#43: The Flying Luna Clipper (1987)

From https://www.msx.org/sites/default/files/news/2017
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Director: Ikko Ono

Viewed in English Language with Japanese Subtitles

Synopsis: Having acquired a rare boat plane from the early 20th century, a Martin M-130, and renovated it to flyable again, a company offers a luxurious holiday trip in the Hawaiian Pacific for those who are the "deepest dreamers". Made with the graphical capabilities of a MSX game console, this film follows the flight patrons through a compilation of lessons and strange experimental shorts within its near hour length.

While this blog is meant to cover Japanese anime, it's be a crime to ignore the other areas of animation⁽¹⁾ that come from Japan alongside anime. The Flying Luna Clipper's existence, as a near hour long film made in glorious 8-bit game console graphics, wouldn't have even been known outside of obscurity in Japan if a blogger by the name of Matt Hawkins hadn't had found a second hand laserdisc copy. The result's a fascinating curiosity; the MSX is one of many Japanese video consoles from an early period of video gaming that would've only been known in its homeland, where the Metal Gear franchise began in fact, used here as an example of creative individuals experimenting with video game consoles beyond merely playable games to outright artistic experiments, be they interactive or not.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6uD6pfH4q1s/hqdefault.jpg

Sadly, like many before and after, these experiments tend to end up doomed to obscurity or beloved cult works that are hampered by archival preservation yet to be publically provided to videogames, especially those which required idiosyncratic controls or require actually being re-released again rather than tracking down second hand, rare copies or online uploads of. It's a shame here as this is a proto-vaporwave head trip to experience, where the 8-bitera of illustration and character design created a colourful, Tropicana world of snowmen wandering around sunny Honolulu and palm trees at dusk. In spite of the limited animation, there's a lush charm from the incredible (and painstaking) detail, an old arcade game in its bright lights and sincerity. Adding to its strangeness and its warm hearted sense of accessibility is that it was likely made to appeal to Western viewers as its dialogue is mostly in English, moments of odd pronunciations in the voice acting against more solid performances which yet come from the mouths of moving portraits of cartoonish oddness. A black bird business tycoon, an air hostess whose a bespectacled banana, Polynesian bananas in coconut bras and grass skirts, a green haired chimp or living singing Hawaiian volcanoes =part of a more sexualised version of a Fantasia (1940) musical number.

From http://68.media.tumblr.com/9d5cdcc78b0362fc3059812988af41ac/
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Japanese pop surrealism, the type of bubblegum surrealism not just found in videogames but in all their media, is absolutely charming. Unless you're viewing the spectrum which follows the traditions of the original movement in being transgressive, there's no sense of the more eccentric side of it of being merely commercial product, instead of cornucopia of full of cute anthropomorphic animals, talking plants, bright colours and spectacle, something I grew up with having a port of the scrolling shooter parody Parodius (1995) for the Sega Satan and hazy memories of episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats (1990-1). For all the darker, illicit areas of Japanese horror and dark fantasy which cross into the unreal and the mind bending, there's this opposite even when its occasionally morbid and full of sexual innuendo that's cute, silly and playful. The Flying Luna Clipper becomes a literal series of dreams for both the passengers of the ship and the viewer them self, the director of the animation literally one of the co-pilots of the clipper as it travels across the pacific ocean and even into outer space briefly. Barring one unfortunate image of a blackface character, on a TV in the background of a single scene, it's a surrealism that's a playful escapade.

From https://www.msx.org/sites/default/files/news/
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Alongside a lesson on the Holose taught by a seahorse with a Germanic accent, to music numbers, you also have material that could be shorts by themselves, one of the most memorable likely an older project by the director in 1986 which is live action, a playful music video of babies falling over, waterfalls and diving women that's charming as its strange, feeling the most dated of the whole work but not a detraction to its value. The whole film in general makes an argument, now becoming known again in a post-vaporwave world, for a period of late eighties and early to mid nineties pop culture as escapes for audiences that shouldn't inherently be dismissed outright for that reason, a lot of anime to videogames even in commercial industries that emphasised escape, dreamscapes and the purely fantastical. Far from cynical, The Flying Luna Clipper feels sincerely fun, more so as its brazenly (proudly) weird even next to a lot of actual anime, its end playing as a series of dreams as the closet to an actual protagonist swears the clipper has been a giant pelican for all this time in the tourist trip.

From http://68.media.tumblr.com/7fcd20cdd7e96eec6fabbbf2d048ac01/
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It's sadly a work that, unless a drastic re-evaluation takes place and enough people keep bringing it up in online topic, will be only known in a YouTube presentation, eternal gratitude to the man who pull the film again out of subterranean cultural memory but with an unknown time period of how long the upload will exist. Whilst from a period just before my birth let along childhood, it revisiting it for this review is why it was fitting to have moved away from videogames by the end of the PlayStation 2 to my permanent love for cinema instead. Less brightness and unexpected weirdness, the joys of childhood playing videogames scored by the soundtrack of Daytona USA (1993) and set in fantastical elaborate worlds, replaced by more "realistic" turgid aesthetics and a restriction in how games are meant to present themselves. I occasionally flick over reviews and clips online of new games, and alongside the cost and space required for new consoles, most of the actual games now are uninteresting for me to return to the medium. In spite of the apparent maturity of the medium in terms of storytelling, which I have to admire, as an outsider I'm put off by the mirrored sense of the bloated, store brand tone that also exists in mainstream cinema having infected the industry as well. In spite of its strangeness, there's a greater knowing sense of playfulness here in The Flying Luna Clipper I'd gladly recommend people explore if just as an antidote of this issue.

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(1) The last time something different from the mould was covered was number #24 Yuki Terai - Secrets (2000), a compilation of shorts and music videos for an entirely fictional female star which you can read the review of HERE.