General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Wings of Rean (リーンの翼)

The Wings of Rean (リーンの翼, Rīn no Tsubasa) is a six-episode Japanese web anime produced by Sunrise, written and chief-directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and distributed over the internet from December 10, 2005 to September 8, 2006¹. It adapts Tomino's novel of the same title, published from 1983 to 1986, and is set in Byston Well, the parallel world he created for Aura Battler Dunbine²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Format	Web anime, 6 episodes of about 25 minutes each; distributed December 10, 2005 to September 8, 2006¹^•⁴
Creative lead	Original story and chief direction by Yoshiyuki Tomino; scripts by Tomino and Takao Koyama²
Setting	Byston Well, the otherworld of Aura Battler Dunbine, reinterpreted with a new design concept and Japanese-style art direction¹
Main characters	Asap Suzuki (voiced by Jun Fukuyama), Lux Sakomizu (Yū Shimamura), Shinjirō Sakomizu (Rikiya Koyama), Amaragan Rudol (Yū Nakano)¹
Home video	Six DVD volumes from April 2006; first Blu-ray BOX released March 25, 2026, 213 minutes, 16,500 yen⁵
Theme song	"MY FATE" performed by ANNA (Anna Tsuchiya)²
Novel source	Tomino's novel, 6 volumes published by Kadokawa from January 1984 to February 1986⁶

Spoilers

Story and setting

The story follows Asap Suzuki, a boy living in Iwakuni, a town with an American military base, born to an American base commander father and a Japanese mother. He meets Lux Sakomizu, a girl who carries the "shoes of the Wings of Rean," and is summoned to the otherworld Byston Well. Lux's father Sakomizu, who rules the Hojo kingdom there, was originally a Japanese military man, and Asap ends up fighting to restrain the king's ambition¹.

Sakomizu is a former kamikaze pilot who was summoned to Byston Well during a special attack mission in the final years of World War II, and he longs to return to the surface world, driving the war that forms the plot³^•¹. The narrative moves between the surface world and Byston Well and back again, intertwining parent-child conflict, feelings toward homeland, the bitterness of defeat, and ambition¹. In the final episode, Sakomizu reaches the surface world and, despairing at how much Tokyo has changed, unleashes destruction with his aura battler Ōkaō, while Asap and Lux race to calm him⁴.

The title refers to the wings of light that appear for the legendary hero spoken of in Byston Well; a qualified person, such as a Holy Warrior, manifests them by wearing shoes of the same name⁸. The Byston Well of this work is treated as a separate world from the one in Aura Battler Dunbine⁸.

Production and release

The series was produced by Sunrise's second studio as a completely new original animation for internet distribution, a format that drew attention at the time as an early example of a broadband-first anime¹^•⁷. Bandai Channel began advance streaming of the first episode in December 2005, and the six DVD volumes were released from April 2006⁵. A DVD-BOX titled The Wings of Rean COMPLETE followed, released between April 26, 2006 and July 27, 2007 under the Bandai Visual label².

The staff assembled around Tomino included okama as visual concept designer, Masafumi Kudo for character design and chief animation direction, Tamotsu Shinohara and Takumi Sakura for mechanical design, Ikeda Shigemi as art director, Kazuhiro Wakabayashi as sound director, and Yasuo Higuchi as composer².

Relationship to Aura Battler Dunbine

The Wings of Rean shares the Byston Well framework and aura battler robots with Aura Battler Dunbine (1983), but it is a separate story with a new cast; Shō Zama, the hero of the earlier series, does not appear⁹. The visual treatment departs deliberately from the earlier show: buildings, aura ships, and costumes carry a Japanese aesthetic, the mecha designs lean toward an insect-like look, and the machines lack the aura converter and magic-mirror cockpit of the Dunbine-era designs¹⁰. The official materials describe the series as the first fantasy robot action set in Byston Well since Dunbine, using the otherworld under a new interpretation to reflect contemporary Japan¹.

The novel source also differs from the anime: in the novel, Sakomizu is the protagonist, and the story ends with his death at Amaragan's hands and his will merging with the Wings of Rean to return to Earth, preventing a third atomic bombing of Japan, an ending the anime does not follow³.

Related media and later releases

A manga adaptation of the OVA ran in Gundam Ace from the December 2005 issue to the March 2007 issue¹¹. The original six-volume novel has not been reprinted; a 2006 revival campaign on Fukkan.com secured a reprint of an analysis and settings collection but reported no prospect of reprinting the novels themselves¹².

The series made its first crossover game appearance in Super Robot Wars UX, joined alongside Aura Battler Dunbine; its units are small, agile, and lack the aura barrier typical of Dunbine-series machines¹³. Its theme song "MY FATE" was adopted as battle music in that game and in Super Robot Wars X-Ω⁸.

For the twentieth anniversary of the anime, Bandai Namco Filmworks released the first Blu-ray BOX on March 25, 2026, collecting all six episodes on one disc at 213 minutes, with a newly produced opening sequence made under Tomino's direction and a booklet of new interviews with Tomino, okama, Kudo, Shinohara, Jun Fukuyama, and Rikiya Koyama⁵. A twentieth-anniversary screening event with a talk show was held in December 2025¹⁴.

Reception

Viewer ratings on Japanese databases have been moderate: Rakuten lists a composite score of 3.4 out of 5¹⁵. A Filmarks reviewer praised the series as a good work despite the density of its six episodes, noting that character relationships must be read from speech patterns and that the story is driven by King Sakomizu and covered by Asap¹⁶.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026