Director Kazuo Yamazaki did it anyway back in 1989, when the anime industry was young and strong and full of money to throw at things doomed to failure. The Five Star Stories film is a failure indeed, though not in the expected way.

For one thing, The Five Star Stories isn’t all that hard to understand. Nagano set his vast space opera across the entire Joker Galaxy, but an introduction delivers the important points: in this high-tech civilization, wars are waged by conventional arms as well as giant ornate mecha called Mortar Headds. The pilots of these robots are Headdliners, and they’re aided by Fatimas, artificial women who nonetheless bleed and deliver dewy-eyed gazes. On the planet Addler, Duke Ballanche creates three advanced Fatima daughters: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Instead of snipping the threads of human lives, the trio grows to robot womanhood. Atropos departs on her own, but a local tyrant named Duke Juba seizes Clotho and Lachesis, hatching some strange plot to make Lachesis his own. Fatimas, it would seem, choose their masters in special ceremonies, but Lachesis has free will and won’t choose a master. So she’ll legally revert to Juba’s greasy protection.

A hero arrives in the form of Ladios Sopp, an effeminate Mortar Headd mechanic and an old chum of Ballanche. Crashing on the planet, Sopp hitches a ride with a trader named Voards Viewlard (yes, really), and the two of them make their way to Juba’s palace. Lachesis is about to appear at her sham of a master-selecting ceremony, and her captor has invited dignitaries, Headdliners, and even the Emperor of the Known Universe, Amaterasu dis Gran Grees Eidas IV (yes, REALLY). Sopp’s stake in things runs deeper than a favor to a friend: he knew all of the Fatimas when they were younger, and Lachesis had quite the crush on him.

Did I mention that Nagano’s vision for The Five Star Stories is ambitious? Because it is. His manga maps out star systems, complex empires, aristocratic wars, elaborate costumes, diverse cultures, and, of course, several thing stolen from Star Wars and Dune. So it’s a towering shame that The Five Stars Stories film is just…boring.

Viewlard toasts the eternal plausibility of giant robots.

And it’s not a slow, moody sort of boring. Or an atrociously convoluted sort of boring. No, it’s just a middling adventure yarn. Sopp’s an inoffensive lead and Viewlard’s a hard-drinking Han Solo, but the rest of the characters just flit into the story for brief introductions, appearing simply because they’re in the source material. The film also drops the ball entirely with its villains: Duke Juba’s just a dirty old sack of doughy heart trouble, and his two leering nephews put up no fight whatsoever. They’re a far cry from their obvious Dune inspirations, so don’t look for the anime equivalent of Sting in a speedo.

Yamazaki and his team at least keep everything comprehensible. Even with peripheral characters dropping in unexplained, everything still hinges on Sopp deciding just what Lachesis means to him. Yet the result does Nagano’s manga no favors. Things come down to a clichéd rescue with a last-minute twist that derails all tension in the story and only promises a better one. And while The Five Star Stories manga has a variety of female characters, the film’s devoted mostly to the meek pining of Clotho and Lachesis. The Fatimas suggest some intriguing studies of women as second-class citizens, but the film does nothing with it (or with a glimpse of an unrefined Fatima’s form). Lachesis and Clotho may just as well be real, and they’re both seemingly helpless without men to rescue, protect, and guide them. Yes, the whole dreadful habit of frail anime women squealing “master” was alive and profitable back in 1989.

The Five Star Stories at least looks the part of a grand space opera, with wide-open scenery and some wonderfully detailed machinery. If Nagano’s willowy, giant-eyed characters sometimes have the limited animation so common to the field, they still break into nicely fluid action—the film’s climactic battle may be entirely predictable, but it’s damn pretty to see. It’s an excellent showcase for the early work of animation director and character designer Nobuteru Yuki, who’d later work on The Vision of Escaflowne and the jaw-dropping mastery of Angel Cop.

ADV Films didn’t bother dubbing their release of The Five Star Stories, perhaps realizing that the film’s appeal was limited to fans of Nagano’s manga and well-budgeted ‘80s animation. The Japanese track is perfectly fine, though, and the score gets the job done. As a dub-track brat, however, I’m sad that we’ll never hear ADV regulars like Chris Patton and Brett Weaver say the name “Voards Viewlard” in a serious tone of voice.

Nagano had kind words for The Five Star Stories film, but even ardent followers of his manga can safely skip this adaptation. It’s merely a shiny trinket for those who adore that particular brand of animation that Japan polished up during the late 1980s. I suppose The Five Star Stories deserves credit for turning a complex comic into a short, fairly approachable film. Too bad it's rarely an entertaining one.