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[personal profile] semperfiona
aka _Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise_

Yo, [livejournal.com profile] jingoro, I watched it. (Hee, when I bought the video the clerk said "Good movie!")

I don't know what to say. Some staggering animation art, but I'm not sure what I think of the story itself. I may have to watch it again a couple of times, maybe listening to the English soundtrack instead of concentrating on trying to understand the Japanese (and berating myself on only catching about 5 words out of 10). It also weirded me out that the characters and places had names that aren't even pronounceable in Japanese. For example, I kept trying to figure out how the translators had come by "Lhadatt" as a surname.


A young man named Shiro joins the Royal Space Force because he wants to fly planes, but his grades aren't good enough to get him into the Air Force. The Space Force turns out to be rather a boondoggle, or at least one man's delusion. Several men have died in his failed attempts to send someone into space. But they drill and train like any soldiers, although soldiers in the other forces consider them a joke.

Shiro meets a girl preacher--I forget her name--out trying to convert people. She gives him a tract with her address on it, and he goes to her house. She has a kid sister who always looks like a very angry boy, but claims that the sister has taken to him faster than to any other person. They have dinner together. She reads to him from the scripture (not the Bible, but something about fire with a similar weighty language). During this conversation she convinces him that being in the Space Force is a singular privilege because it could lead to peace for the world. He goes back feeling much better about his place in it.

Soon the Space Force general is again looking for volunteers for a manned flight. Shiro volunteers. Much training. Political forces are massing against the Space Force as a waste of money and time; simultaneously other countries are planning to steal the new rocket. I'm not sure whether they intend to start a war, but such is the result.

Shiro visits his girlfriend several times. She has lost her home and is living in a church. He tries to have sex with her--really more of an attempted rape--but when he tries to apologize to her, she apologizes to him for kicking him. I totally don't get the point of this part.

The Space Force members go to the launch site and plan to launch early to avoid the attack. But the attackers anticipate this and come early themselves. The authorities try to scrub the launch and evacuate the area. The Space Force refuses and goes through with the launch as battle breaks out around them.

Launch is successful, hurray hurray!

The End. So what does all of it signify? Am I impressed, or not? I don't know.
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