Lhadatt's training as an astronaut parallels his coming of age, as he and the rest of the space project members overcome technological difficulties, doubt, overwhelming public attention, and the machinations of their corrupt government.

[32][j] At the time of the proposal, Yamaga was 22 years old and had directed the opening anime films for Japan's 1981 and 1983 national science fiction conventions, Daicon III and IV,[34] which through their sale to fans on home video through General Products were themselves regarded as informal precursors of the OVA concept.

[69] Okada addressed the board with a speech described as impassioned,[70] speaking for an hour on Gainax's analysis of the anime industry, future market trends, and the desire of the young for "a work called Royal Space Force".

[71] Bandai gave interim approval to Royal Space Force as their company's first independent video production; however, the decision to make the project as a theatrical film would be subject to review at the end of 1985, once Gainax had produced a complete storyboard and settei.

[73] Yamaga envisioned the fictional Honnêamise kingdom where most of the events of Royal Space Force took place to have the scientific level of the 1950s combined with the atmosphere of America and Europe in the 1930s, but with characters who moved to a modern rhythm.

The inspiration he sought to express in anime from Niigata was not its literal look, but rather a sense of the size and feel of the city and its envrions, including its urban geography; the relationships between its old and new parts, and between its denser core and more open spaces.

[74] In August 1985, six members of the crew, Yamaga, Okada, Inoue, Sadamoto, and Anno from Gainax, accompanied by Shigeru Watanabe from Bandai, traveled to the United States for a research trip, studying postmodern architecture, aerospace history, and witnessing a launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Those are the kind of people who will say, 'The art is great, and the animation is very good, but the story—mmmm...'"[86] Okada remarked however that the decentralized decision-making creative process at Gainax meant there were limits to how much control could be asserted through the script;[52] Akai would later comment that "the staff were young and curious, not unlike the characters in the film.

[95] Yamaga decided the alternate world depicted in the pilot film did not have the kind of different realism he was hoping to achieve in the completed work and started over again, creating a new series of "image board" paintings to visualize the look of Royal Space Force.

He laid particular emphasis on attempting to suggest the visual texture of the world's architecture and interior design; following Watabe's detailed notes, Ogura worked to convey in his paintings such aspects as the woodwork motifs prominent in the Space Force headquarters, or by contrast the metallic elements in the room where the Republic minister Nereddon tastes wine.

[131] Critiquing his own work on Royal Space Force, Ogura expressed a wish that he had been able to convey more emphasis on the effects of light and shadow in addition to color, but joked that it was hard to say exactly how things would turn out until he actually painted them, something he said was true of the entire film.

[137] Although his illustrations used a sumi-e ink wash painting technique associated with classical East Asian art, Ohnishi preferred to use the style to depict modern subjects; Yamaga felt the method would convey an alternate perspective and suggest the film's exercise in worldbuilding included a conceptual past and future, rather than a world brought into existence only to tell one particular narrative in time.

In creating the credits, Ohnishi made frequent use of photographs of real people and historical events, which he would then modify when adapting it into a painting: "exchanging and replacing the details of, for example, a European picture with Asian or Middle-Eastern elements and motifs.

[151] However, its third, or C part was nearly finished, and the decision was made to start production there, on the reasoning that the sober tone of many scenes in the third quarter of the film required precision in expression; as there was no release date yet, it was better to work on them while the schedule was still relatively loose.

[161] Isakawa described the technical challenges he faced in filming Royal Space Force, with some individual cuts created by using as many as 12 photographic levels consisting of cels, superimposition layers, and sheets of paper masks designed to capture isolated areas of different colored light.

Akai felt a tone had been set for Royal Space Force by the decision to cast Leo Morimoto in the lead role as Shirotsugh: "The other actors [then] knew that this was going to be a different kind of animated film.

He commented that it was a difficult role for him, as unlike a live-action drama, "you can't fake the mood, you have to express yourself correctly with just your voice," and viewed his work on Royal Space Force as "scary" but "fulfilling.

[212] Okada wrote of having later heard how "emotions were running high" on the Bandai side as well, to the extent of considering taking the project away from Gainax and giving it to another studio to finish, or even cancelling the film's release, despite the 360 million yen already spent on producing it.

However, this would have required someone's "head to roll" at Bandai to take responsibility for the loss, which could mean Makoto Yamashina himself, who had announced Royal Space Force as his personal project durung the official press conference in June.

[213] Okada noted that the person caught in the middle was Shigeru Watanabe, who had supported the project from the beginning but now found himself "forced into a very difficult position," becoming so depressed by the conflict that following the film's release, he took a year's leave of absence.

[203] The national publicity campaign for the film now being promoted under the title The Wings of Honnêamise~Royal Space Force began on New Year's Day, 1987, including full-color newspaper and magazine ads, as well as TV commercials,[220] with eventual placements in over 70 media outlets.

[246] Animerica, in a contemporary review, assessed the dub as "admirable in many respects," but argued that changes to the dialogue meant the subtitled version represents "a clearer presentation of the original ideas and personalities created by Hiroyuki Yamaga.

[279] LA Weekly commented, "These strange, outsize pieces fuse and add a feeling of depth that cartoon narratives often don't obtain ... Technical brilliance aside, what gives [the film] its slow-building power is the love story—a mysterious and credible one.

"[280] The Washington Post viewed its two-hour length as "a bit windy" but also asserted, "Hiroyuki Yamaga's The Wings of Honnêamise is a spectacular example of Japanimation, ambitious and daring in its seamless melding of color, depth and detail.

"[281] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, praising Yamaga's visual imagination and remarked on the director's "offbeat dramatic style," recommending "If you're curious about anime, The Wings of Honnêamise ... is a good place to start.

"[290] During a 2021 interview with the New York Times, science fiction author Ted Chiang, whose Nebula Award-winning "Story of Your Life" was the basis for the Denis Villeneuve movie Arrival, cited Royal Space Force as the single most impressive example of worldbuilding in book or film.

[291] Royal Space Force attracted a broader academic analysis as early as 1992, when Takashi Murakami referenced the film through Sea Breeze, an installation created during his doctoral studies in nihonga at Tokyo University of the Arts.

"[296] "Gainax represented, for Murakami, a model of marginalized yet cutting-edge cultural production ... At the same time, the fact that the burning wheel was contained inside a box signified passion confined within a conventional frame, evoking the failure of Honneamise to present a uniquely Japanese expression as it remained under the influence of Western science-fiction films.

"[304] Cubitt, like Murakami, references the historical consequences of World War II, but in citing a speech by Japan's first postwar prime minister on the need for "nationwide collective repentance," suggests that such repentance is "the theme that seems to resonate in the curious, slow budding" of Royal Space Force through Riquinni's "homemade religion of renunciation and impending judgment"[305] arguing that such a philosophy is evoked also through the film's animation style: "Like the zero of the Lumières' flickering views, the action of [Royal Space Force] sums at nothingness, a zero degree of the political that removes its resolution from history ... into the atemporal zone denoted by Shirotsugh's orbit ... an empty place from which alone the strife of warfare and suffering sinks into pure regret, not so much an end as an exit from history.

"[306] In contrast, Shu Kuge, in a 2007 essay in the journal Mechademia, sees Shiro's position in space at film's end as "not the denial of history but the empathetic move to accept the cruel world without translating it into a metaphysical meaning".