Synopsis
The narrative is told in a nonlinear fashion. This is likely inspired by the lyrics. As the song describes, the two men do not give up in their efforts to rescue the angel girl, no matter how many times they fail.
The video begins with shots of a peaceful but vacant village, overgrown with weeds, with the enormous concrete sarcophagus of a covered-over nuclear reactor in the background.
As the music begins, the scene changes to a sci-fi style nighttime military-style police raid on a cult. Futuristic flying troop transports crash through the windows of a tower topped by the gigantic neon-lit eyes and occupied by armed defenders. Anti-terrorist policemen exchange gunfire and grenades with cultists whose hoods depict an enormous eye, similar to those of the Dorok priests in Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga. The police are victorious; as they sort through the bodies of the cultist, two of them find what appears to be a girl, lying unconscious, with large feathered wings on her back.
The scene changes again, now to bright daylight and blue sky. Two men are driving an old Alfa Romeo down an empty road. One of them helps the girl up; she spreads her wings; he holds her hands as she gains confidence. With a nudge she is airborne, but she seems hesitant and afraid as he lets go.
The scene changes back to the discovery of the girl in the tower (bypassing the original sequence of the raid leading up to this point). Only at this point are the two men revealed to be the two from the vehicle in the previous sequence. The two men carefully carry her out and offer her something to drink, and are encouraged when she sips. But a team of scientists wearing radiation suits arrives and quickly takes the girl away after placing her into a sterile container.
The two men are shown relaxing later, but thinking of the girl and looking somewhat morose — haunted by the fate this girl will suffer. The two plan — they are shown working on various aspects of this, then the pair wearing radiation suits and breaking into a laboratory and rescuing the girl. This triggers the lab's alarms, and the three of them escape in an armored truck. They drive along a narrow suspended roadway over what appears to be a domed city built in a crater. Police hovercrafts are in pursuit, and one of them comes very low to the roadway right in front of the fugitives. When the protagonists try to force their way through underneath the hovercraft's belly, the resulting pressure tears down the roadway, sending the truck plummeting. The winged girl refuses to let go of the hands of her rescuers, and the three of them presumably fall to their deaths.
A brief montage of previous shots follows: the discovery of the girl, the girl flying through a blue sky, the two men rescuing the girl from the laboratory and stealing the truck, the truck plummeting amidst the wreckage of the roadway. But this time, as if inexplicably the main characters had gotten a second chance, the truck fires stabilising thrusters and makes a short flight into the side of an apartment tower. The men and the girl escape; they are seen in their sports car racing through a dark tunnel underneath signs which bear radiation symbols and read (in kanji) "Beware Of Sunlight" and "Survival Not Guaranteed", then finally they emerge into daylight, passing through a field of nuclear cooling towers and past a sign which reads "Extreme Danger." Except for the green fields and trees, there are no other signs of life.
As the car speeds down the road, one of the men helps the girl up, and she spreads her wings and gives them a grateful smile; he kisses her hand, and the other winks in farewell. Soon, she is gone drifting upward into the sky. Briefly, a major urban cityscape is seen beyond the trees. From a bird's-eye view, we see the shape of the car veering off the road and slowing to a stop in the grass. Hayao Miyazaki implies the two policemen might not be able to return to their old life, however; whether this is because of the authorities being on their trail or because of potential radioactive poisoning is unknown.
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