a country occupied by a hostile rival, Ramada, and set up strictly as a provocation to get Ramada to invade. Shiro participates in a public media campaign and becomes something of a national hero, despite protests by radicals and factions in the government which oppose devoting precious funds to a space flight that appears to have no military purpose.

Shiro meets a poor girl, Riquinni, handing out religious pamphlets at a train terminal, and soon takes her and her little sister, Manna, under his wing. He hopes for a relationship, but she is too preoccupied with her proselytizing to recognize his attentions for what they are. At some point, the pressures of being a public figure get to him and he goes AWOL, staying with Riquinni for a few days. One night, he loses control and tries to rape her. She screams and uses a heavy candle-holder to knock him out. In the morning he apologizes for his actions and she apologizes profusely for hitting him, and no more is said on the subject.

The commander of the Space Force, angered at the government’s decision to stage the rocket flight so close to a hostile force, decides to secretly move up the flight time in anticipation of a planned invasion. As the countdown starts, enemy troops invade and the Royal Army sends orders to stop the launch. . . .

The film’s great strength is in its design, both of the characters and in the construction of an entire fictional society. The monarchy of Honneamise seems to have one foot in a traditional feudal world, with uniforms and ceremonial costumes that are holdovers from ancient eras, and the other foot in modern industrial society, circa 1950. News is broadcast over TV sets that look like the earliest models, and in movie theaters where newsreels are still shown. The propeller-driven planes are from an earlier era of aviation. The designers at Gainax clearly had a field day reimagining all kinds of aspects of this new look at an old society, from the public spaces where the characters mill about to the ornate decor in the interiors of government buildings to the tattered, crumbling headquarters of the Space Force to the oddly shaped abandoned church where Ri­quinni takes up residence. The clothes people wear are wildly different from the conventional fashions you would normally find in such a story. One’s attention can be devoted for the entire length of the film to simply scrutinizing all the background details.

A great deal of time was spent on character design, which supplies everyone, including the smallest bit characters, with a distinct, recognizable set of features. The most notable creation is Riquinni, an exceedingly dour young girl who may not seem like the most obvious object of attraction for a strapping young space cadet (and budding national hero) like Shiro. She’s a bit of a fanatic and a little on the neurotic side, and drawn in a fashion that completely defies one’s expectations of anime heroines; she is skinny, flat-chested, and plain-looking, yet she’s real. We can see in her face and expressions all of her hard experiences and gritty determination. She gives the film its soul.

The Gainax creative team included such anime notables as director Hiroyuki Yamaga (Mahoromatic, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi); co-animation director Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion, His and Her Circumstances); art director Hiromasa Ogura (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell); and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, FLCL).

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto contributed music to one other anime movie, Appleseed (2004), but is better known for his scores for such live-action films as Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor, and Little Buddha.

The Wings of Honneamise is about a society’s difficulty in adapting to new ideas, but also about an unformed young man who suddenly finds himself thrust into history’s spotlight and how he adapts. The most intriguing aspect of the plot is the discovery that the government’s hidden motive in agreeing to fund the first flight into space is to provoke an enemy neighboring power and provide a pretext for war. Shiro, the naïve and idealistic young man who genuinely believes he’s doing something valuable for humankind, is merely a pawn. However, the film doesn’t spend too much time on these machinations, focusing instead on Shiro’s day-to-day activities, most of which are not terribly interesting. He’s a rather callow young man, surrounded by bored, unmotivated peers, and indifferent adults, and soon finds himself the subject of a manipulative PR campaign, which alienates him further. We never really find out what makes him tick or why he volunteered so readily. He’s no impassioned young aviator like Pazu from Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky.

Only in the scenes with Riquinni, the young evangelist, does Shiro come most to life as a complex, believable human being. While it may seem odd at first, he’s attracted to her partly because of her determination to spread her message in the face of overwhelming public indifference and partly because she seems so vulnerable. She also has a constant emergency supply of optimism that gets her through the tough grind of her daily existence. She’s warm to Shiro and welcomes him into her life, something no one else does, even though her motives do not mesh with his. He wants a romantic relationship while she wants a platonic friend who shares her religious commitment. She completely overlooks any sign of his true intent, and his frustration gets the best of him in a controversial scene where he tries to force himself on her, leading to a clout on the head that knocks him out and lets him know, definitively, that he’s gone too far. These are two people at cross-purposes and Shiro finally understands this, even though it took a reprehensible action on his part. This is complex, tricky human behavior at work and its presence gives the film a dramatic core that it might not otherwise have.

Popular musician Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the film’s score, which ranks with design as one of the film’s major selling points. Thanks to its mix of eclectic instrumentation, it sounds like music that could have come out of Honneamise itself and it matches the off-kilter look of much of the design. A coda to the story, an extended montage depicting the long struggle of human history, is underscored by an uninterrupted piece conveying the struggle musically, giving the film a dramatic impact on par with that of the story itself.

Honneamise is, at least partly, an impressive achievement and deserves admiration and respect, if not exactly love. It ends with Shiro’s message to the masses about the invisibility of borders when Earth is seen from space, a message that had already been drummed into audiences at the time from years of anti-nuke activities and the “Without Borders” organizations that had sprung up in the Reagan years.

Demon City Shinjuku (1988), from the same director and source writer, is not a sequel, but does offer a closely modeled follow-up.

In a rousing ending, Shiro sits in his capsule waiting for the launch to begin when word comes in that troops from Ramada have crossed the border into Honneamise. When the Royal Command orders the launch to abort, Shiro loudly insists to his Space Force ground control colleagues that the launch proceed, and he manages to convince them. As the rocket blasts off, the two battling armies stop dead in their tracks and look up in wonder.

Wings of Honneamise was the first animated feature by fledgling studio Gainax, made up of fans who had created short animation for sci-fi and comic conventions but hadn’t yet made a commercial production. Bankrolled by toymaker Bandai, Wings was the most expensive anime feature up to that time ($8 million). It was also that rare two-hour anime feature not based on an earlier source (novel, manga, or TV show). One of the film’s huge expenses was the fee (a reported $1 million) paid to composer Ryuichi Sakamoto for his score. Bandai wound up losing its money since the film was a notorious flop, but that didn’t stop other producers from making similar investments. The very next year, Akira would cost even more, and Gainax would go on to create Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, His and Her Circumstances, and FLCL, among many other high-profile productions.

violence Some violent death in final battle. profanity Profanity in the English dub. nudity Nudity and attempted rape in one scene.