Trivia / Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise

• Acclaimed Flop: The movie opened to good reviews and even won an award, but it was such a notorious box office failure that, combined with the similar domestic bombing of AKIRA the following year (itself also a case of this trope), it threatened to put the entire anime industry as a whole in serious jeopardy had AKIRA not turned out to be such a massive success overseas.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the original Japanese version, Shirotsugh Lhadatt was voiced by narrator and actor Leo Morimoto.
• Covers Always Lie: Due to Bandai’s involvement and uncertainty over the film’s tone and marketability, advertisements for the film would outright lie about the film’s general plot and tone, with heavy focus on fantastical elements which don’t actually show up in the movie. This included placing heavy focus on the standing stones, that appear very briefly in the film and that have no impact on the plot, in trailers and claiming that it has the ability to glow due to a telepathic bond of love between Shirotsugh and Riquinni. Other acts included commissioning character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto to draw promotional art featuring a giant bug creature destroying a city and claiming the RSF was founded to search for a mythical book to bring peace to Honnêamise, in the film’s press kit. Despite all this, the film still bombed hard.
• Creator Backlash: Ryuichi Sakamoto looked back poorly on his soundtrack for the film, to the point where he omits it from his autobiography and refused to address it by name in public appearances. According to a 2018 interview with film planner Toshio Okada, Sakamoto was actually eager to work with Gainax thanks to his fond memories of the anime he grew up with as a kid, but his relationship with the studio soured when sound director Atsumi Tashiro was given the final say of which songs would go where (as Sakamoto had already started work scoring The Last Emperor and couldn't be easily contacted).
• Development Hell: In The '90s, Gainax announced that it was working on a Spiritual Successor to Honnêamise called Uru in Blue. (They chose not to make a direct sequel because Bandai Visual, who had financed Honnêamise, owned half the property.) Some very impressive production artwork was released to the public, but Uru in Blue was never completed. They (especially Gainax's lead artist, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto) still professed their desire to eventually complete it, though. And in March 2013, they announced that they finally would, with two key members of the original film's creative team (Sadamoto and writer/director Hiroyuki Yamaga) back in their old roles. However, it STILL festered and in September 2018, the project was announced to have changed studios and is now being produced by Gaina (formerly Fukushima Gainax), eyeing a 2022 release.
• Executive Meddling: Gainax was pressured to change the original title, Royal Space Force, to include The Wings of Honnêamise, because Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was doing well in the box office.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The below-mentioned Star Quest dub was only made to be shown at a pre-release screening in Hollywood and never seen again until 2023 when a copy was uploaded to the Internet Archive by Nicholas Walstrom (better known as Walrusguy...no, really, that Walrusguy!).
• After an obscure and quickly forgotten Macekred release in English as Star Quest, Manga Entertainment faithfully translated and released Royal Space Force in Western markets. Their dub track has since been used in re-releases.
• Bandai Visual U.S.A.'s premium label was named Honneamise after the film.

---