Review of Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Main This is a real treat for people who are into vintage anime! Wings of Honneamise [WoH] is very much like a Miyazawa anime [Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Castle] except instead of dealing with fantasy WoH is sci-fi. Art-Style I love the art style, the animation and the character designs. I have the lower-grade fansub version and I know that WoH was just released in Hi-Def and Blu-Ray so I can only imagine how awesome it looks now! But in all honesty, as with Akira, I don't think you would have been able to tell this show was from the 80's wereit not for the music score or some of the tell-tale character designs but animation-wise you would not be able to tell. The animation was not jumpy and there was no looping or any of those tricks. I think the best moment in art and animation culminates at the final launch scene, which was a very beautiful scene! This being a sci-fi anime.

you will see a lot of machines and technology but it's no Robotech, Transformers or Gundam, there is no transforming into humanoid looking mecha or any of that and that's why I really liked this show. I love Robotech and Gundam Seed but after a while everyone tries to be like those shows and originality goes though the door, everyone tries to deliver the sleekest, newest, "fantabulously" awe-inspiring mecha......boring! Honneamise pays homage to old-school technology by looking backwards and gives you realistic machines with all the metal, smoke and cabling that goes along with it not to mention the bulky flight suits....a little less glamorous but awe-inspiring art nonetheless.

Sound
If you are as old as I am, I think you will say that the ending is probably the most memorable thing when it comes to the music....which sounded like Nu Shooz's “I can't wait” And that is why I say the music gives it away as an older anime. The opening theme was actually not that bad it was a dramatic piano composition, which didn't sound too dated at all.

I watched this show in English and it was very good voice acting on the English side, this was probably supposed to have been for theatrical release or something.

Story
The story is a very subtle one. In the beginning there may not even seem to be a point to it all......and maybe there still isn't! But the moral of the story from what I've gathered is probably about self-awareness. Honneamise starts out small about an introspective and possibly lonely young man who thinks about the insignificant mediocrity of his life and from there it slowly progresses into something of a much grander scale: the science of man. The progression of a country, the conscience of mankind, mankind's place in the world and then our world's place in the universe. So it's about awareness but not only awareness it's also about perspective, personal drives and ambitions.

There is also a lot of God-talk, which at first made me apprehensive because it started with the female lead and that little kid always praying and stuff and then it seemed to be contagious because now the main guy was praying all the time.....and I thought “oh gawd, what have I gotten myself into?” But it's all good and it does seem to serve to add another layer to the story and further accentuates the perspectives between the characters and even the main guy's perspective in this cosmos.

Cast/Characters
As I said before, I loved the character designs they looked very unique. A lot if not most of them are drawn with a high forehead and more realistic chins and jaw lines. Some were more pronounced and squarish and others were softer and rounded. There were also a lot of variations of realistic looking noses instead of just the hint of a line and some shadow.

This is just my opinion, but I think that sometimes it's important to have characters look like us so that we can have that human connection with the character, sometimes when the characters are too stylized or glamorized we lose that bond and are no longer able to empathize with them. These characters looked human both in face and body styles. I also think a lot of work was done with wardrobe and set design and you did get the feel of being in another world, place and time. I especially liked the official military dress clothes which was very colorful and unique it did not look like it was borrowed from any other actual culture, I'm always impressed by these types of originality.

Worth it or NOT?
Again I think this would be a real treat for anyone who's into vintage anime or perhaps an anime sci-fi aficionado. Or maybe even if you are looking for something that not super fantastic or filled with mecha or you have watched all of Hayao Miyazawa's anime and you want to see more stuff like that. There are many reasons to watch this show, either way I don't think you'll be unhappy with this choice.....especially if you have the HD/BluRay version.