Mark Simmons
October 16, 2007 
Wings of Rean, the latest anime from Gundam director Yoshiyuki Tomino, isn’t what one would call his most accessible work. Although it shares a title with a serialized novel he wrote back in the ’80s, Wings of Rean is essentially a spinoff of Tomino’s 1983 anime series Aura Battler Dunbine, which was already one of his more elaborate and mystifying works. Tomino may be well into his 60s, but the pace of his storytelling seems to get faster and faster, and the combination of the complex Dunbine mythos and the director’s hatred of exposition means the viewer may need an advanced degree in Tominology to make heads or tails of this one.
Rean‘s starting premise has distinctly political overtones. The first episode begins with the shadows of American jet fighters passing over Mount Fuji, and continues with an inept missile attack on a US military base by a couple of disaffected Japanese teenagers. Our hero, the improbably named Aesap Suzuki, has opted out of the attack itself but finds himself on the run as his friends continue their rampage.
In the middle of all this, a fleet of bizarre organic warships emerges from the ocean, guided by a young princess with luminous wings sprouting from her magical boots. The mysterious warships rattle their sabers at each other, exchange fire with the American and Japanese military forces, and then scram back to the fantastical realm of Byston Well with Aesap and his troublemaking friends in tow. That’s all in episode 1, by the way.
The real-world political themes aren’t left behind when the action shifts back to Byston Well. It turns out that this land of magical fairies and insectoid war machines has been conquered by a “holy warrior” named Shinjiro Sakomizu, who traveled to Byston Well from World War II-era Japan and now dreams of annexing our world with his arsenal of flying warships and robotic aura battlers. Thus Byston Well, the extradimensional realm where human souls are meant to rest between Earthly incarnations, has become the last stronghold of the old dream of Japanese martial supremacy.
Rean‘s fast-paced story is packed full of striking images, as well as some ingenious costuming and design work that captures the anachronistic flavor of Sakomizu’s feudal fantasy empire and reinforces the theme of worlds in collision. The hopping, chittering, CG-enhanced aura battlers are a definite improvement over those of the original Dunbine, which seldom behaved any differently from conventional giant robots. But the real stars may be the fleets of chitinous biomechanical warships that, with their wooden decking, vintage gun turrets, and crude intercom systems, look like something out of Super Atragon as envisioned by David Cronenberg. Sakomizu’s castle even resembles a colossal aircraft carrier, as if to show how his dreams of imperial glory have warped the landscape of Byston Well itself.
All the action and visual spectacle, however, tends to overwhelm the story itself. The characters are given only the briefest of introductions, and what little exposition Tomino grudgingly provides comes in gasping fragments while the heroes are busy falling off buildings, clawing their way out of the raging sea, or grappling each other into compromising positions. Ordinarily one might assume that the details of plot and character histories would be revealed in later episodes, but given the director’s recent track record it’s safe to assume that these are all the answers we’re ever going to get. All you can do is look out for stray hints and clues as the story rockets along, but at least you’ll have plenty of exotic and spectacular scenery to keep you entertained in the process.
