Sky Crawlers : L'Armée du ciel

I'll admit, it was difficult to get into the right mood to watch "Sky Crawlers." I was expecting one thing, a war film, and while there were moments of that, I found myself confronted with a world full of characters with human concerns, and a strict atmosphere that called upon the audience to pay attention to the details.

Having watched and enjoyed other films by Oshii (this one most resembling "Avalon" in tone and theme), I knew that I'd be in for something demanding and stoic, but I was also surprised by just how initially uncharismatic the two main characters were. However, as the film progressed, I found myself drawn in by their mysterious histories, and eventually deeply sympathizing with their tragedy.

To explain the nature of the pilots is to spoil the film, but rest assured, every frustration and question you have concerning the characters is answered by the end –just make sure you sit through the end of the credits! However, whether or not you are satisfied in the end is another question entirely. While the chaotic, crowd-pleasing dogfights and strikingly rendered landscapes are sure to get a rise out of any audience, the mystery of the characters themselves is initially impenetrable and unwelcoming.

On the other hand, Oshii's depiction of emotionally mature, personally tortured characters is a unique landmark in animation. While there have been other animated films concerned with serious character drama, few of them have chosen to completely eschew melodrama with the exacting discipline of this film.

The film strikes a strange balance between frenetic action scenes and serious character exploration. It won't please everyone. But if you enter "Sky Crawlers" with an open mind, you may find something exciting, brutal, and heartbreaking here.

The Sky Crawlers seem to live up to its name, that it really took its time to tell a story, but in doing so, allowed for the narrative to sink in. After all, it's brought to us by Mamoru Oshii, and as far as his filmography goes, this Japanese maestro's works is often deep, and have more than enough room for multiple viewings, each time allowing you to take away something different, or unnoticed from the previous time round.

Adapted by Chihiro Itou from Hiroshi Mori's story, you could see the themes that this movie had that would interest Oshii to be at the helm. They are nothing relatively new, as fans would see some similarities in the characters' struggle about their own existentialism, and what I enjoyed most, the connected thread between war and peace. It's like the notion of having to prepare for war that you get to enjoy some peace, and I guess every National Serviceman would have heard that at one point or another during their tour of duty.

While one can find some distinct parallels from Americanized films that pay homage or blatantly ripping off Oshii's earlier works, what I thought could have been toned down, was how toward the end, subtlety wasn't the rule of thumb, and almost every theory got explained verbatim. There were enough unanswered questions along the way to tickle your brain, leaving you guessing and drawing your own conclusions, but there were at least two crystal clear moments that decided to tell all and show all, taking away most of the fun. So in a way, you have less room to maneuver your thoughts during that after-movie discussion with friends.

I could imagine and understand any kid sitting inside a theatre hall having absolutely no patience for this masterpiece. Except for the opening sequence which had packed in the action at Top Gun pace, one's notion that this was going to be a war-action movie gets thrown out the window within 10 minutes. Naturally it has the potential to go in that direction by playing up and extending the aerial dogfights, but to do so would be to dumb this film down a lot of notches.

Granted its characters are pilots, and kid pilots at that, "Kildren" (I would like to think of it as Killer-Children) who don't seem to grow up, get careers in Corporations that seem to be waging war on behalf of nations, and pilot propeller-powered warplanes to engage their enemy in attacking and defending routines. Heck, there's even a Red Baron equivalent as the resident bogeyman too! They smoke, they kill (up in the air) and they make love, with nary an adult batting an eyelid, that you would deem them all turning a blind eye to their kids' shenanigans (of course there's a reason for this). Imagine the adults being quite nonchalant, and some even supportive, of kids fighting wars while they go about their daily lives, being quite unaffected other than being a feature in news bulletins.

So we follow the adventures, and mysteries weaved amongst the characters of Kannami Yuichi (voiced by Ryo Kase), base commander Kusanagi (Rinko Kikuchi of Babel fame, who had also collaborated in Oshii's omnibus movie Kill under the segment Assault Girl 2). The remaining supporting characters serve out their primary purpose, such as Tokino (Shosuke Tanihara) as the wingman/buddy, and Mitsuya (Chiaki Kruiyama, Kill Bill's Gogo Yubari) as the tell-all mouthpiece, which I thought that even without, the coda after the end credits roll would have summed it all up nicely.

This is Japanese anime, so its quality is excellent, with some really photo-realistic moments, and aerial dogfights that look as real as if they really built those planes and shot them in mid air. John Woo would also be proud at how balletic the shoot-em-ups can get, pulling back its punches as well to avoid any explicitness in its violence. The main theme of the soundtrack is extremely hypnotic and would linger on you for some time after the end credits roll. After all, it's by Kenji Kawai.

This is not an action movie, period. If that's the kind of movie you're expecting, then my advice would be to save your ticket money. If you're looking toward something that's more contemplative, and dealing with themes that would make you think along the way (until the two mentioned moments where the hints get more obvious), and maybe even appreciate life a little more, then march up to the box office when this opens next week. Highly recommended, and definitely a contender when I compile the top ten list for the year!

This movie is really quite good, especially the idea behind it all. If you are aware of Animes and Manga comics, then you might expect, the movie to be how it is. But if not, be prepared to get a whole lot of story. It might be too much for some audience members and you might not get everything with the first viewing. Now this either will get you hooked and you will watch the movie again or you will hate the movie and rate it badly.

Depending on what you think you can take, it should be up to you to decide if you want to watch it. If you do, you will be confronted with quite some interesting question (not all of which get an answer at all), that might inspire you to think some things over, that you take for granted.

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.

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.