On Your Mark

"On Your Mark"
Single by Chage and Aska
Released	July 15, 1995
Length	6:29

"On Your Mark" (オン・ユア・マーク, On Yua Māku^?) is a song by the Japanese rock duo Chage & Aska. At their request, animator Hayao Miyazaki produced a music video for the song. The music video was created in 1995, is entirely animated, has no dialogue and runs for six and a half minutes. The song was used in advertisements for NEC.

Synopsis

The narrative is told in a nonlinear fashion. This is likely inspired by the lyrics.^[1] As the song describes, the two men do not give up in their efforts to rescue the winged girl, no matter how many times they fail.^[2]

The video begins with shots of a peaceful but vacant village, overgrown with weeds, with the enormous concrete sarcophagus of a covered-over nuclear reactor in the background.

As the music begins, the scene changes to a sci-fi style nighttime military-style police raid on a cult. Futuristic flying troop transports crash through the windows of a tower topped by the gigantic neon-lit eyes and occupied by armed defenders. Anti-terrorist policemen exchange gunfire and grenades with cultists whose hoods depict an enormous eye, similar to those of the Dorok priests in Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga. The police are victorious; as they sort through the bodies of apparent mass suicide victims, two of them find what appears to be a girl, lying unconscious, with large feathered wings on her back.

The scene changes again, now to bright daylight and blue sky. Two men are driving an old Alfa Romeo down an empty road. One of them helps the girl up; she spreads her wings; he holds her hands as she gains confidence. With a nudge she is airborne, but she seems hesitant and afraid as he lets go.

The scene changes back to the discovery of the girl in the tower (bypassing the original sequence of the raid leading up to this point). Only at this point are the two men revealed to be the two from the vehicle in the previous sequence. The two men carefully carry her out and offer her something to drink, and are encouraged when she sips. But a team of scientists wearing radiation suits arrives and quickly takes the girl away after placing her into a sterile container.

The two men are shown relaxing later, but thinking of the girl and looking somewhat morose — haunted by the fate this girl will suffer. The two plan — they are shown working on various aspects of this, then the pair wearing radiation suits and breaking into a laboratory and rescuing the girl. This triggers the lab's alarms, and the three of them escape in an armored truck. They drive along a narrow suspended roadway over what appears to be a domed city built in a crater. Police hovercrafts are in pursuit, and one of them comes very low to the roadway right in front of the fugitives. When the protagonists try to force their way through underneath the hovercraft's belly, the resulting pressure tears down the roadway, sending the truck plummeting. The winged girl refuses to let go of the hands of her rescuers, and the three of them presumably fall to their deaths.

A brief montage of previous shots follows: the discovery of the girl, the girl flying through a blue sky, the two men rescuing the girl from the laboratory and stealing the truck, the truck plummeting amidst the wreckage of the roadway. But this time, the truck fires stabilising thrusters and makes a short flight into the side of an apartment tower. The men and the girl escape; they are seen in their sports car racing through a dark tunnel underneath signs which bear radiation symbols and read (in kanji) "Beware Of Sunlight" and "Survival Not Guaranteed", then finally they emerge into daylight, passing through a field of nuclear cooling towers and past a sign which reads "Extreme Danger." Except for the green fields and trees, there are no other signs of life. This lush vegetation, however, hints the radioactivity might have subsided long ago, allowing nature to take over.

As the car speeds down the road, one of the men helps the girl up, and she spreads her wings and gives them a grateful smile; he kisses her hand, and the other winks in farewell. Soon, she is gone drifting upward into the sky. Briefly, a major urban cityscape is seen beyond the trees. From a bird's-eye view, we see the shape of the car veering off the road and slowing to a stop in the grass. Hayao Miyazaki implies the two policemen might not be able to return to their old life, however; whether this is because of the authorities being on their trail or because of potential radioactive poisoning is unknown.^[3]

Characters

Chage Chage, which can be guessed is his name since it is on his coffee mug, is one of the two policemen who rescue the angel girl. From what can be seen, he is funny, enjoys taking risks and knows much about technology.

Aska Aska is the other policeman. He is more serious than his partner. It is he who suggests they save the angel girl. He drives the car whenever they need to go somewhere.

Angel girl The angel girl may or may not be an actual angel, but she does have two large, white, feathery wings sprouting out of her back. She is found by the two policemen in a religious cult's headquarters. It is possible she was given her wings by the cultists. She is unconscious for nearly the entire film, but in her waking moments, she is revealed to be grateful for what the policemen do for her.

Analysis

The video was inspired partly by the Chernobyl accident of 1986, in which a damaged reactor had to be covered with concrete and the surrounding area evacuated. The two men are meant to look like the singers Chage and Aska themselves. One of the men (wearing a naval cap) is depicted as brave and caring, while the other (wearing a helmet and dark goggles; apparently Chage as implied by the text on his coffee mug) is depicted as being somewhat goofy, but warm-hearted. This kind of pairing is common to anime.

The winged girl resembles a princess from another Miyazaki film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The theme of the film is notable in that Princess Nausicaä studies and takes samples from the Toxic Jungle, a lethal forest contaminated and mutated after the apocalyptic "Seven Days of Fire."

Alternate version

There is another version of this video which, instead of having "On Your Mark" as backing music, has the English version of the song — "Castles in the Air", which is available on Chage & Aska's English-language album One Voice: The Songs of Chage & Aska. This version of the music video was thought by many fans in Asia to be the intended version of the video because it was the version publicized originally.

The version of the video on the Ghibli ga Ippai Short Short DVD collection allows the animation to be played with either "On Your Mark" or "Castles in the Air" as the backing music.

References

1. ^ Lyrics translation, Nausicaa.net
2. ^ On Your Mark FAQ
3. ^ (plain text) On your mark interview, Nausicä, http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/oym/interview_oym.txt .

External links

• On Your Mark at the Internet Movie Database
• On Your Mark (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia