Directed by Ikko Ohno, a pioneering early computer graphics artist from Japan, The Flying Luna Clipper (1987) feels like stepping into a stranger’s half-remembered dream. Ono and a team of digital artists were hired by Sony to create promotional materials for the LaserDisc, then a new form of home entertainment technology, and ran wild with the opportunity. They created a surreal, highly experimental 8-bit feature film—the first ever made on the MSX microcomputer, a system primarily used for video game development—with the same energy as an early children’s point-and-click adventure game.
The loose plot follows a group of “great dreamers”—a mysterious snowman in sunglasses who can change his outfit at will, a disruptive duck, and a cast of anthropomorphic fruits including a mother tomato and her small child—as they embark on the maiden voyage of the titular flying boat, an homage to the infamous handful of Martin M-130s built in the mid-1930s, all of which crashed by 1945. Our dreamers’ flight departs from Honolulu, hopping from island to island as they cruise across the Pacific, watching surreal short films on a 200-inch television screen and indulging in touristy Polynesian activities along the way. It’s less a narrative and more a series of vignettes tied together by recurring symbols: the Holose Cross, a mysterious yellow bird, mosquitoes, and more.
There is no attempt to ground dream logic aboard the Luna Clipper. The film is playfully indulgent, pulling every animation trick it can out of the 8-bit MSX microcomputer. Paradoxically, the MSX’s technical limitations fueled its creativity, imposing boundaries that kept its surrealism in check. It’s easy to dismiss The Flying Luna Clipper as nothing more than a tech demo, but that would miss the point. Beyond a time capsule of early CGI experimentation, it reflects a moment where imagination and burgeoning technologies collided, wholly unburdened by the demands of commercial storytelling. Sony may have intended it to advertise the LaserDisc, but Ono and his team created something far more memorable: a playful, hypnotic journey through an unlikely medium that hints at a future where the line between film and game design has blurred.
The Flying Luna Clipper screens tonight, July 22, at Spectacle as part of the series “The Spectacle Beach Episode: Anime No Gogo Selects.”
