The Sky Crawlers



The Sky Crawlers is a 2008 Japanese anime film, directed by Mamoru Oshii and an adaptation of Hiroshi Mori's novel of the same name. It is a melancholy take on war and those who fight it, but with several significant twists. For one, the world is at peace; it's companies doing the fighting, in order to sate the people's taste for war so that actual conflict does not take place. To fight their endless battles they use Artificial Humans called Kildren that are stuck in a perpetual adolescence of forgotten memories.

The film follows the pilot Yuuichi as he joins a new squadron of Kildren, and becomes intrigued by his cold, enigmatic and possibly insane commander, Kusanagi, who seems to know a lot more about the reality of the war than anybody else on the base. The story is as much about the pilots' downtime and their search for meaning as it is about the stunning aerial combat scenes.

If that doesn't sound appealing, keep in mind that this film is absolutely gorgeous. Broad pans and lingering shots are used just about any time combat isn't going on, which is most of the time.

A Video Game was released in 2008 in Japan by the Ace Combat team. It was released 2010 outside Japan with the title Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, which came as a surprise for fans as it seemed a prime candidate for No Export for You. Plotwise, it's a prequel.

The film provides examples of:

 * Absurdly Youthful Mother: Kusanagi has an 8 year old daughter, but is still physically a child herself.
 * Ace Pilot: Five of them are noted, though two are the same person.
 * Alternate History / Alternate Universe: It's not established in what year the movie is set in, but it features old school airplanes side by side with flat-screen TVs, and apparently conventional war has been completely eliminated in favour of War for Fun and Profit that doesn't put civilians, or governments for that matter, at risk.
 * Anyone Can Die: And a few weeks later they'll rejoin your squadron with the same twitches, tics and habits (folding a paper, breaking a match), but new memories.
 * Bifauxnen: The hooker who sleeps with Yuuchi. Has a Toplessness From the Back shot too.
 * Book Ends: After the beginning sequence and credits,the movie starts with Yuuichi landing in the base and reporting to Kusanagi.
 * Brand X: Examples abound. For example, Pops-Cola and Treasure soft drinks (with logos that resemble Coca Cola and Pepsi), Green Label beer and Leopard cars.
 * Broken Bird: Suito Kusanagi.
 * Celebrity Voice Actor: Suito Kusanagi is voiced by live-action actress Rinko Kikuchi, who was the mute schoolgirl Chieko in the film Babel and actually won an Oscar for it.
 * Cloning Blues:
 * Conspicuous CG: The planes look almost photorealistic, while the humans are drawn traditionally.
 * Contemplate Our Navels: Much of the film, leading to its Love It or Hate It status among viewers.
 * Cool Plane: Lots of them.
 * Days of Future Past: Aesthetically and technologically (for the most part) the setting resembles the 1940s, with piston-powered planes and machine guns... but then you have flatscreen televisions.
 * If you take into consideration that jet fighters and missiles are very expensive and that modern aerial battles are not as spectacular as those in 40s because jets are much faster and thus hard to dogfight in, it's much cheaper to use slow old propeller planes with cheap machine guns that allow fancy dogfights.
 * Did They Or Didn't They: There are two scenes where Yûichi and Kusanagi are together that may or may not have ended in sex, but the camera always fades to black before any kind of confirmation, let alone acknowledgement afterwards.
 * Death Is Dramatic: Pitilessly averted.
 * Dieselpunk
 * Do a Barrel Roll: Of course.
 * Dodge by Braking: Yuichi's signature move, which wins him several dogfights.
 * The Dreaded: "Oh shit! It's the Teacher!"
 * Drives Like Crazy: Kusanagi, apparently. No big deal is made out of it, but she drives extremely fast on narrow roads built on cliffside.
 * Engrish: The quality of English dialogue in the Japanese version of the film ranges from "Surprisingly Good English" to "passable but thickly accented" to "LAWL".
 * Everybody Smokes: It's not like they need to worry about lung cancer at later age.
 * Expy: Kusanagi IS Major Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell, even having the same last name and looking almost exactly the same. Except that she's a teenager. And completely nuts.
 * Also, most of the planes (at least in the game) are expies of real, World War 2-era airplanes. For instance, the main "hero" plane, the Sanka Mk. II, is based on the Kyushu J 7 W Shinden.
 * Forever War: The war has no no beginning and no end in sight.
 * Ghost City: Krakow looks like this, with empty streets and no streetlights in sight, though some windows are lighted. It's purely for stylistic reasons, however.
 * Going by the Matchbook:
 * Go Mad from the Revelation: Kusanagi did this a long time ago.
 * Hooker with a Heart of Gold: So golden you might not realize they're hookers until it's said so well into the movie.
 * Ominous Music Box Tune: Kusanagi has a big music box in her office that plays the film's main tune, possibly as a Shout-Out to the director's previous work, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. It becomes ominous when it plays during Yûichi's realization that something is thoroughly wrong with his existence.
 * Scenery Porn: Most of the movie.
 * Shown Their Work: Among other things, the signs in Krakow are in accurate Polish.
 * The crew actually travelled to Ireland and Poland to get a good visual feel of the place, and toured the local airforce bases and hangars for reference. In the DVD bonus features they are actually shown photographing some house radiators and electric sockets so that they look accurate for the region the movie is supposed to be set in.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The story is on the cynical end; it has been directed by Mamoru Oshii, anyway, and the original author intended it to be like this, too.
 * The Stinger:
 * The Stoic: Kannami. Pretty much nothing can faze him, and whatever emotions he has, he keeps unseen.
 * Suicide Pact:
 * Surprisingly Good English: All the cockpit chatter is done in decently understandable English, though with a couple grammatical errors.
 * Unfortunately due to the muffling gas masks along with the howling wind and machine gun sounds, it's still barely comprehensible. Some subtitles would have been nice, no matter how good the language technically is.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Teacher is introduced by shooting up an ejected pilot.
 * This Loser Is You: According to some interpretations, it is saying that the audience (i.e. apathetic Japanese Otaku) are Kildren, and this is the message.
 * Alternatively, the audience are the shallow, dull tourists who express vague pity over the dead Kildren even as they take amusement in their meaningless battles. At least this is something that the director himself vaguely hinted at.
 * Translation Convention: Averted, if a bit strangely. The main cast speaks Japanese for most of the time, but speak English while in the air, and with tourists, and the few locals seen in Krakow speak passable, if accented Polish. The odd thing is that the whole movie is set in Europe, yet it's never questioned why there are so many Japanese military contractors around.
 * The English dub averts this trope entirely by, of course, having the main cast speak in English all the time and re-dubbing the more Engrish-y lines with native English speakers.
 * United Europe: The European Confederation, mentioned a few times in the passing, where the film takes place - Ireland and Poland, to be exact.
 * The Un-Smile: Yûichi gives one to a nosy tourist videotaping him.
 * War for Fun and Profit: The only kind of war that happens anymore.
 * United Europe: The European Confederation, mentioned a few times in the passing, where the film takes place - Ireland and Poland, to be exact.
 * The Un-Smile: Yûichi gives one to a nosy tourist videotaping him.
 * War for Fun and Profit: The only kind of war that happens anymore.

