# Windaria (ウインダリア)
**Windaria** (ウインダリア) is a Japanese animated fantasy film released theatrically on July 19, 1986, with the original title *Dōwa Meita Senshi Windaria* (童話めいた戦史ウインダリア), also issued in English as *Once Upon a Time* and *Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria*.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) It was produced by Kaname Productions, directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, and written by Keisuke Fujikawa, with voice performances by [Tōru Furuya](https://www.edgepedia.org/toru-furuya), Kazuhiko Inoue, Waka Kanda, and Naoko Matsui.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) The film tells a tragedy of a war between two kingdoms, seen through a young farming couple and through the prince and princess of the opposing states, and its theme is the importance of keeping promises.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Dōwa Meita Senshi Windaria* (童話めいた戦史ウインダリア); English titles include *Once Upon a Time* and *Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria*[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) |
| Release | July 19, 1986, Japan, theatrical[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) |
| Director / writer | Kunihiko Yuyama; original story and screenplay by Keisuke Fujikawa[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) |
| Studio | Kaname Productions, with Idol (あいどる) and Tokyu Recreation as distributors[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) • [3](https://www.fashion-press.net/movies/6969) |
| Character design | Mutsumi Inomata, who also served as animation director[4](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/149837) |
| Runtime | Reported as 101 minutes by the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, 102 minutes by Japanese databases, and 100 minutes by IMDb[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) • [2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) • [5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092218/) |
## Spoilers
### Story
The film opens with mourners watching "the ghost ship", a craft resembling a spaceship, descend from the sky, met by a glowing red bird rising from a laid-out corpse; the ship departs and reappears in the sky during the film as more red birds head toward it.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria)
The setting divides between a rural and an urban world. Saki (called "Blossom" in some versions) is a pastoral village that worships the immense Tree of Windaria, a landscape of unicorns and windmills.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) Izu (Furuya), a young farmer of Saki, is married to Marin (Kanda).[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) Visiting the coastal city-state of Itha, he is present when its sea gate is opened at high tide by a saboteur and manages to close it before serious damage is done.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) The saboteur, captured by Princess Ahnas of Itha (Matsui), confesses under questioning that he was hired by the King of Paro, a mountain kingdom that wishes to add Itha to its territories.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria) Matters are complicated because Ahnas is in love with Prince Jiru of Paro (Inoue); the two meet in a forest and promise that when they reign they will marry and unite their countries.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/)
A senior minister of Paro, impressed by Izu's exploit, recruits him to work for Paro. Izu, hungry for the wealth and glory he cannot find at home, leaves his wife behind despite her objections, promising to return.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) War breaks out between Itha and Paro, and Saki village becomes the battlefield. Izu's plan to open Itha's sea gate and flood the city is adopted by Paro's ministers, and he is rewarded with treasure while lingering in Paro under the influence of a woman named Salem.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) Jiru and Ahnas, forced by their positions to lead their armies and break their promise, meet again in the forest and shoot each other in a double suicide.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) When Izu finally returns to Saki, the village is empty; he meets Marin's ghost, who died in the fighting from a stray bullet while waiting, keeping her promise to stay.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/)
The film's moral frame is explicit: through the two couples, one bound by a promise kept at the cost of life and one by a promise broken for power, the story depicts the importance of promises to human beings.[2](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/) The Science Fiction Encyclopedia calls it a fine anime, visually impressive and well told, though perhaps a little didactic, as moral tales tend to be.[1](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria)
## Production background
Windaria was the major project of Kaname Productions, a studio founded in 1982 by seven members of Ashi Production, including the animators Shigenori Kageyama and Mutsumi Inomata.[6](https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/) Rather than being wholly original, the film adapted a fantasy novel by Keisuke Fujikawa, who had worked with the studio before. The plot was more complex than in comparable productions, running two parallel storylines and drawing significantly on the eighteenth-century collection of tales *Ugetsu Monogatari*, one story of which had earlier been adapted by the live-action director [Kenji Mizoguchi](https://www.edgepedia.org/kenji-mizoguchi) in his 1953 film of the same name.[6](https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/)
The production was ambitious in scale. It carried twenty-four main animators, twice as many as the studio's previous OVAs, though many were beginners who had started under Inomata herself; Atsuko Ishida, later a prominent animator, served as Inomata's assistant on in-between checking.[6](https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/) The film's character designs by Inomata, already known as an illustrator, were noted by reviewers; an IMDb review describes "gorgeous character designs by Inomata Mutsumi" and calls the score one of the most effective in any anime film.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092218/)
## English versions and home video
The film's English-language history is unusually tangled. In 1987 Harmony Gold licensed Windaria for the United States, trimming it from its original running time to 95 minutes. According to director Carl Macek, Harmony Gold was given no scripts or translations of the film and so had little insight into the plot. A review site notes the edit ran to a completely rewritten script aimed at younger audiences, a different soundtrack, and at least 6 to 10 minutes of cut footage, and that no release of the original Japanese film was available in North America.[7](https://themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=476)
Streamline Pictures released the English version, titled *Windaria*, on North American VHS between 1992 and 1993; a planned Image Entertainment laserdisc was never distributed. ADV Films re-released the English version as *Once Upon a Time* on DVD on March 23, 2004.
## Reception and legacy
Windaria did not perform well commercially. Moving from OVAs to a theatrical film was, in one animation history's judgment, the studio's first mistake, and after the film the OVA market became too crowded for Kaname's prospective productions to find an audience. Inomata gradually distanced herself from the studio to work as an illustrator, later designing characters for Bandai Namco's *Tales of* series. Kaname Pro survived by subcontracting until it renamed itself Diva Production and closed after the failure of its 1988 OVA *Watt Poe to Bokura no Ohanashi*.[6](https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/)
Among viewers the film has kept a reputation as a tragedy. IMDb lists a rating of 7.0/10 from 699 votes, and a reviewer there calls it "a deeply moving tragedy" and advises audiences to seek the original Japanese version rather than the American adaptation, which "bears no resemblance to the original Japanese movie apart from the visuals".[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092218/) A contemporary Streamline-era review quoted in an animation-history archive described it as a "beguiling, often pointed" anti-war fantasia in which two kingdoms, the militaristic Shadowlands and the seaside realm of Lunaria, clash over a monopoly on fresh water; those names come from the English version's renaming of Paro and Itha.[8](https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/streamline-pictures-part-17/)
## References
1. [Windaria, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/windaria)
2. [ウインダリア : 作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/68253/)
3. [ウインダリア - 映画情報, Fashion Press](https://www.fashion-press.net/movies/6969)
4. [ウインダリア (1986), allcinema](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/149837)
5. [Windaria (1986), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092218/)
6. [A brief history of Kaname Pro, Animétudes](https://animetudes.com/2021/03/26/a-brief-history-of-kaname-pro/)
7. [THEM Anime Reviews 4.0 - Windaria](https://themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=476)
8. [Streamline Pictures – Part 17, Cartoon Research](https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/streamline-pictures-part-17/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Japanese anime features › Released 1932 to 1998*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license