The Sky Crawlers

Anime: The Sky Crawlers
Overall Rating: C
Genre: Mystery, Action, Drama
Themes: Realism, Military, War

Another highly anticipated movie by Production I.G. called The Sky Crawlers. I was very much looking forward to this film and felt a bit shortened on this. The Dog fighting is out of this world, but the character dimension is very 2D ( I think intentionally).

SPOILERS AHEAD:

Though the backgrounds and vehicles were done in great details, the characters themselves were somewhat flat. No too much shading and flat coloring throughout the movie. I think they wanted it this way to show them as less than human. They seem like they are just clones(?) in the movie and are constantly have some sort of "de ja vue" on things. I was taken back by how the characters resembled those from Ghost in the Shell 2.0. They even have a beagle at military airbase.

We find out during the film that these are "Kildren" that cannot age past adolescence and are used in the war. They will not die unless shot in battle also. One pilot on the other side however is called "Teacher" and is actually the only know adult pilot. He is unbeatable and usually anyone who goes against him looses big time. We watch a dogfight with "Teacher" and see almost everyone loose. We cut to a scene where one of the pilots is landing at a military airstrip. So the lot thickens as he does not remember the last dogfight and is the new guy here.

There is a love affair of sort as we find that one of the Kildren actually had a child - wtf?

You get a feeling that this is a movie watching another movie. I almost seems like everything is sort of hazy and not sure what is truth and falsehoods. As we get further, they get philosophical and talk about how can you know peace if you do not know war. So we find out that these are actually screened fights for entertainment purposes. The "Kildren" were designed just for this reason and such can be re-built as needed. Kind of spooky if you ask me.

I was getting bored by this movie after a while as it seemed to drag on and on and on with no end. I know this was a pretty deep movie, so maybe I was looking more for something that did not make me think (ow - my brain hurts now).

If you enjoy a good mystery and like trying to figure out what is happening in a movie, this is for you. I guess I was expecting something else as I had not done any pre-reading on it. This way I had no expectations during the film.

Here are some screen shots (mostly from animeclick.it):

You can see the difference in dimension

In this scene, you get the spooky truth