This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A Disappointing Continuation

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

I would always see this film on the shelf of the ANIME section of my local BLOCKBUSTER store. When they had their OUT OF BUSINESS sale, I figured buying it at a discount couldn't hurt. It would be a month and a half until I would finally sit and watch it. Please bear with me, this is my first written review. The story follows a young fighter pilot named Yukito who has just transferred to a new base. He is puzzled by feelings of Deja vú and by the fact that nobody will answer him about the pilot he is replacing. One thing viewers should keep I mind is that this isn't the action packs spectacle the cover makes it appear to be. Don't get me wrong, there are some stunning dogfights in this movie, but they are few and far in between. Most of the movie's time is spent following Yukito as he tries to unravel the mystery of his predecessor, of his superior, Kusenagi, and his own past. And honestly, I found it thoroughly engrossing. Almost as much as the battles which got a tad bit confusing because all the planes look similar. The movie goes for a more philosophical approach on the topic of war and peace, poses questions about the choices we make as humans. The movie however did get a tad cliché near the end, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't see a lot of the plot twists coming a mile away. But it still holds interest, builds up suspense, creates a certain atmosphere, and brings new ideas that will have you mulling over for a couple hours after viewing. Just know that this movie takes a slower pace and isn't as much about the fighting as it is the who and why.

The near future. Humanity has achieved some semblance of peace. To remind the masses of pain and suffering, and to inject wonder, gratitude and emotion into a world that has long calloused into apathy, multinational corporations stage elaborate wars fought by cloned fighter pilots called "Kildren". The corporations are named after German football teams. The Kildren do not age and remain in a state of perpetual adolescence."The Sky Crawlers" was directed by Mamourou Oshii, who cites Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky as influences. His film begins with Yuichi Kannami, one of many fighter pilot Kildren, arriving at a military installation. Everyone at the installation knows that Yuichi is simply a clone who's been assigned to them and died countless times before, but they nevertheless treat him as a "real" human being. It is a charade they're tired of maintaining."Why bother to grow up if I'm going to die?" Yuichi says early in the film, the line encapsulating his indifference to all things. Unfazed by the possibility that he may be bioengineered, a machine created for virtually no purpose, Yuichi spends his days drinking beer, playing war games, having sex and lazing about. He never questions who he is, why he's on the island or why he fights. He has no memory of what came before "now" and little regard for what will come next.Towards the end of the film Yuichi begins to develop some modicum of self-awareness. Seeking a kind of Sartrean authenticity, and desperate to end the charade he is caught up in, he takes to the skies. He is then mercilessly shot down by a fighter pilot called "the teacher". The following day (wait until the end of the credits) another clone of Yuichi appears at the military base. It then becomes apparent that each clone is destroyed or commits suicide prior to attaining self-awareness. For the Kildren, ignorance is bliss.The film is philosophically heavy, Oshii swimming in waters routinely visited by Antonioni. Today in Japan an estimate one million youths, or roughly one percent of the population, are classified as "hikikomori", which literally means "being confined". These are youths who have sequestered themselves in family homes and have little contact with the outside world. Having given up on the idea of being a contributing member of society these youths either remain unemployed or work in menial jobs, embracing stagnation and self medicating themselves with various post-industrial creature comforts. In addition to this, the number of students dropping out of school in Japan has doubled since 1990, and women are increasingly going on "womb strikes", refusing to have children. With this comes a shrinking work force and a fall in birth rates. An entire chunk of Japan no longer wishes to live.While many believe the "hikikomori" to be social misfits or psychologically damaged, it is better to think of them as an early warning signal. Like coal mining canaries, which were once used to detect toxic gasses, the "hikikomori" are a red flag, sensitive individuals who sense that something is wrong and so retreat to the wombs of their bedrooms to escape from a society they view as being toxic.Much literature has been written about the "hikikomori", but their existence essentially boils down to one thing: Japan is the world's first true post-modern nation. What you have in Japan is a conflict between East and West, between group and individual, between modernity and post-modernity. It is a country caught within a web of diametrically opposed forces, forces which are pressure cooked because of several relatively unique factors.So on one hand you have a country cocooned by walls of water. A country with a fixed national identity, heavy immigration restrictions, a rigid school curriculum, a homogeneous ideology, a society built on strong social mores, honour, tradition, hard work, loyalty, group-ism, specific aesthetics, a hierarchical structure emphasising the inequality between persons etc etc. And on the other hand you have a country which no longer believes in the myth of Progress. Which suffers the atomization of the family, the rampant feminization of men, which now heavily borrows and models itself after Western culture, and which, in the wake of the economic boom of the 1980s, finds the pursuit of material extravagance to deliver emptiness rather than inner contentment.Of course existential questions of meaningfulness and identity traditionally crop up in wealthy societies, as man's focus shifts from self-preservation to introspection. But Japan goes beyond this. Postmodernity is epitomised by relational identities, a loss of absolutes and widespread fragmentation. It abolishes the idea of fixed essences and leaves individuals to construct identities by appropriating from vapid, but always shifting, cultural and ethnic positions. End result: today the essence of the Japanese is "to have no essence", a stance which the "hikikomori" feebly rebel against.So at its core "The Sky Crawlers" is about a society of youths caught in limbo, refusing to grow up because they have nothing to live for. Stuck in stasis they become increasingly infantilized, soothing their pain with vices like anime, which in this film takes the form of "staged" or "theatrical" wars "fought by actors". Oshii, in other words, attacks the anime industry itself, an industry in which the same old thing is repeated ad infinitum, all with the same interchangeable boy pilot avatars. Resentful of a dead creative environment (see "Children Of Men", in which the future is literally sterilized) he urges his hero, and audience, to escape and strive towards something. Interestingly, this pursuit is seen to be suicidal. Dedicating the body to a cause is itself the decision to erode the body for that cause.Many complain that the film is too slow (even its dog fights are made banal), but those familiar with Antonioni will be at home here. The film isn't slow so much as it is beautifully nauseous. It's Antonioni's "Red Desert" with fighter jets.8.9/10 - Flawed masterpiece. See "The Tin Drum".

Unbelievably dull anime from the director of Ghost in the Shell. That movie was pretty ponderous, but this one takes ponderousness and pretentiousness to a whole new level. The story is about a bunch of unaging teenage pilots who are fighting some sort of sky war. Most of the movie is spent with the zombie-like characters pregnantly pausing, staring into space for minutes at a time. The artwork is ugly as Hell. All the characters look pretty much identical and are drawn very simply. The airplanes are done in a really ancient-looking CGI, and the backgrounds look kind of like rotoscope. This film is nearly unbearable, and it elicited cheers from me and my two friends when the credits started to roll (apparently there's another sequence post-credits, but I'm not sorry I missed it). Folk star Joanna Newsom apparently voices one of the characters in the English dub, but I watched it in Japanese, so I missed one of the only things that makes this possibly worth sitting through.

If your one of those people who had rather think than speak, then this movie will probably be memorable and an instant top favorite within your archive of loved anime. This is a drama, it's plot is one that forces the audience to place themselves in the fantasy to better understand it. It's not just a bunch of pretty pictures but has in itself a meaning; perhaps it's meaning is meaningless in the real world, it is, however, a movie that has a story to tell. In the end that's what it's all about is the story. Remember it or forget it, it's not your choice it all depends on whether it's a story worth telling... if it is, it's most likely worth remembering. This is one of those. --->I think it is anyway<--- :)