#the wings of honneamise

[filmreel]

ROYAL SPACE FORCE - THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE ‘王立宇宙軍 オネアミスの翼’ dir. Hiroyuki Yamaga

[omercifulheaves]

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987) Laser Disc art

[animenostalgia]

Some sad news to share - Iconic musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto has passed away at the age of 71. While he’s probably much more famous for being a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and for his many movie soundtrack compositions, he also did compose for anime from time to time. Some of his biggest anime works include The Wings of Honneamise, the Appleseed films, and he even has music in the new Urusei Yatsura reboot. He also composed for the American 1987 movie The Last Emperor, which he won an Oscar for. RIP to an unforgettable musical talent. 

[randomrichards]

ROYAL SPACE FORCE: THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE

Dimbulb astronaut

Long journey to space mission

Learns about living

[the-world-annealing]

Watching The Wings of Honneamise on a crappy nineties recording (because it's the one they have on the IA) and they kept in the previews to the localizer's other movies, all three of which seemed to have the gimmick of 'cops but X' (cops but in mechs! cops but in tanks! cops but one's a woman!), what's up with that.

Like, I assume it has something to do with the 80s/90s crime wave, but in what way? Selection effects on the publisher's end or Japanese movie trends mirroring USA ones even if they lack the same root causes?

[dailyworldcinema]

ROYAL SPACE FORCE - THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE ‘王立宇宙軍 オネアミスの翼’ dir. Hiroyuki Yamaga

[videoclubs]

ROYAL SPACE FORCE - THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE ‘王立宇宙軍 オネアミスの翼’ dir. Hiroyuki Yamaga

[getamovieon]

[otomokatsuhiro]

[roseillith]

[animations-daily]

[s-pyder]

🕷️Wings of Honneamise, 1987🕷️

[canmom]

Animation Night 168: when Anno was young...

Animation Night has been getting kind of short lately, huh? Gone are the days when we'd marathon three films in a night... for now. Next week is Animation Night 169, and @mogsk has been helping me cook up quite a program to act as a sequel to Animation Night 69. It's time to find out just how much Twitch will let me get away with.

But what about tonight? Well, tonight I figure since we've been talking about Anno this week, it might be fun to put a short program together to show some of his earlier works - as an animator. Truly long-time viewers might remember watching Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise and Gunbuster all the way back on Animation Night 29. But this isn't exactly a reprise of that. We'll revisit Gunbuster on another day. Tonight the subject will be Metal Skin Panic: Madox-01 and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise.

So here's a brief timeline (largely leaning on SteveM's video here lol). Anno's work on the Daicon III film got him a foot in the door in the industry by impressing Studio Nue enough to invite the Daicon III team to work on Macross. Nue were also in large part fans turned animators, many of them Gundam doujinshi artists. Anno joined what became known as the 'mecha unit' at Artland, working alongside the legendary Ichirō Itano - where he was known for walking around barefoot and talking loudly to himself. A couple of years after Daicon III, the Daicon team reassembled to create a followup film, a lavish effort packed with a ludicrous density of pop-culture references.

Not long after this... Anno dropped out of university, and started bouncing between animation studios in Tokyo. The next big break came when he applied to work on Miyazaki's Nausicaa, a production which was rapidly transforming the outsourcing-oriented studio Topcraft into a gathering of some of the best animators in the business. At Topcraft, Anno's reputation was 'the primal man', sleeping under his desk with the cockroaches and not wearing shoes. But despite his inexperience, he made a good impression on Miyazaki, who assigned him the crucial finale cuts of the God Warrior.

Here we see what is sometimes called the 'Anno explosion', where the laser sweeps across and a massive explosion follows after a beat. Anno was able to handle the complex shading and multiple layers with aplomb...

...if not entirely on schedule. (One anecdote has that he tried to use his work on this sequence to pick up women. Which, to be fair...)

So in the mid 80s, Anno has established himself as a skilled mecha animator who can handle some ludicrously technical scenes. Besides Nausicaa and Macross, you will see him in Megazone 23 Part I, Giant Robo: The Animation, Baoh, Birth - and even Grave of the Fireflies. Any time you wanted mechanical animation or explosions, Anno was definitely a guy to get on the phone. And of course one of his most significant projects was on SDF Macross: Do You Remember Love? where he animated... you guessed it, lots of missiles and explosions.

