Sky Crawlers : L'Armée du ciel

It's astonishing how much heart and soul writer Hiroshi Mori and Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshii managed to incorporate in this gently told, unique story despite the remote, but at the same time also strangely deep nature of it's characters. The discreet use of the beautiful visuals serves the movie - not the other way round - and though pretty slow-paced and without major cataclysms Sky Crawlers manages to keep up a fascinating and unique atmosphere till the very end.

I think everyone with a heart and an open mind will recognize this one as a rare gem.

7/10

As another reviewer wrote earlier, I have little doubt that the film's mediocre rating is due to its slowness in developing the thesis that Mamoru Oshii hides behind the plot. It is a film that demands patience, so much in fact, that I find it directly to blame for the negative reviews. It is not a viewer's fault to lose interest when they have already seen more than half of a film and the fog that shrouds the plot remains as dense as it was at the beginning.

Nevertheless, with proper time, the doubts and issues that may have seemed incoherent are explained with efficiency and appeal. What initially looks inconsistent, once the viewer is given the background information, makes complete sense. The characters' erratic behavior, the anachronistic war machines, the nonsensical dialogues: it all makes sense in just a few minutes through an almost epiphany.

The film, very much in Oshii's style, raises philosophical questions revolving around existentialism and the ontology of human beings: what is the role of war in society, are our memories what make us what we are, what is the point of continuing to live day by day? All these questions are treated by the director in a plot that is unnecessarily slow, but still fascinating.

The Sky Crawlers forced me to reexamine the mindset I have when I watch an anime film. When I sit down to watch these types of works, I expect clichéd characters, fantastically absurd plots and flat thoughts that pretend to have depth. While there are plenty of exceptions, it is undeniable that many anime productions use characters and formulas as predictable as Hollywood blockbusters. The Sky Crawlers, to a prejudiced viewer like me, may at first seem like just another film in the long line of those Japanese animated features that rely more on the beauty of their art than their content. This is not the case. This is a deep and thoughtful work that, sadly, moves at a slower pace than what contemporary moviegoers are used to. I insist: the plot is spectacular and not overly complex, it is just slow.

I found the view of wars as an instrument to remind us of what it means to be peaceful to be an interesting idea. The concept of Killdre who can't (won't?) become adults were also quite interesting, but I felt they could've done much more with this story.

Throughout the film, the main character repeated that there were no reason to become adults, but what was the real difference between childhood and adulthood? Children and their immaturity come from inexperience. Even if their bodies never grew up, wouldn't their minds continue to grow into an adult? I wish they had explained this more because the Killdre pilots in this movie didn't behave that different compared to adult pilots. To me, it seemed like being children had no real advantages other than better reflexes and lighter weight for the planes.

They did a fine job with the revival problems of Killdre, that they can't escape the war even through death, but I wished they focused more on the subject.

Animation on this was quite disastrous in my opinion. In this day and age, many anime series mix 3D-CGI and traditional cel animation. This style of animation never worked for me, since the hand-drawn cel animation seems like laziness behind 3D backgrounds, especially since there were many 'frozen' frames where a character don't move for about 5 seconds. Such wide gap in animation quality within an anime movie seems unnatural, and I believe the CG technology in Japan has not reached a convincing level in anime yet. Some plane fight scenes were quite cool, but the following cel animation in the base always seemed awkward afterwards.

Truly great animated films in recent years like "Byousoku 5cm" and reputable anime studios like Ghibli and Mad House still use computer graphics only to assist the hand-drawn special effects without using protrusive 3D-CGI in 2-dimensional background or characters. Japanese anime creators need to wait until they have enough budget and technology to match current Pixar films before using CGI in their anime films.

I really liked the character development in this movie, but I believe this film had a lot of space for improvements.

It is hard to write a coherent review of The Sky Crawlers without revealing major plot twists, but I will try. I advise you to see the movie without reading too much about it beforehand so that you can enjoy and think about what happens without bias. Do stick around for the epilog after the closing credits.

The Sky Crawlers is a thought-provoking alternate history that will appeal to literate science fiction fans. Mainstream audiences will undoubtedly be bored and confused by what happens in the film. The film examines weighty themes such as the meaning of war and the nature of memories. I was reminded of the recent death of famous amnesiac "HM" while watching The Sky Crawlers, as some of the characters suffer from a similar type of memory loss. Why they suffer this loss is one of the twists that will either spark heated discussion or bewilderment afterward. Like most good science fiction, The Sky Crawlers presents somewhat ambiguous characters and ideas. It is up to the viewer to interpret the meaning.

What worked: The CGI aerial combat sequences were amazing—dizzying and spectacular, with intricately designed air vehicles that spurred the imagination. The characters' emotional depths were thoroughly mined—although not always pleasantly so. The character design and art direction were top notch—the CGI segments were almost photo-realistic, and the 2D segments were beautifully drawn and lighted, too. The Basset Hound was cute.

What didn't work: The pacing was slow—this is a psychological drama, not an action adventure—and could have benefited from some judicious editing. Although I found the transitions from CGI to 2D and back to be perfectly fine, particularly after getting into the rhythm of the film, many viewers will likely find the transitions jarring.

If your tastes run more towards Blade Runner or A Clockwork Orange, you will probably appreciate The Sky Crawlers. If your tastes lean more towards Star Wars or The Incredibles, I advise you to see something else.

The Sky Crawlers: (Sukai Kurora):7 out of 10: This is an adult anime...In fact this is a very adult anime. No there isn’t copious amounts of fan service or blood. (In fact the film is rated PG-13 primarily for smoking.) Instead Sky Crawlers has a very quiet, reserved pacing. It’s a two hour anime that feels like it clocks in at over three hours. Not boring per se but very deliberately paced with adult conversations, adult music and an overall adult tone that reminds one of Before Sunrise with occasional airborne dogfight to break up the relationship introspection.

The plot is both light (I will reveal that here) and quite heavy (I will let the movie itself surprise you with its philosophical underpinnings). On the light side is there is a special group of teenagers who are pilots that never grow old. The movie refers to them as Kildren and much is made of how they are just kids; but if you drive, fly, have sex, drink, and smoke a pack every 10 minutes of screen time your are at best a teen and in reality a young adult.

These Kildren fight in retro WW2 style aircraft against each other in an air war with no winners and no other casualties all to apparently satiate the public’s need for conflict. (Think Star Trek’s “A Taste of Armageddon”). There is a new pilot, a wingman and a couple of androgynous love interests with deep secret pasts. There is even a Red Baron character rumored to be an adult and a constant source of tension and conversation in both the dogfights and on the ground.

The Animation is simply awe inspiring. The CGI work is better than many a Hollywood blockbuster and the 2 dimensional cell shaded characters fit both the pacing and the mood of the film. The attention to detail is quite amazing overall.

Overall the film is recommended for fans of adult drama and serious anime. I do confess I did wish for longer sky battles, more realistic violence and even some fan service. It is ironic that one of the most adult anime I have ever seen suffers from a lack of adult thrills with its PG-13 rating.