Sora Tobu Yûreisen

Japan • 1969 • 61m •

• Directed by: Hiroshi Ikeda. • Starring: Masako Nozawa, Akio Tanaka, Akira Nagoya, Gorô Naya, Yukiko Okada, Kôsei Tomita, Kyôko Satomi, Ryô Ishihara, Kei'ichi Noda, Hiroshi Masuoka, Hiroshi Ôtake, Kunihiko Kitagawa, Kyôko Ai. • Music by: Kosuke Onozaki.

Hayato's peaceful life with his parents and his dog is brought to a dramatic, terrible end when a giant robot, said to be sent from a flying ghost ship, devastates the city, killing hundreds including Hayato's parents. Shortly before his death, Hayato's father reveals that he is not really their son. Hayato is now alone, struggling in this strange new world left after the disaster, where giant machines and monsters control the world. He sets on a dangerous quest to discover the mysterious powers that be, only to discover that he is directly connected to it all...

Review:

As one previous reviewer said, this was one of the very first animes that were shown on a big screen in the Soviet Union. The other one was "Barefoot Gen". I think they showed those movies in ~1985, but not sure. There were so few foreign movies shown (that was before video was available to the soviet people), that any movie that passed through the draconian film commission would automatically become extremely popular in the USSR.

The message behind this movie was not as "anti-imperialism" (read anti-American in soviet terminology), "anti-war", "anti-capitalism" (and it also does not deal with the nuclear war, thanks god) as the Barefoot Gen, but it still left a lasting impression on me and countless other kids. As kids, we did not get the subtle satire of the advertising parody, big corporations, and so on, but as almost all of the anime, it has something really scary and illogical at the core, which would scare any kid.

I have recently re-watched the movie after finding it in a supermarket bargain basement and although it's probably 10-15 minutes too long and some gags are way off (the annoying dog, a rip-off from scooby doo is particularly hard to bear) there are topics you would rarely find in a Hollywood movie - city being destroyed, people getting killed by sea monsters, corporations taking over the world, arms race, and so on.

This animation was filmed in 1969, with the horrors of war still fresh in the memory of the Japanese, and although the animation might not be up to standard of state-of-the-art animes like Mononoke, etc. it is still an enjoyable film.

More so for people who watched it as the kids during the time of Soviet propaganda.

Review by hveckovics from the Internet Movie Database.

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