Review of Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Royal Space Force is one of the most unique animes I've ever seen. It's certainly flawed, and narratively it didn't really come together for me, but it has this outstanding quality as a pure creative endeavor that allowed me to enjoy it regardless. The art is just spectacular. The level of detail, vividness, and imagination is something rare and special. The strongest part of this movie, for me, was probably its visual design. How often do you get to see a unique and thoroughly imagined alternate world portrayed so faithfully? I wish the story had told us more about that world. Unfortunately, most things are leftfairly vague and unexplored. There's a lot of untapped potential here. Longform storytelling is hard, and I think this film would have been much more effective as a short, rather than a feature-length.

The relationship between the two main characters has some interesting subtlety, but is never really explored, like pretty much all the characters themselves. I was disappointed by how distant all the people in this film felt. I had a hard time relating to anyone, and never felt like I really knew or understood anyone's motivations. For a film going for more of a serious and philosophical tone, this seemed like a big oversight. The philosophy itself was presented in a fairly ham-fisted way, as well. It would have been more compelling if they could have illustrated their points more, instead of having characters yak about them. Oh well.

One other lacking aspect was the music. Loud, clunky synthesizers drag down otherwise perfectly fine moments, or create a confusing tone. One thing that puzzled me about this film is the tone itself -- I wasn't ever sure how I was supposed to be feeling at a given point in the story. Some scenes seem to be a weird mashup of screwball comedy and serious drama. A strong feeling of ennui pervades Royal Space Force, dampening the enthusiasm and fighting spirit that might otherwise shine through in a film about an underdog space program. Perhaps I'm missing the point of what they were going for, but I just had a hard time figuring out what exactly that point was, aside from the obvious: war is bad, humans have the capacity for evil, human priorities are often inverted. These are fair points to explore, but this film just stays on the surface, and never really explores them, simply presents them over and over again.

I had a hard time figuring out how to rate this. I loved the visuals and the worldbuilding, and didn't like much else. But there's a certain je ne sais quoi to Royal Space Force -- you can feel the creative energy behind it, and the world is rendered so compellingly that it's a pleasure to exist in it, even if the story taking place there isn't that great. It's impressive as a feat of imagination, and it's also impressive considering the inexperience of GAINAX at the time. I don't think it really holds together as a story, but as a creative work, it's certainly something worth experiencing.