Oh, the irony. The wonderful irony. The Wings of Honneamise is Gainax first major production. While I haven’t seen all of their works, I have seen quite a few, and I must say that Wings of Honneamise is Gainax’s only production without any reliance on moe-stereotypes, there’s hardly any useless or stupid fanservice, and it also has a pretty good chance to be one of their most down-to-earth work. I’m not certain whether one thing comes from the other, but for me, it also was among the best that the studio has ever shown me. Oh, the irony.

Basically, The Wings of Honneamse is about space-travel. Sending the first man into orbit, to be exact. The main character feels real and likable and not overly GAR for his own good. He’s pretty stupid at times as well, but make no mistake: the script is very clever at times. There’s lots of symbolism, and this is one movie that makes you think without trying to shove its message down your throat.

While it isn’t a comedy, there’s plenty enough to laugh at, and especially for major part of its airtime, this movie knows exactly when to be funny and when to be serious. The side-characters also do a wonderful job in supporting the main character. For a movie, there’s also a relatively large amount of character-development. Regarding the bad points, well, the creators seemed a bit too keen on making the climax as perfect as possible, and didn’t quite get it right. The result feels a bit weird, but by no means bad.

One thing that should be noted is that you do not want to go into this movie, expecting standard Gainax. This is absolutely nothing like their other works. The pacing is slow, the characters are nearly all adults and none feels out of place. There’s no outrageous animation and everything feels much more life-like. It’s a shame that Gainax went into such a different direction after making The Wings of Honneamise, as this movie is a pretty damn good one!

The original Sky Girls OVA was just a tasteless fanservice-fest. Needless to say that I wasn’t that keen on checking out the full-length-series for the concept. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the creators had no intention to make this end up as the failure that was the OVA. Sky Girls is definitely one of the surprises of 2007.

The show does have its issues in the beginning, though. In the first half, it just doesn’t succeed in making its setting believable. A giant war against invaders called WORMs in the past caused a lot of deaths, especially for adults, so because of that under-aged children have been allowed to join the military as well. Fair enough, though at the same time you see enough fully grown males parade the screen as mechanics and other similar jobs. You’d wonder why they didn’t do the piloting as well, as the bodies of young girls just can’t take that much strain when compared to fully grown adults.

The world was also supposed to have been nuked years ago, in an attempt to get rid of the WORMs, and again we hardly see any of the damages of these nuclear attacks. The first half of the series also consists out of a string of random episodes without much coherence; at one point, the characters also have nothing else to do besides comparing breast-sizes.

Still, as the series went on, it becomes clear that the creators knew fully well what they wanted with this series. Sky Girls isn’t about seeing cute girls in questionable outfits pilot mechas against giant invaders. It’s about living in the military, and how people deal with the relatives and loved ones that they leave behind. The main characters all have family, and they all have different relationships, and this anime does a very fine job of portraying this.

The series really picks up its pacing once the second half starts, and the characters start boarding a ship that was specifically designed to take care of the WORMs. With every character far away from home, and without much contact to the outside world, there are quite a few episodes dedicated to the characters, trying to brighten up their situation and trying to forget about the loneliness. What surprised me the most about this series is the final quarter, though, when the plot starts to kick in. Believe it or not, but the entire setting gets satisfactory explained and developed.

Overall, the pacing may be quiet, but this is one series that’s a pretty good recommendation if you want something light, yet engaging and thought-provoking. The first few episodes may not seem that much, but they’re building up pretty well for the second half of this series. It may not be the best, but it’s a great example of how you don’t need to have the hugest storyline in order to be good.