The two policemen drive the winged girl to safety.

"On Your Mark" is a song by the Japanese rock duo Chage & Aska. At their request, animator Miyazaki Hayao produced a music video for the song. The music video was created in 1995, is entirely animated, has no dialogue, and runs for about six and a half minutes. Image File history File links On_your_mark. ... Image File history File links On_your_mark. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... CHAGE and ASKA are a Japanese musical duo, consisting of singer-songwriters CHAGE (Shuuji Shibata) and ASKA (Shigeaki Miyazaki), both from Fukuoka. ... Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿 Miyazaki Hayao) (born January 5, 1941) is one of the most famous and respected creators of Anime, or Japanese animated films. ... A music video (also promo) is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Synopsis

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. A village is a human residential settlement commonly found in rural areas. ... A weed is an unwanted plant. ... Pouring a concrete floor for a commercial building, (slab-on-grade) Installing rebar in a floor slab during a concrete pour For other uses, see Concrete (disambiguation). ... Core of a small nuclear reactor used for research. ...

As the music picks up, the scene changes to a nighttime military raid on a religious group. Futuristic flying troop transports crash through the windows of a tower topped by the neon slogan "God Is Watching You," and anti-terrorist policemen exchange gunfire and grenades with people 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. Closeup of a neon tube. ... Terrorism is a controversial term with multiple definitions. ... For the band, see The Police. ... A hand grenade is a hand-held bomb, made to be thrown by a soldier. ...

The scene changes again, now to bright daylight and blue sky. The two men are driving a sports car down an empty road. One of them helps the girl up; she spreads her wings; he holds her hands as she gains confidence, and finally with a nudge she is airborne. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Back to the discovery of the girl in the tower: 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 whisks the girl away after placing her into a sterile container. A HAZMAT suit is an overall garment worn by people to protect themselves from hazardous materials or substances. ...

The two men are shown relaxing later, but thinking about the girl and looking somewhat morose, until they have some sort of realization - something as beautiful, as miraculous as this young girl, should be free to fly, to shine - not be held in a security field and have tests run on her. The two hatch a plan - we see them 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 we see the three of them escaping in an armored truck. They drive along a narrow suspended roadway over what appears to be a domed city built in a crater. Police craft pursue them, and one of them collides with the roadway and destroys it, sending the truck plummeting. The winged girl refuses to let go of the hands of her rescuers, and so the three of them presumably fall to their deaths. Biochemistry laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... An armored car (US English) or armoured car (British English) is one of several types of wheeled armored vehicles: a civilian bullet-proof passenger car, a military wheeled armored vehicle, or a special-purpose armored cargo vehicle for transporting valuables. ... The domed city is a recurring concept in science fiction. ...

A 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." Besides the green fields and trees, there are no other signs of life. A disused railway tunnel now converted to pedestrian and bicycle use, near Houyet, Belgium A tunnel is an underground passage. ... Radiation in physics is a process of emission of energy or particles. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Kanji (Japanese: ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), arabic numerals, and the Roman alphabet. ... Cooling towers are structures for cooling water or other working medium to near-ambient temperature. ...

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 she is gone drifting upward into the sky.

Analysis

The video was inspired in part by the Chernobyl accident of 1986, in which a damaged reactor had to be covered with concrete and the surrounding area evacuated. The suicide cult is likely to be inspired by the cult Heaven's Gate. Miyazaki is known to be atheist^{[citation needed]}, and this could be his expression of worry towards not just the influence of cults, but all religions in general. The nuclear power plant at Chernobyl prior to the completion of the sarcophagus. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Cult suicide is that phenomenon by which some religious groups, in this context often referred to as cults, have led to their membership committing suicide. ... Heavens Gate was the name of a UFO religion co-led by Marshall Applewhite, Mitchell Huffman, and Bonnie Nettles (until her death). ... For information about the band, see Atheist (band). ...

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. // A scene from Cowboy Bebop (1998) Anime ), which is short for the English word animation, in the western world most popularly refers to the medium of animation originating in Japan, with distinctive character and background aesthetics that visually set it apart from other forms of animation (e. ...

The winged girl bears close resemblance to the princess from another Miyazaki film, Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind. Nausicaä flying her Mehve over the Valley of Wind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ Kaze no tani no Naushika) is a graphic novel (manga) and 1984 film by Japanese writer, illustrator, and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. ...

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. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

External links

• On Your Mark on the Nausicaa.net fansite - detailed information, links and song lyrics
• On Your Mark at the Internet Movie Database
• On Your Mark Fansite

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about actors, films, television shows, television stars, video games and production crew personnel. ...