(Anime Movie) The Sky Crawlers
6:59 PM
Burn Toro
Release year: 2008
Language: Japanese
Subtitle: English
The film is based on a popular five-part novel by a best-seller writer, MORI Hiroshi, who enjoys enthusiastic support from younger generations and has sold over 8 million copies of his works in total. The story unfolds in another ‘possible’ modern age. The main characters are youngsters called “Kildren”, who are destined to live eternally in their adolescence. The Kildren are conscious that every day could be the last, because they fight a “war as entertainment” organized and operated by adults. But as they embrace the reality they are faced with, they live their day-to-day lives to the full.
After reading the novel, Director Oshii praised it as “a work that should be made into a movie for young people now.” Clothing, food and housing are in abundance in our modern society, and yet we carry an unfulfilled vacuum in our hearts. “It is time to face this new perception to our existence through the Kildren, who live indefinitely in eternal adolescence, and this theme should be dealt with now,” claims Oshii earnestly. The author MORI regards his novel, The Sky Crawlers “as the most difficult among all of my works for film adaptation.” However, MORI declared himself “surprised and relieved at the same time to know the director was going to be Mamoru Oshii,” and gave his immediate consent.
A military romance drama, it is set in an era similar to WWII’s. To fight as a fighter pilot is the only way for the Kildren to live their lives, for they do not age, thus do not die unless killed. Puppets of the two warring companies, the Kildren have no choice but to embrace their destiny and try to live fulfillingly. Some point in the movie reveals the darker side of the plot; who Kannami really is, who the father of Kusanagi’s daughter is, who Jin-roh before his death is, and of course when you realise where the plot is directing you to, everything falls into place.
True to director Oshii’s style, the visuals in the film were nothing short of spectacular, with dogfighting skirmishes punctuating the cadence of slow-paced expositions. Character development for the adolescent protagonists sufficed to portray the intricate relationships between Kannami and Suito, the other Kildren and the system that drives their world. Towards the end, that powerful moment enhanced by Kusanagi’s one rare emotional outbreak as well as the trifling of Kannami’s seemingly heroic determination and will to defeat ‘the Teacher’, had made the powerful, thought-inducing element that complements the main feel of the film. Why has her resolution dissolved? Was she any different in other of Kannami’s incarnation? Did she break down everytime Kannami or his predecessors came to love her? What will become of their found love? How would Kusanagi choose to face death itself?
The film subliminally teases you into its gripping plot, with heart-wrenching the audience its motive. The sparse discourse throughout the film, the trance-inducing background music, as well as the explosive opening marred by death, creates a surreal and overpoweringly oppressive flavour. With each iteration of death we are aware of, the atmosphere becomes heavier. With each incarnation we see, the mood becomes more tense. Till towards the end, as Kusanagi waits for Kannami’s return that will never come, with her daughter hopeful of a new father, it was painfully so Kusanagi has to accept the reality. Being another taint to her already torn insides, it was Kannami’s feelings for her that had gave her the last reason to continue living and deplore nothing of her loss.
A visually stunning, thought inducing film that grips you from the start till the last moment with its plot, ‘The Sky Crawlers’ is one of the most intriguing I’ve watched to date. If time and finances allow, I would have no hesitation in wanting to rewatch Sky Crawlers.
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