Toward the Terra [地球へ… Terra e…] (1980)
AKA Chikyū e…
Starring Junichi Inoue, Masaya Oki, Kumiko Akiyoshi, Akira Kamiya, Chiyoko Kawashima, Eiko Masuyama, Kyōko Kishida, Mami Koyama, Masako Ikeda, Tōru Furuya, Yasuo Hisamatsu
Directed by Hideo Onchi
When I first ordered this film, I had no idea just how old it was. It’s rather unusual for such an old anime to get an American release. It was probably meant to coincide with the release of the much more recent TV adaptation. At any rate, this was a pleasant surprise for me. I am very fond of older animation, and it made me want to watch the film even more. In the end I’m glad I picked this one, because it was quite a good film.
As the title implies, this is a sci-fi epic about a quest to return to good old Earth. In the future, humans exiled themselves from their homeworld once it became uninhabitable from pollution. It sounds like an environmental awareness after school special, but this is just the basic setting, rather than a major theme. The real story is about a society completely regulated by computers that stifle human emotions.