The first film from the Gainax studio features a nobody as the hero—a nobody who makes you look through the sky, past the weather, and into what is possible.
—Patrick Drazen
Wings of Honneamise’s protagonist, Shirotsugh (Shiro) Lhadatt, does not even vaguely resemble the standard sci-fi anime hero—if the phrase is taken to designate, as it frequently is, a valiant soul abetted by either material or mental superpowers. In fact, Shiro is a quintessentially average young man who, having aspired to fulfill his childhood fantasy of flying by joining the Honneamano Navy but having failed to obtain the required grades, has ended up joining the Royal Space Force instead. Regrettably, this organization turns out to amount to little more than a dolefully underfunded group of elderly rocket scientists, dropouts and lazy young recruits, fabricated as a publicity stunt and diplomatic pawn by the royal family and by the government. As it happens, nobody has ever even made it into space and the technology necessary to achieve this feat is far from realization. Shiro’s life in the Royal Space Force is riddled with humiliations, repetitively useless chores and debilitating forays into a vapid pleasure industry, which unsurprisingly plunge him into apathetic inertia.
His attitude changes drastically upon meeting the idealistic young missionary Riquinni Nondelaiko, the first person he has ever come across to react enthusiastically to the notion of space travel. He thereby transcends his existential malaise, is able to rekindle the dormant embers of ambition in his spirit, and commits himself passionately to the attainment of the Force’s putative objective by becoming indeed the first man in space. It is also noteworthy, even though autobiographical concerns do not come explicitly into play in Wings of Honneamise, that director Hiroyuki Yamaga was only twenty-four years old at the time he embarked upon the execution of this epoch-making cinematic extravaganza, and that his task therefore amounted to a bold excursion into the virtually unknown comparable to Shiro’s own venture.
Shiro’s fascination with Riquinni is not wholly Platonic, however, and much as he endeavors to sublimate his libido to loftier values, there comes a point when his instincts gain the upper hand and he attempts to force the young woman into sexual intercourse. Far from providing a slice of dubiously voyeuristic fan service, the scene plays an important role in Wings of Honneamise’s overall diegesis insofar as it serves to throw sharply into relief the clash between two incompatible worldviews: the earthbound hedonism of a frustrated and painfully human bloke, and the asceticism of a blindly devout foundationalist whose striving for otherworldliness is ultimately no less of a testament to her human limitations. Thus, the film is not merely a story about humankind’s ascent into space—it is also, no less importantly, a story about descent into the murky depths of characters that are both unsure about their future goals and haunted by a legacy of thwarted fantasies. These characters’ psychological and emotional turmoil is consistently conveyed, from a dramaturgical point of view, not only by conversations about daunting issues such as war, poverty, material and spiritual corruption and, ultimately, life itself but also, often more effectively, by frames in which dialogue is overtly marginalized. In such shots, the film opts for a deliberately low-key tone intensified by pregnant pauses and a focus on facial expressions that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.
The action follows the struggles of the Royal Space Force to launch Shiro into orbit amidst countless budget cuts and attempts on the prospective pilot’s life meant to sabotage the operation. What does not transpire until it is almost too late is that the military forces do not wish the project to succeed but rather intend to use the rocket as a means of provoking a neighboring kingdom into attacking them in order to capture the weapon, hence giving the Honneamano army itself a pretext to invade. Shiro’s ship, propelled just as the invad-ing army approaches the launch site, rises majestically above the conflict below into cosmic infinity. The launch scene is realistic, and indeed almost indistinguishable from live-action footage of actual sequences of its kind. Fieldwork conducted by the troupe at Cape Kennedy and the Air and Space Museum no doubt abetted the accomplishment of this visual feat. Vividly redolent of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the sequence powerfully intimates that space flight as conceived of in Wings of Honneamise does not merely constitute a physical journey but, more crucially, also a psychological odyssey of self-understanding and maturation.
