- The Wings of Rean (2005-2006: Sunrise) 6/6 eps.
Staff and Background
Many famous creators aren’t known for the thing they really want to be known for. For example, Tezuka is most well known for Astro Boy and Black Jack but he would rather have been known for Phoenix, which was his life’s work. The same goes for Tomino. He is most well known as the creator of Mobile Suit Gundam but his real passion is the Bryston Wells Saga. This is a set of stories where there is a parallel dimension called Bryston Well and people sometimes get drawn into that dimension from our world. This all started with a light novel series called The Wings of Rean he wrote in the 80s. From this he went onto direct 3 anime stories based on or related to these novels: Aura Battler Dunbine, Garzey’s Wing, and The Wings of Rean. All of these works have been Tomino heavy in terms of production and it is quite obvious that they are very personal works, which makes them interesting even if Dunbine is the only good show amongst them. Tomino directed, scripted, and storyboarded the Wings of Rean ONA we are looking at today, so it is all on him. Now Tomino very much seems to be a love him or loath him director and he has a very distinct style. I personally love him so I will be a tad biased, but I can totally understand why people might hate his works.
Story and Characters
The basic set up of the show is that one day 2 teenagers attack a US military base near Tokyo as an act of defiance. While this is happening a whole fleet of floating ships emerges from the sea and appear to be attacking each other. It turns out that they came from Bryston Wells, via the Aura Road, where there is currently a civil war. On the one side you have the king Sakumizu who is trying his best to get to our word and on the other you have Amalgam who used to be the king’s mate but has seen that Sakumizu has gone a bit crazy and tyrannical. Caught between the two is one of our MCs Luxe. She is the King’s daughter from his first wife and can see what her father is doing is wrong and believes that it is the King’s new wife who is behind him going a little mad. So you have a small fleet led by Luxe and a ship (or two, I honestly can’t remember) 
led by Amalgam ending up near Tokyo. As it turns out Luxe is wearing the legendary Boots of Rean, which are a bit magical. Our main MS is a guy called Asap, that wonderfully silly Tomino naming is back! He is the son of a Japanese woman and an American commander from the naval base where all this shit is going down. Fate conspires for him to end up on Luxe’s ship and when all the Bryston Well people inevitably get sucked back to their world he goes with them. From there on it is basically civil war stuff. The story is actually quite simply, however there just isn’t enough space to fit it all in. Tomino loves his in res media and uses it here, but there just isn’t the time to get a grip of what all of these terms mean and which ones actually matter. It would have been made infinitely easier if everyone and every ship had their name pop up when 
they were introduced or cut to. Given 26 episodes I could see this being a very good show. That number of episodes would have let everything breath and would have given time for stuff to actually be explained. The show features Tomino’s classic anti-war sentiment in a deeply personal way by referencing real events such as the fire bombings of Tokyo. No military is good and he goes to great pains to show this. As for the characters I generally quite like them. Again they suffer from a lack of time, so some of their actions are a bit odd, but overall I think he didn’t do too badly here. In particular I think Sakumizu is incredibly interesting once you find out his story. Asap is a little bland to be honest but I really feel that is as a result of a lack of time rather than Tomino wanting to write him that way.
Audio and Visuals
The Wings of Rean presents a fairly strong front in terms of audio and visuals. As it is an ONA the animation throughout is generally quite good (literally one of 3 videos I could 
find of this show…). There is CG used for the mecha and some vehicles but I actually thought it was rather good most of the time. It is, however, the art direction and not the animation that really sells this. I love the character designs by Masashi Kudou, I love the simplicity of them and the fact they are just slightly off from what characters normally look like. The bug-like mecha are also really cool and totally unlike anything else you’ll see outside of a Bryston Well show. Just the whole way the world looks and feels is excellent, they did such a good job here. I’m also a big fan of the music in this show, you get everything from epic pieces to very quiet and contemplative tunes. I also love the ED, it feels like it is very personal to Tomino despite being in English (IIRC Tomino rewrote the lyrics himself). On the voice acting front I really have no complaints as everyone was damn good. I do want to give a special shout out to Rikiya Koyama who plays Sakumizu, he was truly excellent.
Conclusion
The Wings of Rean really isn’t good. It is very rushed and very confusing unless you stop and spend some time working it all out in your head. However, it is a very interesting failure in many ways. The show is clearly very personal to Tomino and by watching it I feel one can get into his head space just a little. For this reason it is actually quite difficult to talk about in many ways, it is hard to describe feelings like that. For anyone not interested in Tomino I would advise you stay away but for those, like myself, you enjoy his works and are interesting in him then I would say it is worth a watch, especially as it is only 6 episodes long.
3/10
I also highly recommend checking out the AWO episode on the Wings of Rean as i is just fantastic, they even have Mike Toole as a guest!
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