Windaria (Once Upon a Time)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Tales of Windaria, Windaria: Legend of Fabulous Battle, Douwa Meita Senshi Windaria

Japanese: ウインダリア, 童話めいた戦史ウインダリア

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Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jul 19, 1986

Producers: Gallop

Licensors: ADV Films, Harmony Gold, Streamline Pictures

Studios: Kaname Productions, Idol

Source: Original

Genres: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi

Duration: 1 hr. 40 min.

Rating: R+ - Mild Nudity

Statistics

Score: 6.47¹ (scored by 4,371 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #7190²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #6547

Members: 10,500

Favorites: 30

Resources

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Synopsis

The non-aggression pact between the flourishing maritime city of Itha and the barren military state of Paro comes to an end when the latter's greedy monarch attempts to sabotage Itha and target its riches. Following this dreadful incident, the escalating animosity on each side disturbs the happiness of Itha's princess Ahnas and Paro's prince Jill, both of whom are deeply in love.

The peaceful farmers from the village of Saki are worried as well. With their land separating Itha and Paro, they risk getting caught in the crossfire of an upcoming battle. Yet there is one among them that does not share such fear. Izu—an ambitious, energetic young man—sees this war as an opportunity to gain fame and wealth. Enticed by Paro's promise of a generous reward, he readily answers the kingdom's call for help, vowing to his beloved wife Marin that they will soon reunite.

Feeling heartbroken, Marin becomes engrossed in prayer for her husband's safe return. Meanwhile, Ahnas and Jill are determined to not let their positions or their families' hostilities come between them. But will these young people's genuine love prevail over human foolishness and vices, or will it be sacrificed to petty ambitions?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Although the story was originally conceived for the production of an anime, Windaria first appeared as a novel titled Douwa Meita Senshi Windaria four months prior to the movie's release. As stated in the postscript, the author believed this reading would further entice people to watch the film.

The movie was broadcasted several times on Yomiuri TV's Anime Daisuki! program. An English version was made available under the title Once Upon a Time by Harmony Gold in 1987. However, in order to make it suitable for a younger audience, major changes were made: the exclusion of some nudity and violent scenes, modification of the script, new character names, and added narration.

In Japan, Windaria was initially distributed to home video by Victor Entertainment, which later released it on DVD on December 16, 2000. In the US, it was made available on VHS as Windaria by Streamline Pictures on August 1, 1993, and on DVD as Once Upon a Time by ADV Films on March 16, 2004. Additionally, a video game adaptation titled Dungeon of Windaria was released in Japan by Nintendo on May 15, 2008.

Kinoshita, Yumi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Macek, Carl

Producer, Script, ADR Director

Yuyama, Kunihiko

Director

Watanabe, Jun

Sound Director

Matsuura, Noriyoshi

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"Yakusoku" by Akino Arai

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Ending Theme

"Utsukushii Hoshi (美しい星)" by Akino Arai

Reviews

Oct 29, 2021

ryu2k2

Recommended

Meaningless wars leave no good memories for anyone.

Windaria is an archetypical fantasy flick. War between nations, politics, princes and princesses and your every day young man from a peaceful village. Love and betrayal etc. etc.
If anything in this movie sticks out it's the animations and music. The art is surprisingly detailed for an obscure movie and the soundtrack always beautifully orchestrates what is shown on screen.
The movie's first half is well paced and takes its time to introduce the main cast, their believes and motivations and the world they act in. However a city becoming partially flooded is what most stood out in this half ...

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Mar 24, 2014

vigorousjammer

Mixed Feelings

So, I just finished watching Windaria. To be specific, it was the original Japanese version, subtitled by the "Live-eviL" fan-sub group.

Well, let's start with the art. For a film from 1986, it looks VERY nice. The animation is smooth, varied, and has a lot of nice, subtle touches. It still looks dated by today's standards, but is still pretty easy to appreciate. The world is also pretty beautifully realized, with some gorgeous looking background art. The character art is all pretty standard for the era, but the quality of the animation makes them stand out more than they otherwise would.

As for the story, this is ... where it really falls apart for me. The movie starts off fine, and the characters start to develop. You start to get a feel for the world, and the story arc, and despite it being paced somewhat slowly, it still seemed pretty well put together. However, about halfway through the story, things change. Characters that were developed early-on start arbitrarily changing their motivations left and right, seemingly for no reason. Yet, other characters feel lifeless, like an empty shell, with no real depth to them whatsoever. This makes it difficult to like any of the characters, and as such, the story ends up falling flat, since it's very focused on them.