Hand-drawn frame by frame, Wings of Honneamise is nonetheless technically innovative on numerous counts, enthroning Studio Gainax’s acclaimed preference for dizzying perspectives, bizarre camera angles, sensational backgrounds and, most memorably, meticulously executed montages of unparalleled complexity, particularly in the emphatically impressionistic sequence following Shiro’s launch into orbit. An elaborate sequence of images, beautifully painted by the fine artist Nobuyuki Ohnishi, is here used to evoke a recapitulation of the protagonist’s life as it flashes before his mind’s eye. This microcosmic dimension is then echoed by a macrocosmic series of pictures proposing in telescoped guise the growth of human civilization from prehistory through the industrial era to the age of flight. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s stylish soundtrack, combining electronic music and string melodies, evocatively enhances the action’s epic momentum without ever swamping its pathos. Wings of Honneamise’s employment of impressionistic drawings invested with painterly tactility foreshadows Gainax’s use of the same technique in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, most dramatically in the acherontic montages that fill the show’s pre-credit sequence.
Integrating numerous motifs typical of Japan’s traditional visual and performance arts (from the ink scroll and the ukiyo-e to Kabuki and Noh), the overtly hand-drawn images presented in Yamaga’s movie tenaciously abide in memory by virtue of their intensely artisanal feel. In this respect, they act as a prelude to a style to be subsequently developed by Gainax as one of the studio’s most distinctive trademarks. An unflinching passion for manually crafted visuals indeed permeates the company’s output across productions as diverse as Neon Genesis Evangelion and His and Her Circumstances, FLCL and Mahoromatic—Automatic Maiden, in spite of its progressive integration of state-of-the-art digital tools and techniques into the production process.
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s character designs, whilst unequivocally detailed in the rendition of both naturalistic and cartoony personae, are not undilutedly attractive—especially in comparison with the designs later executed by the same artist for Nadia and Evangelion. Snub noses and overelongated chins, for example, are not somatic traits to which seasoned anime lovers will automatically warm. The final character designs resulted from the director’s request for a markedly realistic style, while Sadamoto’s original drawings had been much more graceful (and much more to his own liking). This is confirmed by the concept art included in the “Art and Music” bonus on the Manga DVD, as well as the color plate portraying the film’s main characters presented in the artbook Der Mond. More importantly, however, deliberately uncomely character designs serve as iconographic clues to the moral baseness of Honneamano’s society. As “Scoot” maintains,
the entire cast is ugly. Racked with the cowardly, greedy vulgarities which make us human, they are a million miles away from the clean-cut, huge-eyed peacocks which preen and strut through the majority of modern productions. Here we see character development in a corporeal way: never do we resent the cast for thinking of themselves first—instead we relate to them, which in turn makes us care for them all the more, flaws and all [“Scoot”].
Often the costumes, more than the characters’ physiognomies themselves, succeed most eloquently in conveying both individual and group identities. In capitalizing on an inspired synthesis of traditional Eastern and Western fashions (including Chinese, Indian and Native American motifs), martial garb and civilian dress, muted and lurid palettes, fluid and stark lines, the costumes consistently communicate the impression that Honneamano is an alien culture and yet eerily similar to our own world. They do so not so much by recourse to explicitly outlandish stylistic markers as through the inclusion of subtly marginal oddities (asymmetrical suspenders and epaulets, for instance) or else of garments that appear to combine the attributes of disparate forms of attire from the actual world (e.g., collars and mantles, balaclavas and helmets, breeches and skirts).
Where the film unquestionably triumphs, at the level of art direction (a task undertaken by Hiromasa Ogura), is in the backgrounds representing both Nature and architecture. In an astoundingly elaborate world-building enterprise, every aspect of the film’s fictional culture is punctiliously crafted down to the most prosaic details: its language and alphabet, currency and units of measurement, popular games, funeral rites, drinking customs, cuisine, ticket-vending machines—the list could potentially stretch over several paragraphs. It is ultimately up to the individual spectator to take the time to explore the movie’s semiotic density and accordingly appreciate its simultaneous similarity to and departure from the actual world. As the AAW review of the film maintains, “at its heart this is a quiet movie for those with imagination, for people who see more than the simple hustle and bustle of the world around them, and who look for something bigger in life” (Marc 2003).
