Hermes: Ai wa Kaze no Gotoku

This anime is about the Greek god Hermes, who first tries to rescue Aphrodite and later free Crete from the tyranny of king Minos.

This certainly looks old, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the art. The animation was pleasantly done, though nothing extraordinary. I was pleased to see they had been careful when animating the horses (too many animes have horses that look like big dogs). Stylewise, it was nice to see something off main stream.

I did enjoy the music for the instrumental parts, but I must say the few songs this anime had were awful. The lyrics were really cheesy and ... beyond cliché, and they made me wish they would have ended soon. I don't understand why they had inserted those songs there in the first place. Maybe they were after something Disney-like?

I liked the story for its battles and mythology connections, though I would have wished for more development and screen time for the supporting characters. Some of the more "artistic" parts of the film were maybe a bit too long, which made them boring, but they didn't bother me that much because battle would soon take over.

Overall the story could have used some more depth. It was really straightforward without much deviation from the main plot. It was more of a compact record of Hermes' life than a complex story. I don't know how much of it is based on the real myth of Hermes, though, which might explain the drifting.

Perhaps, to commemorate the life of Ryuho Okawa, we chose to watch the first installment of the Happy Science Religion (cough cult cough) movies. Now, this is not the first Happy Science film I have seen, and I can say that both "The Golden Laws" and "The Laws of the Sun" are far superior to Hermes' horrifically placed story.

If I were to critique Hermes legitimately, it would be an insult to anime as a medium. It has horrific pacing, ranging between several minutes of Hermes pondering on a hill to climactic action sequences ending in thirty seconds flat. There are a few (abysmal) musical ... numbers that have no reason to be interjected in the story, but at least, they have a bit of that trademarked 90s flare. (My main musical complaint, however, is the lack of smooth jazz. Needs more jazz.) The plot is MIA; I searched and searched for the entire two hours, but it was nowhere to be found.

If I were to critique Hermes through the lens of bad anime, well, it would be an insult to the artistry of bad anime. Hermes can't hold a candle to anything from Ghost Stories to Garzey's Wing to Gibiate to MD Geist. The only way to properly assess Hermes is only as a Happy Science film, and even then, it falls short. What is Hermes' purpose in the world's lore? What is his relation to the reincarnation of El Cantare? Where even is El Cantare? Hermes is nothing more than a fool playing god.

I completed the movie approximately two hours ago, and I can barely remember what happened, but here is my possibly inaccurate summary:
- A golden CGI feather floats down from the heavens to ancient Greece.
- It is prophesized that the king of Greece will be born! And then, Hermes pops out of the womb!
- There is this King Minos who is bad! And his wife gives birth to a minotaur (spoiler alert: the minotaur gets like sixty seconds of screen time later until he is crushed under rocks). He is trying to take over Greece and is taking prisoners from different lands or something.
- Hermes is older now, and he is really cool and has a white horse, while everyone else has lame brown horses.
- People think he should get married, and he starts stalking this pretty girl named Aphrodite who for some reason is locked away in this tower on an island.
- She is also in love with him, even though she's only seen him from the distance as he tries to row his way to the island.
- She gets whisked away by Hermes on his second visit to the island and then they get married!
- Hermes is visited by Ophealis, who is the god of creation (I don't remember this part of Greek Mythology). And he's like "Bro, you've gotta save Greece! King Minos is bad!"
- So Hermes tells some guy that they should ally with the other Greek places to defeat King Minos' army.
- He goes and sees this chad Theseus who has a bowl cut. I think Theseus and some others pretend to be prisoners and taken to Minos' castle. They team up with Minos' daughter.
- Army sequences. The castle burns down. The bad guys die. Yay! Theseus was literally like "Minos' daughter just lost her brother and her parents...I want to marry her." Because ancient Greek dudes want to get married to strange girls after knowing them for like twenty-four hours.
- Ophealis visits Hermes again and is like "You are me, and I am you." And gives him this staff that grants wishes, but can't grant your personal desires. So Hermes helps out the townspeople (but what if that was his desire all along?).
- Lots of pondering happens.
- Aphrodite wants to carry Hermes' baby, but they have been married for like seven years and hasn't gotten pregnant. So she does the very smart thing of trying to run away and not talking to Hermes about this. But she gets about two-hundred feet outside of the city and this spirit lady shoots in her in the tit with an arrow and is like "You will have a baby boy!" And she does just that.
- Some fucking fairies visit Hermes, give him the winged shoes, and then they leave the physical realm.
- They go to the actual gateway to heaven, except it's more like a psychedelic trip.
- For some reason, it's important that Hermes knows that mermaids are endangered on earth, because people stopped loving the ocean or something?
- Hermes and the fairies are sucked into the pits of hell where Hermes fights Minos as he's trying to take over the world.

Yeah, so basically if you want to watch a bad anime, don't watch this. If you want to watch a weird anime produced by a cult, don't watch this.

Praise be to El Cantare!