Jiro (Hideaki Anno) has always wanted his life to revolve around airplanes. Bad vision keeps him from being a pilot, so he sets out to design them instead, taking inspiration from leaders in the field as well as nature. He gets a job with Mitsubishi working on prototype fighter planes for the Imperial Navy. Rumors of war circulate amidst economic hardships but life and love go on as he meets Nahoko (Miori Takimoto), a beautiful but fragile young woman, at a vacation resort.
This is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the A6M "Zero" fighter plane. If you are not familiar with the aircraft, fret not! I Wikipedia'd it for you. It started out as an engineering marvel, a spectacular dogfighter that gave an early advantage, but was rendered mostly ineffective as the Allied planes caught up and then surpassed it, so it was repurposed into a kamikaze vehicle.
Yep. This dude's lifelong ambition to create a beautiful piece of engineering and expand his country's aviation capability was co-opted into a death machine. Ain't that a motherfucker?
As an American, it is especially awkward finding Jiro sympathetic since, you know, wrong side and everything, but it's important to know these stories, because otherwise all you get is propaganda from the winners. The film is beautiful, naturally, and the English dub (*spit*) has an incredible voice cast. The Japanese sub is the preferred version and HBO Max has both, but the sub is unavailable on mobile.
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