The videogame contains examples of:

 * AKA-47: Most, if not all of the aircrafts in the game are modelled after various WWII era fighter planes:
 * The Suiga, the first plane the player accesses, is a fusion of a Focke-Wulf 190 D and a F2G Super Corsair.
 * The Fission, Lautern's basic fighter plane, resembles the Junkers EF.112 ground attacker concept.
 * The Seiei experimental fighter resembles the Dornier 335 Pfeil, albeit more compact.
 * The Sanka is nearly a dead ringer for the J7W1 Shinden.
 * The Itsuha resembles the Henschel Hs P.75.
 * The Shougu resembles the Grumman F8F Bearcat.
 * The Skyly D is what you get when you toss a Supermarine Seafire FR47, a Focke-Wulf Ta 152, and a P-51D Mustang into a blender.
 * The Vice is essentially a skinnier Bf 110 heavy fighter.
 * The Senryu has the cockpit of a Junkers Ju 388J night fighter, the overall body shape of the Focke-Wulf 189, and the engine configuration of the SAAB 21.
 * The Fortune strongly resembles the Gloster Meteor, only with propellers in a pusher configuration instead of jet engines.
 * The Tulip is based off the P-51D Mustang, only sleeker, and with inverted gull wings.
 * The Incident is the only plane that doesn't resemble a WWII aircraft, while its twin broom design seems to be based off the P-38 Lightning, it actually bears a closer resemblance to the OV-10 Bronco.
 * Alternate Company Equivalent: Most of the aircraft the two companies field have clear equivalents with their competitor:
 * Rostock's Sanka and Lautern's Skyly are the companies' next generation fighter planes, the Sanka putting an emphasis on maneuverability, while the Skyly is capable of reaching impressive speeds but is harder to control. Additionally, they're the only aircraft known to receive periodic updates to their airframes, with the successor models, the Sanka M-B and the Skyly J2 featuring prominently in the film.
 * Rostock's Senryu and Lautern's Vice are both heavy fighters designed with the ability to function as attackers in mind, they are capable of carrying impressive amount of ordinances but are somewhat lacking in the dogfighting department. The Vice, however, is a more dedicated heavy fighter while the Senryu is more of a high speed utility aircraft.
 * Rostock's Shougu and Lautern's Tulip are both dedicated fighters with impressive maneuverability, the downsides are the Shougu being somewhat tricky to handle, and for the Tulip it's lackluster armor.
 * Both Rostock's Suiga and Lautern's Fortune are balanced general purpose fighters that can be adapted to perform various roles.
 * Rostock's Seiei and Lautern's Incident are both twin-engined interceptors with unconventional designs that puts an emphasis on speed at the cost of everything else.
 * Only Lautern's Fission and Rostock's Itsuha lack clear counterparts, with the Fission being highly stable but lacking in every other department due to its weak power plant; and the Itsuha being a high-end experimental fighter with a design similar to the Sanka's, but with exceptional maneuverability at the lost of having very little armor.
 * Alternate History / Alternate Universe: Like in the movie, it's not established in what year the game is set in, but it features old school airplanes side by side with flat-screen TVs, and apparently conventional war has been completely eliminated in favour of War for Fun and Profit that doesn't put civilians, or governments for that matter, at risk. Also, it's obviously set in Earth, but the places the game have oriental-sounding names instead of European ones, like.
 * Charge Meter: In the form of the Tactical Manuver Command system (or TM Cs). Since the game has no missiles to speak off, a special guage fills up when you stick close to an enemy. When executed, it plays a small cutscene and positions your craft just right behind your enemy. However, just like missiles, there is the chance that your attacks can still be dodged despite this.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * Luke, I Am Your Father:
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Orishina
 * Red Baron: The player character. Starts out as "Lynx", gets promoted to "Cheetah" and finally attains legendary status when the enemy fighters nickname him "Black Cat" for his black panther head design in his plane's tail.
 * Tempting Fate: In the first mission, Ban muses on the short lifespan of fighter pilots. Three missions later, guess who gets shot down?
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Ukumori.