So, okay, it's called Sky Crawlers, the case features bullets and fire and swooshing hair, this movie is lying to you from the very first. Despite the title's implication there is a sad lack of vast Eldritchian insects tearing through the stratosphere (darn.) and the violent, frantic tone set by the opening is... misleading.
We start off with a dogfight that hammers home Sky Crawlers' main quality. This thing is beautiful.
I mean, astoundingly, ethereally gorgeous.
The visual style is a jarring blend of highly rendered CGI props and landscapes
with soft, simple, understating and pastel-coloured character design.
Unlike Steamboy, it doesn't even attempt to blend these disparate elements and sets a precedent for the "feel" of the story as a whole. We're following Yuichi, a boy (as in child, which I'll get to later) inheriting his predecessor's fighter jet, and the newest addition to this odd little group of pilots.
He asks a few questions, especially about the status of the pilot he's replacing, Jinro, and makes little headway. Everyone is quiet and cryptic. One of his new partners, the friendly Naofumi, shows him the sights. The sights include a diner that makes good meat pies and... a brothel. Huh.
The pair of prostitutes are no less enthusiastic when it comes to reinforcing the vague-and-mysterious theme. Yuichi retires with the darker and more tattooed of the two, who intimates to him that Jinro used to visit her, and that Yuichi reminds her of him.
The rest of the tale develops slowly and strangely, punctuated by aerial battles. Yuichi tries to question his superior officer, Suito Kusanagi, but only gets his information in snippets. Everyone stares, everything is awkward, the soundtrack hasn't graced us with its presence since the opening and only resurfaces later in the form of Kusanagi's giant, slightly terrifying music box.
All the while, our characters are going off to fight faceless enemies and occasionally they don't come back. Kusanagi seems to be the only one with a real reaction to this. Tourist groups pose for pictures with the aircrafts, the fights are all blithely broadcast on the news... it's all a very calm kind of war.
In order to skip all this vague description, allow me to spoil the whole twist right now.
The pilots are synthetic people called "Kildren". They are immortal unless outright killed. They are being used to act out a sort of mock war, a play put on for a warless world to remind the populace of how important peace really is. A real, immediate reminder of conflict with real (albeit disposable and inhuman) casualties. When they die, they are reincarnated with simple false memories, retaining their use as pilots in an unending cycle.
The revelation if this is an unwinding, letting us in on small implications before it confirms anything. I like this setup.
And I would have liked it better if it hadn't been WRITTEN OF THE BACK OF THE VIDEO CASE.
Oh, wow, that's nice. I didn't want to wait for any of that, just go ahead and tell me in that stilted, preview-narrator way of yours. Thanks.
Okay, so that sort of wrecked my first viewing. With the knowledge that: 1. Kildren are immortal child-things. 2. They are fighting an endless war. And 3. Something weird happened to the pilot Yuichi is replacing I expected the rest of the film to be a big science fiction spectacle with mysteries solved and deaths avenged and conspiracies unveiled and all that good stuff. The idea of watching a character make surreal, existantial discoveries becomes a lot more appealing when we are not told the results before we hit play.
When I finished watching Sky Crawlers the first time around, I was annoyed. I'm glad, however, that I took the time to go through it a second time and really look at it, pay attention to it, and understand what it had to offer. Planes explode and guns are brandished, but this is not an action adventure. It's set in an alternate world of manufactured child-soldiers, but it's not a sci-fi fantasy. I wouldn't even call it a regular "commentary" piece, despite its lapses out of subtlety. It's just about watching these characters act and interact. Experiencing with them the disconnected, vague, dreamlike quality of a world full of endless repetitions and forgettings. If anything, it reminds me a bit of Stalker, and has crept its way into my list of favourite films. One I'll definitely be watching again.
That said, this is far from perfect. The most interesting problem I found was with our smoking, drinking, occasionally sexual main characters. I get what the idea is, constantly confronting us with the debauchery of "children" who might die tomorrow and are unaffected by normal societal rules. The thing is... with the anime aesthetic, even with this more grounded style, how much of a visual difference is there between a thirteen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old? The characters have low, mature voices, some have tired lines around their eyes... there isn't enough to distinguish them as intentionally children and not just young people. It makes it a little confusing if you don't know what you're supposed to be seeing.
A final note before I finish this up; part of what bumped this into the territory of real re-watch value. I really like the relationship between Yuichi and Suito.
What we eventually get explained is that Suito and Jinro were lovers. Suito, having lived a fair bit longer than the other Kildren and caught on to the cycle of repetition, kills Jinro at his behest to "release" him. Only to have him come back as Yuichi. The clashing of Yuichi's hazy, apathetic calm and Suito's increasingly desperate and destructive recklessness is interesting to watch.
It feels heavy and real, and it caught my attention more than I had expected.
In conclusion, give this a watch if you like fabulous animation and aren't afraid of a story that tries to hypnotise rather than entertain you. Preferably watched without any distractions.
The Sky Crawlers is © 2009 Layout and Design Sony Pictures Home Entertainment inc. All rights reserved.
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