With all this experience under his belt, Anno was almost ready to return to the newly founded Gainax - what had been Daicon Film. But first - lets check out Metal Skin Panic! MADOX-01. This OVA, made at AIC and Artmic - who made so many of the classic OVAs from this period, it's nuts - was the directorial debut of Shinji Aramaki, whose later CG films we covered back on Animation Night 152. Even back in 1987, Aramaki's love of intricate mechanical detail was on full display - and luckily Anno was on hand to make that vision work, along with the even younger 14-year-old prodigy Kōji Akimoto. (I'm not entirely sure what became of Akimoto. He only has one other anime credit, much later.)

Anno's scenes here prefigure the later similar hyper-detailed mechanical animation in works like Patlabor 2. But what's this OVA actually about? Well, it's a pretty simple story: a mechanic gets trapped inside a mecha suit, and accidentally ends up on a rampage as he's chased by the military (remind you of Roujin Z? or Stink Bomb in Memories?), hoping to unite with his girlfriend Shiori. Ultimately he ends up in a confrontation with an American soldier Lieutenant Kilgore. They fight! Really, we're here for the animation.

So, that brings us to Royal Space Force. The origin is kinda messy. To make a long story short, Daicon Film approached Bandai, hoping to make an OVA based on new Gundam kits. Bandai (and more specifically Shigeru Watanabe) said no to Gundam, but they were interested in this idea for a scifi OVA - and they'd drop them a cool three and a half million dollars to make a film to rival Nausicaa. (Apparently Mamoru Oshii's approval played a big part in that).

So Royal Space Force, what a film. There truly isn't anything quite like it, either in Gainax's oeuvre or anime at large. The closest thing I could compare it to might be the near-future anime series Planetes, which similarly focuses on realistic spaceflight in the context of war and geopolitics - but the tone of these two stories is markedly different. Of all things, it actually most makes me think of the works of Le Guin.

Honneamise is set on a fictional world vaguely resembling eartly 20th Century Earth, in which a country embroiled in war is putting together its world's first, threadbare space programme. It follows aspiring astronaut Shirotsugh Ladatt, who missed his chance to be a pilot and ended up in the sideshow space programme. But he meets a religious girl named Riquinni Nonderaiko who convinces him of the potential of spaceflight in bringing peace to the world.

But this idealism clashes with the reality of a world where the space programme is viewed cynically, a means to an end, with protestors questioning the cost of it and the higherups seeing the rocket launch merely as a means to set up an ambush against their enemies. Shirotsugh increasingly doubts whether the space programme is worthwhile at all. And he himself is definitely not a fully sympathetic protagonist; in one particularly uncomfortable scene he attempts to rape Riquinni (which in its framing reminds me of a similar moment with Shevek in The Dispossessed).

The film is as much as anything an insane work of worldbuilding, full of constructed cultures and small details that sit just a little askew of Earth while still feeling incredibly grounded. The animation in this film is fucking insane - not just Anno's incredible rocket launch and flight sequences, based on a research trip to the States where he watched the Shuttle go up for real - but throughout, in its character animation, it anticipates the 90s 'realist' approach to stylisation. It's just full of loving detail, wordlessly conveying so much about its setting.

Of course, such an ambitious film faced a troubled production. Between the inexperience of Daicon Film Gainax and the difference between what this film was going for and what everything else was going for, and production meddling... it was a mess. Big name composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was pulled in to score the film, won over by its storyboards, but ended up clashing over the timing of scenes, and in the end his score was chopped up and rearranged.

And for their part, Bandai started getting antsy and attempted to impose changes, like insisting on tacking on the subtitle 'The Wings of Honneamise'. They wanted to cut the runtime, cut elements that didn't have toy potential, and so on. They wanted something that would sell toys... and got a deliberately slow, moody art film that leans heavily on nonverbal storytelling.

So it's a weird one... and it didn't sell in its theatrical run. But you know, all those elements that made it a hard sell at first are a perfect recipe for 'cult classic', and for that reason, Honneamise is still remembered today.

