Review of "The Sky Crawlers" (スカイ・クロラ)

Title: The Sky Crawlers
Directed by: Oshii Mamoru
Theme song: Konya mo hoshi ni dakarete... by ayaka
Shown in theaters from (Japan): 2 August 2008
Total run time: 121 minutes
Produced by: NTV & Production I.G


Cast:

Kannami Yuuichi - Kase Ryo
Kusanagi Suito - Kikuchi Rinko
Tokino Naofumi - Tanihara Shosuke
Mitsuya Midori - Kuriyama Chiaki
Master - Takenaka Naoto

Review:

After seeing the feature of the film at the Anime Festival Asia 08, that made me take notice of this anime. However, I am very disappointed after watching this today and I must say that this is the first time I've almost fallen asleep while watching anime.

First of all, there are too many unexplained facts or conflicting developments in the story. For example, it was not mentioned clearly why Kildren came into existence. According to Kannami, he said that they chose not to be adults since they would die in battle anyway. From the trailer, it seemed as if they did not have a choice as to whether they want to be Kildren. However, from the way it looks in the movie, these Kildren do seem to aspire to become adults since there's a tinge of longing whenever they mention adults. This is especially evident when they are talking about the Teacher, an ace pilot in the rival company. It is as if adults possess something which they want to have but cannot attain since they remain as children.

Another thing is, why is that Kusanagi supposedly gave birth to Mizuki if she is really a Kildren? If she's a child, how could she get pregnant? Till the end, we still don't know for sure whether she was indeed involved with Kurita Jinrou (the pilot whom Kannami was supposed to replace) and if she really killed him. And why do children get to smoke and drink or even have sex with prostitutes so freely?

If the characters are all speaking in Japanese, why do they have to speak English when they are flying the planes? And it does seem like the whole story is set in Europe so it's weird for the team at the airbase to speak in Japanese.

Besides the confusion and conflicting facts present in the story, I feel that the length of the movie is simply too long. Other than the fighter plane scenes, I was practically fidgeting all the time because I had to fight hard to prevent myself from falling asleep.

It was only till the very end that there is a hint of suspense where we are left to guess whether Kannami is indeed a replica of Kurita Jinrou. I think that was the only part which I really felt interested in. It would be really sad if these Kildren can be easily replaced with clones so as to preserve their skills and knowledge.

Another big shortcoming of this film is the character design and movement of the characters. Although the fighter plane scenes were done quite nicely and the scenery presented was relatively realistic, it felt as if they scrimped on the character design and movements were rather stiff and unnatural.

With regards to the voice acting, I only knew that Kase Ryo and Kikuchi Rinko were playing the leads. According to Wikipedia, it is mentioned that the director strongly wanted Kikuchi to play the role of Kusanagi. Their performances were fine but I thought Tanihara Shosuke's potrayal of Tokino was more outstanding.

Frankly speaking, I would not recommend watching this film unless you want to watch the fighter plane scenes which took up less than half of the running time. This is certainly not for those who have a short attention span and don't want to be left confused by the story at the end of the movie.