The Sky Crawlers (2009)

Nippon Television Corporation

Sony Home Entertainment

R4 DVD

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

Subtitled in clear English

This film leaves me puzzled. It has elements that are brilliant but it also has underlying themes that are darker and stay that way throughout the film. It asks more questions than it answers and even the answers are puzzling.

In an alternative world wars (both commercial and national) are contracted out to military companies. The current war is between Rostock and Lautern. Yuichi Kannami arrives at his Rostock base somewhere in Europe to take up his position as one of the base’s fighter pilots. He is assigned a secondhand fighter that is in surprisingly good condition considering that its previous pilot died. He also appears to have an uncanny resemblance to that pilot. Yuichi is a “kildren” – a (genetically modified?) teenager who can never grow older. This preserves his reflexes and youthful stamina and makes him an ideal pilot. Where the Kildren come from is not explained. Yuichi’s past is not explained either – he has some vague childhood memories but that’s all.

The life of a fighter pilot is an odd one. In the sky they are alive but on the ground their existence seems flat and lifeless. Their entertainments are mostly drinking and sex, their parties are morbid affairs, their relationships with each other are only fleeting. They do not mix much with the normal adults who man the base. Their only purpose is to fight for the corporation until they are shot down.

In the sky, however, their existence is justified. It’s not so much that they fly to live as they live to fly. They are at their most animated while they are in their aircraft but when they are back on the ground their lives go back to the dull flat day-to-day existence.

Sometimes a pilot will appear to reappear in the barracks as if he is a new man, but carrying his old habits. It’s as if the pilots are periodically brain-wiped so they can begin their futile existence again with a clean mind. This is not explained.

Yuichi forms a relationship with the base commanding officer, the beautiful but disturbed Suito Kusanagi. She is another Kildren and has already had a child. Can it last? At the end of the film, after the subtitles, we find out.

Director Mamoru Oshii said this film was intended to be a message to young people, but if so his message is depressing. Your life will be dull, your work will be your only pleasure, you can’t change it? War is necessary, and you are the ones chosento fight it?

The questions and messages are wrapped in a gloriously drawn film that reminds me a lot of the 1987 Gainax classic The Wings of Honneamise. Even the aircraft have a similar style. The artists seem to have fallen in love with their aircraft because that’s where all the detail is. By contrast the characters are drawn flat, unemotional and almost unresponsive. At least the aircraft have a purpose in life.

I am still ambivalent about the film, but apart from its unanswered questions I enjoyed it. You will be working out your own answers by the end of the film anyway. I would like to see a followup to develop some of the themes a little more, and so I can see those glorious aircraft once again.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.6 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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