For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The planet's first space explorers just happen to be from a land engaged in a border war. This naturally lends urgency to any mission of peaceful exploration, and this is the central message of the film: that we should strive to achieve the impossible, rather than wasting our efforts and squandering our lives bickering with our neighbors. Mankind's future is among the stars. With its grand sweeping cityscapes and pastoral vistas to tempt the eye and its exciting race against time story of hard working rocket builders struggling to finish their creation before their construction facility is overrun by an invading army, this movie is great fun, marvelous to look at, just a joy to watch.

Do not listen to anybody bagging this movie, they do not have the experience with anime to appreciate it. Wings of Honeamise is a pinnacle in Japanese animation, it took anime to it's popularity. It made anime known.

The only way I can describe how this film makes me feel is to compare it to a child watching My Neighbor Totoro. It is animation but not quite what you see everyday. It has a plot but it has subtle and even hidden depth.To me this film is so good that it ceases to be "just anime" to become film art in the truest sense: it conjures up an imaginary world and makes it real, people have troubles and tribulations and we identify with them, everything comes to conclusion and we are changed by it and for the better.For people think this is just sunday network cartoons two hours long I recommend watching this alongside Apollo 13 and/or Forrest Gump and try to find the analogies, you'll be surprised.

I think the posts above cover just about all important aspects of this remarkable film. I noted a lot of people seems quite upset about one certain attempted rape scene, after which the girl apologizes. At first I was quite confused since that particular scene was cut from my subbed vhs-copy. But I'll take the liberty of commenting anyway.It's pretty obvious that Shiro's world and society are quite patriarchic and generally male-dominated. There are no women in high places in society (none that we see at least) and all female characters are either girlfriends, widows or prostitutes. I my opinion, this is not very far from, say, Japanese society (even more so in the 80's, things have changed.) Even now, it is not uncommon for women to blame themselves for rapes or assaults, not just in Japan, but everywhere in the world. The general idea seems to be that, because the woman is attractive or seductive, the man couldn't "help" himself and was a victim of his own carnal desires. Many women too adopts this way of thought, and hence blames themselves, for having been "seductive."I believe this is why the girl were able to apologize to Shiro. Because that is what is expected from a good wife (or would-be wife.)