Windaria is an old, old anime from 1986 that I’ve been meaning to watch for at least 10 years, ever since fansub group Live-Evil released their “set right what went wrong” version (apparently Windaria got a rather horrible official English dub/hackjob known as “Once Upon a Time”, courtesy of Harmony Gold). So I downloaded the fansub upon release, burned it to a CD (a CD!! that’s how long ago it was) and promptly forgot about it. Every couple of years I would stumble across it and mean to watch it then forget again, but today, at last, I finally got off my rump and watched the whole thing in one quick sitting.
Thoughts? Those Japanese don’t muck around with their unhappy endings! …and that’s all I’m going to say about the ending. TBH I saw the final denouement coming a few hundred miles away, but it was still a miserable thing to watch. Since I put spoilers in the title I’m going to spoil, but it’s a nice little movie, short, action-packed, good music, so maybe you stop now and go watch it yourself.
Windaria’s story has a war breaking out between two nations, Paro and Itha. [btw, official summaries say the war is over a supply of fresh water, but as far as I can recall this wasn’t mentioned in the anime itself. Maybe it’s from the book the anime was based on.]
A young villager named Izu who lives between the two countries decides, against his wife Marin’s advice, to throw his lot in with Paro in the upcoming war. Marin promises to wait for him to come back, but Izu – after betraying Itha and killing pretty much all the civilians in one act of subterfuge – forgets all about her and parties in Paro until circumstances drive him home with only the clothes on his back. Luckily for him Marin is still waiting for him… or rather her ghost is, only to depart after fulfilling her end of the promise. The movie ends with Izu bitterly regretting the greed and ambition that led him to betray everything he ever held dear, the end.
Most people will be familiar with the main themes of the show: war sucks for everyone, especially women + nothing good comes of allowing greed/a misguided sense of duty to force you to do what you know is wrong.
The two main male characters, Prince Jill and Izu, basically ruin things for everyone around them. Izu is a louse through and through, and it’s very annoying that he’s the only one to survive at the end (I kept hoping someone would pop up and shoot him), but Prince Jill squandered a very good chance to end the war and unite the two nations, and for that he definitely deserved to die.
The only one I felt sorry for was Marin, because her fate was pretty much sealed the moment Izu joined the dark side. She was killed when a bomb hit her house, but if she had joined the other villagers in evacuating into Itha, she would have been drowned when Izu flooded the place. Either way her life sucked. If Izu had stayed he probably would have been killed along with most of the other volunteer soldiers, but at least maybe the evacuees would have survived. Maybe. We’ll never know. Their best bet would have been to get as far away from either country as possible, but they were just simple village folk with few resources. *sigh*
If you like Infernal Affairs-type “Bad guy wins Pyrrhic victory” kind of anime, if you like movies about war or if you just want a rage-worthy tragedy, Windaria is right up your alley. Some people have called it a ‘tear-jerker’ but I was far too mad to even think about crying by the time it was over. I’m going to rage a little longer and get some shut-eye. G’night!
Windaria! I love the old school anime.(I rarely see new anime :P)
I really like the characters and the “handmade” backgrounds. 🙂
Nice blog! ^^
Greetings from Argentina! ^^
I love old school anime too, especially old anime movies. They have a mystical feel and look about them versus the modern ones which are so slick and polished and focused on presenting reality as it really is.
Thanks for visiting! Good luck with your fansubs!