This feature was first shown only as a movie in the Expo 85 (the International Exposition, a world's fair exhibition that had its theme as "Science and Technology for Man at Home") at Tsukuba Ibaraki, Japan, in 1985 (Tsukuba Ibaraki was the location of Tsukuba Science City, a city with futuristic technology whose development was planned in the 1980s).
Anime creator Leiji Matsumoto originally intended this film to be an educational-like fable, involving real information about Earth and outer space.