To Aru Hikūshi e no Tsuioku

Otherwise known as The Princess And The Pilot (とある飛空士への追憶)

Although the film was released a while back, the translation just came out this week, and I was wondering if anyone else was able to watch it.

The plot is relatively straightforward (with a mercenary pilot ferrying the empress-to-be to the mainland with the enemy fleet on their tail), but the backgrounds are breathtaking. There's a kind of WW 2-ish conflict going on between stand-ins for Imperial Spain and Imperial Japan, and the aesthetics fit too... except we have flying battleships with heat-seeking missiles along with the prop-fighters and a craft that looks suspiciously like the Kyushu J 7 W Shinden.

Any thoughts?

edited 29th Feb '12 9:33:03 PM by MyssaRei

Huh, double-post. Anyway, as I mentioned the translation to the movie has just made itself available, so I was wondering about anyone else's thoughts on this.

edited 29th Feb '12 9:32:11 PM by MyssaRei

I don't know what the title is supposed to be, so could you please send a mod holler to fix it to whatever it actually should be?

Fixed.

Sorry about, that, Unicode is not my thing.

Anyway, like I mentioned the movie is very straightforward. We have a half-blood (results of couplings between Amatsukami folk and Revaamu-empire folk are treated as second-class citizens and are generally looked-down upon) mercenary pilot tasked with a secret mission: to bring the future bride of the crown prince safely across 12,000 kilometers of sea that's pretty much swarming with enemy forces. He's the best that they've got and... he's apparently the Princess' Forgotten Childhood Friend by virtue of his mother actually taking care of the princess when she was still young.

Yeah, that's just one little complication that comes up during the flight. The movie itself (and the novel its based on) is labeled as a romance, but there's really nothing but Ship Tease throughout its length.

Finally did a quick entry on the movie:

Toaru Hikushi E No Tsuioku

Yeah, I made a mistake in the spelling. Is there any way to fix it without deleting the WHOLE page and starting from scratch?

Not really, but I'm not sure what the problem is

It's supposed to be To Aru (like in the Index and Railgun series), with the words separate.

It is. Capitalization doesn't matter. Dragonball is Dragon Ball is Drag On Ball

Uhh... The Raildex series both use "Toaru", not "To aru". The former is the bit which gets translated as "A certain".

Relatedly, I don't see how the title here translates into anything like what you said it did in the first post. I'm not terrific at translating Japanese, sure, but using what I know (mixed with a bit of creative use of Google Translate) leads me to think it's more like "Memories of the Phrase 'To Fly Empty'"

edited 1st Mar '12 3:07:35 PM by Sabbo

The Princess and The Pilot is what the English title of the movie eventually became. From what I read, it was supposed to be something like "Reminiscence of a Lone Pilot" or something like that.

とある can be Toaru or To Aru. It really doesn't matter.

An accurate translation for the title, とある飛空士への追憶, would be "Recollections to a Certain Pilot".

edited 2nd Mar '12 12:02:24 AM by KuroBaraHime

Ah, Google Translate. I really should have looked at that title one kanji at a time.

That said, my main point about how the Raildex series use Toaru but not To Aru is still correct. I was directly responding to somebody who said the inverse was true.

edited 1st Mar '12 11:21:46 PM by Sabbo

Finally got around to watching this.

First off, no problem with production values. The music is nice, the scenery is breathtaking, everything is well-drawn and well-animated.

The plot is fairly typical, but the execution is a cut above average. A lot of what happens is predictable, but nonetheless engaging. The ending certainly left me wanting to learn more, especially about Charles. I know the LN has a translation out, but I want to ask those who already read it: does the book go into more detail about what happens after Charles and Fana part ways?

As with , I have nothing bad to say about this. The movie is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time, very well-animated and very well-executed.

The premise isn't amazing, but it really is all in the execution. I rate it really highly, despite not introducing any surprising or different ideas (and me rating something like that highly is a surprise itself. Meta-surprise?).