The gorgeously detailed artwork underpinning both the natural and the architectural backgrounds is studiously interwoven with the characters’ emotional struggles, whilst concurrently playing an instrumental role in the film’s seamless orchestration of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Moreover, Wings of Honneamise uses the popular elements of Art Deco—trapezoidal, zigzagged and tumbled shapes, as well as fractionated, crystalline and prismatic patterns—allied with sweeping curves that at times supplement and at other times supplant the more gently sinuous and whiplash lines, largely based on stylized organic forms, characteristic of Art Nouveau. The pervasive utilization of elements derived from Art Deco and Art Nouveau in the creation of vibrant urbanscapes replete with myriad ornamental fixtures evokes a relatively recognizable stylistic realm. However, the application of analogous motifs to the rendition of vehicles and assorted machinery causes Shiro’s world to often come across as tantalizingly uncanny. An ostensibly marginal but unforgettable touch consists of the design of the wiper arms for the local transport system (trolley convoys of sorts) in the shape of Art Deco “leaves” so delicately molded as to appear almost ethereal.1
Characterized throughout by curvilinear and undulating architectural structures, the city rises to the role of protagonist in several scenes. Its prominence is exuberantly proclaimed by a fanfare of roaring and rolling vehicles, a labyrinthine network of winding cobblestone alleys and meandering canals, and a veritable flurry of stairways, catwalks, gangways, archways, bridges, overpasses, funicular railways, battlements, domes, lobbies, pillars, wrought-iron railings, kiosks and food stalls, as well as a deluge of street signs, billboards and graffiti depicted in elegantly modulated hues. Specifically, technological aspects of each available scenario are conveyed with a cornucopian profusion of eagerly crafted details. At times, the machines exude an ominous sense of crushing gravity. At others, their exquisitely delineated contours recall the grace of filigree with its lace-like intertwined wires.
The oscillation of the two contrasting modalities of familiarity and estrangement at the level of style is mirrored by the film’s pace. Indeed, the action deftly alternates between sequences of effervescent dynamism (i.e., in its breakneck chases and in the more challenging aspects of Shiro’s training), and quieter moments devoted to the characters’ domestic contexts and daily routines, as well as to technical evaluations of the scientific project in hand. It would be preposterous to deny, however, that the film’s tempo occasionally flags to the point that the action would come across as excruciatingly ponderous were it not relieved by unflinchingly rich visuals. Aesthetically satisfying in the more intimate scenes, these rise to authentically sublime proportions in the representation of large-scale soaring vistas.
Most notably, Wings of Honneamise never tilts conclusively toward either the energetic or the meditative poles, maintaining throughout a delicate balance. The same could be said of its guiding message. At the same time as it contrasts generous idealism, on the one hand, and cynical rapaciousness, on the other, the movie intimates assiduously that the noblest of intentions are always in danger of degenerating into bigotry—and hence into no less blinkered a mentality than the one fostered by power-hungry politicians. This is patently borne out by the ill-defined—though seemingly staunch—spiritual goals pursued by Riquinni, whose philosophy often exudes adolescent fervor rather than mature conviction. Shiro is himself trapped in a thorny ethical dilemma. Whereas flying is his driving personal ambition, he is well aware of the iniquity poisoning the venture to which he has devoted himself and ill-disposed toward the government-led propaganda he is enjoined to fuel. When, at the end, he addresses humanity from orbit and messianically invites all people to pray and thank god for every step they take, it is also clear that he has not uncritically bought into the myth of space travel as a universal panacea. In fact, having alleged that warfare may be the result of humans feeling “confined,” and that by entering cosmic infinity, they might be able to transcend the dread of enclosure and the attendant drive to fight, he remains resolutely pragmatic. Hence, he is wise enough to point out that were more and more people to follow his first steps into space, they would soon begin to wreck it through selfishness and belligerence.