In any case, back to Anno. He delivered the most impressive animation of his career. The rocket launch in meticulous detail of course, but equally scenes of planes to rival any in Miyazaki's films (or The Cockpit [AN146]). Of course, he didn't carry it alone! The great realist Toshiyuki Inoue, who'd later be famous for his work at Production I.G. such as Ghost in the Shell, was on it, working for example on astonishingly busy crowd scenes which apparently took a full month to animate. And animators like Fumio Iida, Nobuteru Yuki and Noriasu Yamauchi, brought some of the best work they'd ever done.

All in all, there's nothing quite like Royal Space Force, before or since. So I'm really looking forward to seeing it again.

Animation Night 168 will go live shortly; films will begin at 11pm UK time and continue to about 2am UK time. (Apologies it's so late once more, my sleep is proving troublesome to shift.) We will as usual be at twitch.tv/canmom. I hope to see you there, it's gonna be a real sakuga feast tonight!!

[homogrimoire]

My submission for David for DbD's cosmetic contest! I'm not much of an artist, but i wanted to show him some love. Plus, this man needs some more pink/red in his wardrobe. Here's the description I wrote up for it and some more fum facts if you'd like:

David King: King of Roses

Once prosperous, New Moon Roses are now but an image in a passing memory. Until now.

Head - Parasite

Near a death, the last remnant of original power took root in King, granting him elevated vitality and virility. Unfortunately, its power, even with a host, is not enough to defy the usurper. Or so it seems. The rose in his right eye and his memories will not disappear, even upon “revival.”

Torso - Rubedo

Roses also bloomed sparsely across his body and on his tattoo. Not painful, only itching sometimes. It hardly compares to the weight of remembrance, but knowing has changed him for the better. His clothing is from a lost world, one watched by the New Moon Rose.

Legs - Vox

In addition to elevated virility and vitality, his voice held a certain sway to it. It wasn't noticeable at first, subtle. Despite the many advantages it offers, King hates the control it can exert over his friends. David theorizes String Theory is at play, the sound waves of his voice affecting everything around him.

The headpeice being titled Parasite is a reference to Zero from Drakengard 3, who had The Flower parasite take root in her eye when she died, reviving her and granting her a great and terrible power

The body piece is titled Rubedo, Reddening in latin. It is the final step in the alchemical process to obtaining a philosopher's stone. represented by things such as a rose or a crowned king, and blood. [if i started this sooner, i would've given david a crown, since his last name is king, buuut i started this late and am also, once again, not much of an artist.] In psychology, rubedo is basically a unification of the self and the ego, creating a new personality, creating wholeness within a person, allowing them to see their true nature and resolve inner conflict.

The colors of the other roses also match the other alchemical processes in creating a philosopher's stone: the light creme for albedo, whitening, the darker deep red for nigredo, blackening, and the (yellowish) orange for citrinitas, yellowing.

The world refrenced in this part doesn't actually relate to any world in dbd canon. Though, i did base the design of the clothing and inspired the patters from the movie Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise because I wanted an otherworldly but still distinctly human look. Some inspiration is also taken from Keith Haring, a gay artist you may be familiar with.

Vox is latin for Voice. The legs aren't the best place for this title, but this is about lore more than anything lol. This is about refrence to Zero, the flower turning her into an Intoner, a "human", technically a zombie now, with powerful magic, and access to the most powerful form of magic, Song.

Lastly, since i love doing perk concepts, here's one for this outfit: Blood Tone

Blood Tone - Your gunts of pain are 100% louder. Pools of blood are brighter for you, and remain visible for an extra 3 seconds. For the next 45 seconds after you scream, or if your grunts of pain are audible, the following activates: Allies recover from negative effects 10% slower. Pools of blood within 24 meters of you grants 5% haste while not in chase, 5% for 5 seconds once every 30 seconds in chase, and recharge items by 5% for each second near a pool of blood.

[anarchic-miscellany]

The DVD release of the important, ground-breaking, seminal classic "Wings of Honneamise" is rated 15. The VHS version of the same film (which I own) is PG. The former retains the out of place attempted sexual assault by the main character; which completely throws the tone out of sync, goes against the hopeful, skyward bound message and mankind reaching beyond petty grievances. It genuinely takes the movie from a 5 star to a 3. The version without the scene loses nothing, and in fact remains a soaring, wonderful exploration of class, hope, science, faith and reaching for the stars. I believe that the streaming versions of the film (because until maybe the last 5 years it was an ASSHOLE to get anywhere) use the DVD rapey version

Protect physical media, guys.