The Wings of Honneamise
A sophisticated, science fiction allegory about a fictional Earth's first astronaut, used as a narrative device to examine human nature and its history? No moe girls talking about hard work and guts? No mecha doing cool poses while the pilot screams? No space aliens with crazy designs trying to kill everyone? Morally ambiguous characters everywhere? An extremely uncomfortable "romance"? Religion?
It's almost like Gainax didn't care about making money.
RIP Good Gainax, 1987
In all seriousness, it was a very impressive film. It bears the kind of dedication to storytelling you rarely see in anime(certainly not from Gainax afterwards), in that it's actually attempting to portray a serious story, with believable and human characters. You could even call it deep, without the sarcasm normally applied to anime's attempts at philosophical narratives. You can tell that Gainax put just as much effort into the script and the characters, and the world-building, that they did the animation. Which is of course gorgeous.
The movie demonstrates the beautiful marriage possible between visuals and story. Every shot, every design, every keyframe is dedicated to developing the characters and/or the incredible world they inhabit. I would be remiss to not especially point out the work they put into the alternate Earth they created, with its own history and nations. Everything references our world without being a lazy copy of any specific culture. They even came up with an original numeric system.
The animation is great, as are the backgrounds. Also, this might be the pinnacle of Gainax's mechanical designs and animation. All of the stuff with the rockets floored me in how it paid homage to real designs while maintaining a unique identity.
If there's one thing to criticize, I don't think the music/sound design was always the best.
Really though, dem backgrounds:
Very likely the most commendable thing Gainax has done. It has style AND substance.