Additionally, as Shiro passionately asks whether anybody is listening to his exhortation, we are given precious little indication that this might indeed be the case. In fact, as his words recede into the background, the screen is filled by images of ordinary life on Earth portraying mindless and brawling humans utterly oblivious to any peace-promoting message. In this decidedly unpreachy and inconclusive finale, it is made patently clear that the world of Honneamano (like the real world itself) may be on the verge of realizing one of mankind’s grandest ambitions but is no less poised to face the possibility of utter annihilation by war.
An undisputed landmark in the evolution of space opera, Wings of Honneamise has inspired more or less directly numerous anime productions in later years. In its articulation of a whole mythology of cosmic exploration underpinned by meticulous world-building, Yamaga’s feature has indeed imprinted its vestigial signature even on explicitly futuristic worlds, which take the human colonization of distant galaxies for granted, in terms of tone if not in those of narrative development. A case in point is the television series Crest of the Stars (dir. Yasuchika Nagaoka, 1999), in which “United Mankind” wage war against the “Abh,” a race of aliens reminiscent of Tolkien’s Elves. Crest of the Stars does not bear any obvious plot connections with Wings of Honneamise, yet it echoes Yamaga’s movie in its ethical stance. The film, as shown, does not unproblematically enthrone the penetration—and possible domination—of space as a heroic quest guided by undilutedly noble principles. The finale makes this perfectly patent. In Crest of the Stars, similarly, the human race’s objectives are presented as dubious and as hampered by tunnel vision. Above all, the human characters appear incapable of conceiving the so-called enemy in any terms other than narrowly human ones. Driven by an eminently teleological notion of cosmic expansion as the guarantee of steady progression toward higher and higher ends, humans simply cannot grasp the Abh’s own worldview: as it happens, the alien race has no interest in dominance per se but actually regards the conquest of space purely as a means of gaining the freedom to roam it and to fathom its inexhaustible beauty. (The inappropriateness of judging non-humans by entirely human criteria is a theme that Gainax will revisit in greater depth, most notably in the Evangelion saga and in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.)
Traces of Wings of Honneamise’s take on the development of astronautical technology and its military utilization can also be detected in Shouji Kawamori’s Macross Plus—The Movie (1995)—a film that concurrently reverberates with Yamaga’s fascination with intensely painterly natural imagery whose pastoral charm stands in ironic contrast with the technological equipment’s sinister connotations. In the specific domain of natural backgrounds, one of Wings of Honneamise’s most worthy successors in recent years is undoubtedly the feature The Place Promised In Our Early Days (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2004). In this work, virtually each of the frames depicting the environment is so stylishly lit as to appear endowed with an inner glow. Undoubtedly, many art lovers—and not merely anime enthusiasts—would like to see a still of one such frame on their wall. A mysterious column soaring tens of miles into the sky (which eventually turns out to be a parallel-universe generator powered through the hypersophisticated application of quantum physics) supplies the concomitantly magnificent and forbidding catalyst around which the visuals cluster, spiral and scatter by turns—in much the same way as Shiro’s rocket provides an economically graphic pivot in Yamaga’s movie. It is also worth pointing out that The Place Promised In Our Early Days shares several typically Gainaxian preoccupations. Set in an alternate-history postwar Japan and chronicling the principal characters’ struggle to keep their teenage dreams alive, while both personal and collective crises insistently thrust them into a bleak adult reality, the film indeed provides an elegant interweaving of a solid sci-fi theme with an unsentimental exploration of convoluted psyches, tortuous relationships, unfulfilled promises and longings, and large-scale political intrigues.
Influential, yet still unique, Wings of Honneamise endures in anime history as a fascinating reinscription of classic science fiction into a story that some may regard as an adventure and others as a sermon but that ultimately stands out, first and foremost, as a grittily human and resolutely open-ended speculation on the engagement between man and machine. The spectacle it thereby offers, stark and serene by turns, resonates throughout with rhapsodic wonder at the mystery of the unfathomable beyond.