Uru in Blue

Uru in Blue (Japanese: 蒼きウル, Hepburn: Aoki Uru), also known as Blue Uru,^[1] is an unproduced Japanese animated science fiction film project by Gainax intended as a sequel to their 1987 film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Aoki Uru was originally planned to be directed by Hideaki Anno and scripted by Hiroyuki Yamaga, with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto serving as its chief animation director and character designer. During 1992–93, the Aoki Uru creative team produced a complete storyboard, a partial script, and a large collection of designs and pre-production art for the film; however, the project had been initiated without a secured budget, and its development occurred within a period of personal, financial, and managerial crises at Gainax that contributed to the indefinite suspension of work on Aoki Uru in July 1993.

Aoki Uru co-producer Yasuhiro Takeda has argued that the themes and circumstances surrounding the film project influenced the creation of Anno's TV anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, the planning for which began in the same month that Aoki Uru was put on hold.^[2] In the years following 1993, Gainax has made occasional announcements regarding a revival of the Aoki Uru concept, this time to be directed by Yamaga, with Sadamoto remaining attached to the project, including a multimedia proposal in the late 1990s, and the formal announcement of an English name for the film, Uru in Blue, at the 2013 Tokyo Anime Fair. In 2018, the Uru in Blue project was transferred from Gainax to Gaina, a different corporate entity and subsidiary of the Kinoshita Group, with the aim of a worldwide release of the film in 2022; an essay published at the end of 2022 described Yamaga as currently working on the project.