Bandai Namco Celebrate 35th anniversary Arts Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise
Bandai Namco Arts announced on Monday that it is producing a 4K remaster of the Royal Space Force – The Wings of Honnêamise film, with original director Hiroyuki Yamaga overseeing the remaster process derived from an original 35mm master print. The remaster will have a revival theatrical screening at an as-yet unrevealed date, which will feature the original 1987 audio track.
Bandai Namco Arts made the announcement on March 14, 2022, on the exact day of the 35th anniversary of the film’s Japanese premiere.
35 years ago today, on March 14, 1987, Gainax and Bandai’s first original anime feature film, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise was released in Japan. The film was written/directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga and created by many other top creators, including Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and Shinji Higuchi, with music by the Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The 1987 film served as legendary anime studio GAINAX‘s first full-fledged anime production. The film follows Shirotsugh Lhadatt, an astronaut candidate for the world’s first manned spaceflight program. Shirotsugh belongs to a small group that wants to use technology to move mankind into the future and into space amidst two rivaling entities, the Kingdom of Honneamise and The Republic, who are on the verge of all-out war.
Gainax co-founder Yamaga directed and wrote the film. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion) created the character designs. The film also helped elevate the careers of other directors such as Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Mahiro Maeda, and Ichiro Itano.
Though the film premiered in March 1987 in Japan, the film had its initial premiere in Los Angeles a month earlier with the title Star Quest, featuring an English dub by Go East Productions. The film has been released in English multiple times by many publishers, and Maiden Japan most recently released the film on Blu-ray Disc in June 2019.
Gainax began plans for a sequel titled Uru in Blue in 1992 with Anno, Yamaga, and Sadamoto on board. The project was suspended the following year, with revivals announced in 1998, 2001, and 2013. In 2014, Yamaga announced that the film was slated for 2018. A preview short titled “Overture” was slated for 2014, delayed to 2015, and has yet to debut. Yamaga announced in June 2017 that Gainax had begun production on the anime that same month. In 2018, studio Gaina (formerly Fukushima Gainax) announced that it is taking over the production for the project, with a planned 2022 release.
