4/5 Beautiful, if a little strange
  by Brennan B James
I love animation, and Sky Crawlers is another good addition to my collection. My only problem with it was that the parameters of the world were never explained. It takes place in, what looks like Italy, with an American diner down the street, and Japanese people being at the air base. The characters, I think, fight for the entertainment of the rest of the world? It's a little confusing. The relationships between the characters, who they are, and where they come from is explained completely. The reasons they fight, however, are quite vague.

If you don't mind your animation being a little surreal, then it's a wonderful animated film. Absolutely the best dogfighting film in animation. If you like fighter planes in animation, then this film is a must have. They get the feel and motion of a dogfighting experience completely accurately in this film.

4/5 The Sky Crawlers... The English Patient the Anime
  by Julian Kennedy (St Pete Florida)
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.



5/5 This movie is very different then any run of the mill storyline. When did that start being a bad thing?
  by J. Smart
This movie is very different then any run of the mill storyline. And I have to say that's what got me to watch this movie. Now I know I've heard people talk about this movie not being that good because it doesn't have a "happy ending" or really lead anywhere. I disagree with that though, when you really think about how things are when the movie ends, a lot of important things have happened since the begin and it seems more real the way its been done. And OMG you might have to think after the movie is over; about what's going to happen after the movie in the storyline. I like movies that make me think after there over, so I thought this was a great movie.
PS: after the movie don't forget to watch after the credits are over...

2/5 Watch the intro, then return the rental
  by gllcanon (Houston, TX)
The intro is the best part, unfortunately then the movies starts. Thus begins the boring sky crawl. If you watch the special features before the movie like I did, you will be amazed that the director, crew and artists flew to Poland and the U.S. to make sure they got all the little details right. The set of this world is quite amazingly drawn, you see where the research in Poland pays off. Sometimes you think it's real. The American sound artists at the Skywalker Ranch did top notch sound effects, however, the characters are drawn very poorly, like something you'd see in the 70's Speed Racer cartoon. When everything else is drawn so incredibly realistic, you expect the characters to look as good as those in FINAL FANTASY:The Spirits Within. However, since the characters were so boring, improving their appearance probably wouldn't have helped. Part of the problem is understanding the backstory. I've never the read the book, or cartoon, or whatever this originated from. You really need some kind of scrolling history at the beginning, ala Star Wars, to know what's going on. Very little is explained. The unit's Commanding Officer (which the movie calls the Command Officer) doesn't look or act the part. When she goes bowling and takes off her jacket, she looks like a Japanese schoolgirl, with her little skirt and knee-high socks -- that's a CO? Lots of disconnects: you have Japanese-looking characters, with Japanese names, flying WWII vintage Axis planes, in Europe, using modern cell phones, driving vintage vehicles, but having modern War-Rooms, speaking Japanese on the ground, but English while in the cockpit, but not even bothering to use correct aviation-lingo. "Height" instead of "altitude" for example. Signage on the city streets is in Polish. All these disconnects are one problem, but the main problem is the plodding pace. I fell asleep watching it the first time, forced myself to watch the rest of it the next day. Watching the special features, you notice how the director has his photographers take pix of everything, such as hinges on a hanger door, and stickers on fire extinguishers. If only he paid such attention to the screenplay. The dialogue was terrible at times. "I want you to shoot me with this gun." First off, it's a pistol, as any military person would know. Secondly, that sounds so stilted. Again, someone should have proofed the screenplay - the dialogue was the weakest part of this movie, followed by the poor artistry in drawing the characters. I think "Memphis Belle" told the same story much better. SPOILER ALERT: people need something to work for, the end of war, or the chance to go home, or both. But if life continues endlessly like Murray's "Groundhog Day," with no hope of release, you will go insane or want to shoot yourself. And then, after suffering thru this movie, you almost do want to shoot yourself. What a disappointing end.

4/5 Rare Gem
  by Ana Mardoll (United States)
Sky Crawlers / B001VBM0Z0

*Spoilers*

Funny enough, I didn't much care for Ghost in the Shell, but I felt that "Sky Crawlers" was a rare and unexpected gem. Indeed, the day immediately after watching "Sky Crawlers" for the first time, we sat down and watched it a second time as well.

Part of this repeated viewing, however, is kind of because you *have* to in order to understand the plot. If you don't understand, going in, that the pilots are all ageless clones that die and are reborn to wage pointless, unending battle as an opiate for the human population, then you're going to miss out on a lot of the sub-text, and indeed, a lot of the super-text as well!

Once you get past that, you may find that "Sky Crawlers" is one of the most horrific movies out there. The slow, hazy crawl of the movie (there's even a lovingly rendered shot of the pet dog doing marking territory on the front lawn) mirrors the slow, hazy crawl of the clone's lives, as they live in a perpetual haze - their long-term memories almost completely non-functional, due to the chaotic live-die-live cycle that they perpetuate. The clones go through their daily routines, noting blearily that everything "seems familiar" - that diner reminds me of somewhere, that food tasted familiar, I used to know a person like you, and so on. As some of the clones become more self-aware, they blanch at the bleak and terrifyingly changeless future before them, and contemplate escape - even if it means suicide.

"Sky Crawlers" is slow-paced, and despite the air battles, seems largely more like a dreamy philosophical film than an action packed adventure. The characters are exceedingly well rendered and well characterized, an interesting tightrope to walk when the clones are also supposed to be largely 'personality free', due to the near-brainwashing effects of lacking any substantial long-term memories. And the animation is truly lovely - this is one of the prettiest anime movies I've ever seen. Really, "Sky Crawlers" is one of those 'love-or-hate' movies, and it's just going to depend on taste and personality.

On a lighter note, you can play a good drinking game with the number of cigarettes lit on-screen - there were so many "lighting a cigarette" sequences that I actually half-jokingly theorized that the cigarettes were a metaphor for the clones - easily used-up and replaceable consumer commodities that provide comfort for the population at the expense of their (moral) health. Indeed, considering the resolution, that theory might not be too far off...