The pacing also seemed to get slower and slower as the film went on. There's a lot of filler shots, and it made me feel like I was just waiting for the next thing to happen. However, even when that next thing happened, I wasn't satisfied with it, because it usually involved one of the characters, who are all so completely unlikable that anything that happened involving them didn't matter to me. The film entirely failed to be captivating, and by the last 30 minutes, I was kind of just waiting for it to be over. Then it ended, and I still didn't feel satisfied. I felt like the ending was supposed to make me cry, but it didn't, because I wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters. After all was said and done, I kind of just felt like I wasted my time.

Yet, despite all that, I still find the movie oddly charming. I don't think it's good by any stretch, but it has a few decent moments in the beginning and middle of it. Also, the animation probably would have really wowed me 10 or 15 years ago, and it's still good today, but it's not good enough to push everything else to the side and focus solely on that. However, that seems like exactly what this movie tries to do. It substitutes well-formed characters and a well-paced story arc for some visual flair. It ultimately ends up being far less than what it could have otherwise been, if a little extra care went into the story and the characters.

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Apr 8, 2017

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Windaria is a Studio Gallop film from 1986. Yes, the same studio that did the early episodes of Rurouni Kenshin. Like many of the other films I've reviewed during this year's film festival, it's not based on anything. It's also one I'd never heard of prior to browsing random anime films. So, was it worth dredging up? Let's take a peek and see.

Story:

We open with a young couple, Izu & Marin, taking their cart to sell their wares in the kingdom of Isa. Their idyllic time is ruined when someone tries to flood the city. An attempt which gets thwarted by Izu's intervention. Turns ... out, the nearby kingdom of Paro has its sights set on the lands occupied by Isa. Izu and Marin find themselves in an awkward situation, with their village between the two countries. To make things more complicated, Prince Jill of Paro and Princess Ahnas of Isa are romantically attached. What will happen to these young pairs of lovers when war breaks out? Yes, it's one of those stories.

There are a lot of problems with the narrative in this film. First of all, the warring kingdoms are both inexcusably stupid. Paro starts this whole conflict after clearly planning an offensive but they're also completely unprepared and undisciplined. They probably do as much damage to themselves through complete incompetence as Isa does to them. What kind of imbecilic leader gets into a rough situation with bugger all preparation? Putting King Trump aside, Isa is just as bad. After the whole near disaster at the beginning their “defence” against someone unauthorised messing with the gates that could flood their city comes down to giving one old guy a spear and some armour. Yes, Isa, that will keep your flood gates closed. It's a much better solution than proper guards working rotating shifts. Fecking morons. The film also suffers from adding completely pointless fantasy elements. We have a ghost ship that we see floating across the sky at different points. It contributes nothing. There are unicorns for, like, five seconds. There are spirits that we see take to the sky without actually doing anything. There's a forest with illusions which could be removed from the film completely without losing anything. You get the impression that Gallop wanted to craft a massive world with a lot of lore behind it, but the writing is too incompetent to do it well. There's also a general issue with the film taking a tired concept and not really adding anything of value to it. It's not horribly written, but the execution behind it is pretty bad.

Characters:

The characters are actually a pretty big issue here. This type of “lovers torn apart by conflict” narrative needs strong leads who we want to see find happiness in order to work. This film, however, gives us two pairs of really boring, flat characters. Maybe Fujikawa Keisuke thought that the potential for tragedy was a guarantee and he couldn't be bothered to flesh out the characters or their dynamics. Whatever the case, the consequence is that what should be a tragic tale transforms into watching a bunch of morons we have no investment in scramble around.

Art:

The artwork actually does look, for the most part, pretty good. There are some awkward facial expressions and movements here and there. Which is kind of to be expected of anime from that era. Actually, the fantasy elements of the film might solely exist to make the thing more visually interesting rather than as an incompetent attempt at world building. The action sequences are a bit weak too.

Sound:

There are some decent actors in this. Matsui Naoko (Dorothy Catalonia), Furuya Toru (Chiba Mamoru), & Inoue Kazuhiko (Yuki Eiri) have all given strong performances before. This is not one of those times. Listening to the acting in this is roughly equivalent to listening to a Junior High school theatrical production where they know the lines and they seem to be trying but they aren't very good. The music is pretty decent.

Ho-yay:

Honestly, this film doesn't have strong enough character dynamics for any of them to seem romantic. No, not even the main het ones. We just know they're supposed to be romantic because the film outright says it and shows the occasional kiss.

Final Thoughts:

Windaria is a pretty bad film. The narrative takes an old idea and combines it with poor execution. The characters are beyond bland. It's just generally a bit of a mess. My final rating is going to be a 3/10. That's all for this year's film festival week. Next Wednesday I'll look at Iria: Zeiram The Animation.