On Your Mark

Synopsis

The song “On Your Mark” portrays two people running toward the future, never giving up however many times they fail, but Miyazaki turned it into a story set in a future after the end of the century, poisoned by radiation, in which two policemen modelled on CHAGE and ASKA save a girl with wings.

The setting is a city of a future after the end of the century, where the ozone layer has been destroyed and dangerous sunlight pours down, nuclear accidents have contaminated the surface with radioactive material, and humankind has come to live underground.

A squad of armed police storms the base of a suspicious religious group and takes it after a fierce gunfight.

Searching the inside of the destroyed base, the two policemen who are the heroes find a girl on the verge of death, and the girl has wings (from here on, for convenience, the policeman who looks like ASKA is called “Policeman A” and the one who looks like CHAGE “Policeman B”).

The two hurry to carry the girl outside, and Policeman A gives her water. Their joy that she is conscious is short-lived: a team of scientists forcibly takes the girl away as a research sample, shut in a capsule. The two have no choice but to back down for the moment, but they cannot forget the girl and try to take her back.