It's like Record of Lodoss War in that two kingdoms are warring against each other, but the war itself doesn't break out until the second half of the movie due to rising tensions between the two kingdoms. There's another place called the Village of Blossoms which live near the Tree of Windaria, which the village people pray to when needed. One day, when Itha nearly floods, a man named Izu rushes to close the water gates, saving the town from disaster. But later on, a messenger from Paro invites him to help with a mission and be rewarded with a castle, riches, and women, even though he already has a wife named Marin and a pet Eevee-lookalike named Polipoli. He takes on the job, and Marin decides to wait for him, even as war comes closer. On the other hand, a prince of Paro, Jill (why does he have a girl's name? He's named Roland in the Harmony Gold dub), and a princess of Itha, Ahnas, are in love, and don't like the way things are going. But when war breaks out, things definitely won't be peachy keen for anyone.
There's something I am DYING to get out of the way: I hate every single character, but I love how they're executed. Every major character follows some kind of archetype: the brash, adventurous young man, a meek, submissive girl, a rebellious princess, a bland prince who hates his kingdom, and an evil king. They don't get very much development, and never grow out of their stereotypes. The most egregious example is Marin, who, quite seriously, does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the movie. All she does is sit around and do nothing while bad things are happening. She literally had absolutely no impact on the movie. Heck, you could cut her out altogether and nothing could be lost! Everyone else are just a bunch of one dimensional stereotypes. However! They all have one MAJOR saving grace that I feel the movie accomplished REALLY well: their flaws, and how they lead to their downfall. I won't mention anything for the sake of spoilers, but I absolutely LOVE how their major character flaws are completely realistic and actually have consequences for not just themselves but everyone else around them. Marin does nothing but sit around in a war torn village, Izu goes from one kingdom to another and becomes a money grubbing idiot when he defects to Paro, and Jill's hatred for his father clouds his judgment about the war. Their flaws drive the entire story, and not only do they make the entire story happen, when reality comes crashing down before them, the mistakes they make have grave consequences. I absolutely love that! That is a great way to use a character's flaws and mistakes! Characters in stories have to have flaws that need to be overcome and make mistakes so they can be well rounded characters! I love that!...but the only problem is, none of the characters are even remotely likable at all. It's good to have flawed characters instead of perfect little Mary Sues, but it's another thing to actually make them into good, well rounded, likable characters, with redeemable flaws and imperfections. The characters are basically the movie's biggest dark spot.
Now to get these out of the way: the music and animation are beautiful. Jaw-droppingly gorgeous, the animation is legendary for it's time. There's a ton of detail put into everything, like characters preparing for a battle to simple character movement, and the animators go way out of their way to make the people from Itha and Paro different from each other. I also really love the way they animate explosions and flying ships, especially the scene were Izu plays around with a flying machine for the first time. The music is also very wonderful, with some Yoko Kanno-esque orchestral tracks, even though I did find some pieces that I felt were a bit too peppy and bouncy for certain scenes. Also some things I didn't like were the evil king and a random nipple shot early on (I really need to stop being so sensitive about these things). It's definitely not a perfect movie, and it could have been better if it made it's characters more than just a bunch of one dimensional stereotypes, but I can see how this movie made an impact on the early otaku community when anime was just barely making a blip in the US. It's well animated, it's grim, it doesn't have a happy ending, and it's characters are so annoyingly but wonderfully flawed.
I don't hate the movie. I acknowledge everything it does right, and GOD, some things it does right are absolutely wonderful! But it could have been so much better if the characters were more likable.
