Movies - Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

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	Movies - Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

is the first feature-length anime movie produced by Gainax. Directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga, and with a budget of 800 million yen, this 1987 film was one of the most expensive works of anime ever produced, yet did not do well when initially released to theaters.

Story

The story is set in a world similar to our own, but with 1950s technology. Shirotsugh Lhadatt is an unmotivated young man who has drifted into his nation's lackadaisical space program. After the death of a fellow astronaut and a meeting with a religious young woman, Shiro volunteers to be the first person launched into space. His training as an astronaut parallels his coming of age, his surviving unreliable technology and assassination attempts, and war brewing with a neighboring nation.

Deconstruction

This film is constructed to tickle two fancies at once: the filmgoer's desire to be the first person in space (while still maintaining Japanese identifications), and to have that event produce a change in world history, even more than the commotion caused by Sputnik. Since it cannot be about a Japanese person being the first in space from this world, it is set in a world that continually references Japan.

The society is a constitutional monarchy whose royal family is shown sitting on the floor with back-support similar to a formal piece of Japanese furniture commonly used by those of the noble class. In fact, the word "Royal" in the title is the translation of the word Oritsu, which the film's chief saw on a teabag. He was delighted that he had found a word of dignity, without being a direct reference to the Emperor of Japan.

Politics within the hero's country have reference to the political in-fighting endemic to contemporary Japan. The word "Honneamise" in the title comes partly from the Japanese word "honne," meaning "unshared insider understanding" of a particular subject or topic. Specifically, the "Royal Space Force" is a half-hearted showpiece funded off-and-on by members of the royal family, and frequently manipulated by greater political circles. This makes the protagonist not an acclaimed test pilot with the eyes of the nation upon him, but someone with whom the average cinemagoer can relate. He does not need to begin with confidence and dedication, but can acquire these along the way. Even the emblem of the RSF is absolutely Japanese, based on the Zen design of the enso, a clockwise circle made with a brush, which starts with a circular blob at the top and isn't really closed. Here this is redoubled: an enso within an enso.

Everyday items were re-designed made to be distinctly different from the practices of this planet, especially those of the West, though nonetheless workable. The Chinese-like shoulder tie of the uniform exemplifies this, being a redesigned cotter pin. The protractor is concave and the bowls of the spoons triangular. The coins used are oblong rather than round. The aircraft Shiro trains on is quite like one of the last experimental fighters which the Japanese built in World War II, the Mitsubishi J7W Shinden. The rocket was a combination of the Soviet "R-7 Semyorka" used for Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz and the S-IVB stage of NASA's Saturn. Its engines are stated as being named after mythological sea monsters of that imaginary planet, just as the first major Japanese rocket was named "Kappa," after one in Japanese mythology that also happened to be the name of a letter in the Greek alphabet. The designers took Art Nouveau structures as their models sometimes. As the Japanese like to have a wide variety of supports for fences rather than mere rectilinear ones as Western countries do, this is in evidence even in such things as window frames. Not everything is different, though, as the bicycles look quite similar to what exists here on this world.

There are also interesting references in the particulars of the "bad guys." Their language is composed of phrases from various rural dialects of Japanese, while being recited by non-Japanese, to make it on the brink of difference and recognizability. And the uniforms of their troops have the collars from the Zeon forces of the first Gundam series.

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