Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise Review
I’ve joined Yukan Blog! and I’m thrilled to be writing for it. Here’s the rundown of Anime I’ve watched in this weekend:
R.O.D.: Read or Die OVA, Speed Racer (five episodes), Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise
All solid, classic Anime. Out of these three shows/films, I liked the Read or Die OVA and Wings of Honneamise the best, though Speed Racer had its moments.
I’ll start off my Yukan Blog! career with an examination of Wings of Honneamise:
Wings of Honneamise is a science fiction Anime film about the first man in space on a planet similar to our Earth. It is quite a good film, and delivers solid science and realistic plotline that so many science fiction Anime shows and films lack. HOWEVER! There is the issue of one thing in the movie that might be a bit confronting: Shiro, the main character and aspiring spaceman, attempts to rape Riquinni, a girl who hands out religious pamphlets, when she is getting undressed.
Now when you see it it’s a lot less horrifying than it sounds, because Shiro, although he tried to rape Riquinni, realises his error and stops when Riquinni tells him to, but she whacks him out cold in the process. As a result, Riquinni, due to her implied belief in “turn the other cheek”, feels guilty that she has hurt Shiro. Shiro on the other hand feels guilty because he tried to ravish her without her permission, and he feels awful and tries to explain the blame is on him. Nonetheless Riquinni hates the idea that she would hurt anyone, especially a friend.
It’s nowhere near as disturbing as say, Perfect Blue, but it raises some questions about the ethics of depicting rape in Anime. Here, Riquinni isn’t exploited at all, and Shiro isn’t glorified for performing this heinous act of violation, but instead of being depicted as horrifying it’s shown as more of a misunderstanding between them, both of them clearly have feelings for each other and are coming to terms with the awkwardness that results from this event. Shiro is probably inexperienced with women, and thus Riquinni, who is probably as inexperienced in romance and sex as he is, most likely appeals to him, but his way of expressing this attraction is unacceptable by moral standards, however both parties seem to be forgiving of each other completely, showing the message of forgiveness and understanding as a moral of the film. The aborted rape scene is not used by the director to titillate or otherwise pander to rape fantasy, but to illustrate how two characters come to terms with their relationship and the forgiveness required when the boundaries of morals and religious belief are crossed. Thus the message is “turn the other cheek” instead of “rape is acceptable”.
Other than this detail the film explores a lot of awe in reaching the stars, and standing up to those who say you’ll never get off the ground. I could go on here, but a I’ve already said quite a lot about this film in my original Wings of Honneamise review here:
Haha, YOU’RE FAST! XD
You know I’ve never heard of any of those anime, but you get an A+ anyways!
What? You’ve never heard of Speed Racer, R.O.D. OR Wings of Honneamise?
*faints* What DO you watch anyway?
I watch the new stuff … LOL!
I watch stuff that’s come out on DVD, because this is a less virusey way of obtaining Anime. No wonder you got a virus the other day!
LOLOL! Still~~~~~
Whoa, what happened to my post, it looks… half decent… How do I do this for my posts in future?
Haha I told you via email
Why would the rape scene be disturbing? I think it added to its flavour… I never really got the movie per se, but I certainly thought Perfect Blue was much more explicit and disturbing.
@ritchan:
I guess it’s because I’m just not used to that, that I found it so shocking that I would devote an entire analysis of the scene to my review. I don’t watch many Anime that have that sort of sexual violence in them, Perfect Blue was the only other example I’ve seen that had such content.
Keep in mind I grew up in a very sheltered environment, and I haven’t grown up with the grit and grime of the streets.
YOU GOT ANOTHER WRITER? AHAUWRHUWHUWRH I’M SO JEALOUS~ D:
That being said, I look forward to your entries, newgeekphilosopher. (Actually a better place to tell you this would be on your own blog. orz.)
Yes, I am a new writer for Yukan Blog, but I’m still going to post at my blog occasionally. blissmo poached me I guess.
WELCOME TO THE YUKAN CLUB! I am the ever-so-lazy blogger, aka, ALMIGHTY RULER OF THE TRUE YUKAN CLUB, midnightrose! Enjoy your stay, and watch out for my rare posts (which are mostly rants, not anime summaries).
I remember how my brother used to go crazy over speed racer and how he used to force me to watch it everytime T.T
Yoo newgeekphilosopher! I look forward to moar of your posts. (:
Now see this is a more interesting post than that Aussie propaganda crap.
The ethics of depicting rape are out of the question. It’s a space anime. Within the confines of our modern philosophical systems we define rape as wrong, but you didn’t even touch upon the cultural relativism aspect of it. Would Machiavelli think rape is wrong? As long as it gets us further to our goals its okay by thousands of past cultures.
As far as depicting rape in anime I believe its fine, because this is not real life. Rape is wrong to me, but as far as the context of the story and building of the plot, those are more important than fretting about whether rape is immoral or not.
That last little thought you threw in there really stuck with me though that last little mini paragraph was worth more than the rest of this whole post.
Change makes either gold or silver overvalued. ,
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