The Sky Crawlers [Blu-ray]
by Mamoru Oshii
![The Sky Crawlers [Blu-ray]](/images/The-Sky-Crawlers-Blu-ray-B001VBM0ZU-L.jpg)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bryce Hitchcock, Chiaki Kuriyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Ryo Kase, Shosuke TaniharaDirector: Mamoru Oshii
Brand: Sony
Cinematographer: Hisashi Ezura
Editor: Junichi Uematsu
Producer: Mitsuhisa Ishikawa
Producer: Seiji Okuda
Producer: Tomohiko Ishii
Producer: Toru Kawaguchi
Writer: Chihiro Itou
Writer: Hiroshi Mori
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language); English (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-05-26
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of The Sky Crawlers [Blu-ray]
Movie Review: The Sky Crawlers... The English Patient the Anime
Summary: 4 Stars
The Sky Crawlers: (Sukai Kurora):7 out of 10: This is an adult anime...In fact this is a very adult anime. No there isnt 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. Its 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 publics need for conflict. (Think Star Treks "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 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.
Summary of The Sky Crawlers [Blu-ray]
From Mamoru Oshii, the world-acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell comes an award-winning story of an exciting but endless war with heroes too young to understand the meaning of their battles. A group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds. With his only childhood memory consisting of intense flight training, the fearless teenage pilot Yuichi's dogfights coexist with his struggle to find his missing past. When his beautiful, young female commander Suito is reluctant to discuss the fate of the pilot that Yuichi is replacing - or the strangely perfect condition of that pilot's former aircraft - Yuichi's curiosity becomes heightened.Mamoru Oshii's The Sky Crawlers (2008) plays like a mixture of Top Gun and Serial Experiments Lain. Although teenage fighter pilot Yuichi lacks Tom Cruise's good looks, he's the ace of his unit at the Rostock Corporation, performing elaborate maneuvers and bringing down enemy planes. Yuichi and his fellow pilots are mysterious beings known as "Kildren:" they never age, but remain teenagers their entire lives. When commander Suito learns that the Kildren are products of a mysterious genetic experiment, she begins to suspect that she and the pilots are used, discarded, and replaced, like so many spare parts. Yuichi doesn't just resemble Jinroh, the former pilot of his plane (and Suito's lover); he's the reincarnation of Jinroh. These revelations would pack more punch if the characters weren't such nonentities. Yuichi and the other pilots express so little emotion, they make Keanu Reeves seem like a dynamic presence. Oshii uses computer animation for the elaborate aerial dogfights, although the realistically rendered, three-dimensional aircraft never mesh with the flat, two-dimensional characters. Sky Crawlers had a decidedly mixed reaction in Japan, and its limited theatrical release in the U.S. failed to generate much excitement. It's a disappointing effort from the creator of the watershed Ghost in the Shell. (Rated PG-13: Violence, sexual situations, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles Solomon
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