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May 19, 2009 
Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum
Okay, this will be the absolutely hardest review I’ve done so far. See, I didn’t actually know anything about Sky Crawlers when I watched it. I read a summary on Anime Encyclopedia, but it took me so long to get the thing downloaded that I actually forgot what it was about when I watched it. If I had known, I don’t think I’d have enjoyed it as much. So I’m going to do my very best not to tell you a thing about what this movie is about; makes it kind of hard to review though. Do yourself a favor and just watch it. Don’t look it up on anything, hell, don’t even finish reading this review. Just go watch it. This is the kind of movie that you aren’t supposed to know much about going in. This review will probably be a bit shorter than my other ones because I can’t go into details.
When I give a summary I usually look up one on the Anime Encyclopedia or something similar to get an idea of how far I should go with my description, but AE totally takes the mystery out Sky Crawlers, and if you aren’t sitting there going “what the hell is going on?” for half the movie then you aren’t going to enjoy the reveal. So, I guess I can tell you there’s a war, but the specifics and reasons behind it aren’t terribly clear. Neither is the reason that most of the main combatants are children. It’s similar to World War II with a focus on air combat with propeller driven planes. The story follows a pilot that transfers to a little air base and his relationships with the people he meets and the lessons he learns about life.
The music in Sky Crawlers is phenomenal, not because it’s great, but because the music knows what it’s supposed to do and excels at it, but it also knows when it needs to stay quiet. The audio in this movie was great all around. The sounds are fitting and silence isn’t just a gap between things, but sound in itself to be used for the story. Music, when used well, takes one of two forms: The first is when the music has its own identity separate but complementary to the movie; that’s when we buy soundtracks and remember particular songs and such. The second is when the music is used solely for the effect of the story and to further the experience; that music has no identity outside of the movie but if used properly the movie won’t exist without it. The music in Sky Crawlers is not memorable at all, but that’s because it is used so well that it blends perfectly with everything else in the movie. I can count on one hand the number of movies or shows that used music so well. Since the same amount of effort that went into the music went into the sound, it merits a mention here too. Sound in anime is typically well done and doesn’t need to be complimented, but every piece of audio in this movie was so well-implemented that I can’t help but say nice things. I’d give it a cookie if I could. In trying to think of any particular songs or sounds, the silence is actually the most stand out thing that comes to mind. Silence is an oft-overlooked tool in sound design, but knowing how to use it effectively can make the difference between a tired scene and a gripping scene. Anyway, that’s enough nice things about the music that I can’t remember.
Sky Crawlers has a unique visual flavor to it, merging less common anime designs and computer generated vehicles. The anime style is, well, it lacks detail similar to a style I saw in another anime but I can’t for the life of me remember which one. The designs are sharp, though, and the lack of detail makes everything else stand out in a good way while keeping everything looking unique with a definite artistic sense. By everything else standing out I mean the characterization and the planes. See, the planes are ludicrously detailed, but it gives a subtle sense of unbalance that works at several levels with the story. The plane designs are good (I love the one based on the P-51 Mustang) and the differences between the planes for each side are obvious enough that anyone can tell which planes are on which side in the war. The animation, both CG and regular, is smooth without any errors or slowdown. This movie knew where it was going from day one, and it shows in every aspect. The character movements are deliberate and never wasted with the same emphasis on stillness that there was on silence. The air battles, well, the air battles merit their own paragraph.
Air combat in Sky Crawlers is not the center of the movie, but it’s gorgeous and lots of other nice things. The biggest problem with flight in Last Exile is that they focused too much on the close angles and the dynamic fly-by shots and lost any sense of location. To effectively portray flight you need things moving in relation to other things consistently. You don’t get a sense of distance from a fly-by, but you do when you have a plane racing by a wall of clouds, then looping up and around through them with a camera that stays far back enough to show it in one shot. To show two planes in relation to one another it’s important to keep them in the frame, even when you change angles so you can always see where they are in relation to one another. Sky Crawlers does all this and more, but it does it with a focus on the cinematic elements that takes it beyond a functional level and into the wildly artistic. But since it’s not the focus of the movie, you don’t actually get to see the combat as much. It was done so well I can’t help but talk about it at length. Just so you don’t think I’m thick later, I did pick up on the fact that there’s no sense of freedom in these skies, but it’s war and some other reasons I won’t go into it. Also, it’s nice to see that the people making this movie knew that while the flying isn’t the main thing to watch, the detail needs to be put into it so it doesn’t lose the effect it needs when it is there. All of the flying has a profound impact on the feel of the story and it blends perfectly with all of the thematic elements that pop up.
So, for the story I can’t tell you much. What I can tell you, though, is that this movie has the second most interesting character I’ve ever seen in an anime. To say this movie is character driven would be like saying water is wet. All of the characters are unique and well-written. The way they act is subtle and the dialogue is poignant. Sometimes, though, it’s a little too subtle. It might be the cultural differences showing, but the characters are so subtle it actually took me out of the experience a bit as I had to focus so hard on the meanings of some of their actions. But it wasn’t the simple trying to figure out some subtle gesture kind of meanings, it was the is this how people relate to each other at deeper levels kind of meanings. The only two criticisms I can come up with for this movie are that first, it’s deliberately slow and at two hours it’s a lot of slow, and second, not everything is explained to the level of mind-numbing detail we’re used to. However, both of those complaints fall short when looking at the story as a whole. The story in Sky Crawlers is subtle, varied, and full of symbolism that needs a slow pace so you can soak it all in. It’s best that only what’s necessary is explained as that makes you think about what the parts that weren’t explained mean and eventually the deeper meanings behind that. I have so many things I want to say about this story, but they actually apply to everything as a whole; so, here we go to the conclusion!
Sky Crawlers is an immersive movie full of subtlety, beauty, meaning, and all the other things a good piece of art should have. The music, animation, and story come together in harmony that we don’t often see. The depth of this story and the way it pushes our understanding of the human condition and the nature of children is…well, I don’t think I should type too much more here. I liked Sky Crawlers. I liked it a lot. It was everything I look for in an anime. I can point at this and say this is not just progress, this is art. What was the last thing you saw that made you say that?
~Whim
PS – I watched this movie as a fansub from Frostii.
PS2 – This anime is for mature audiences.
PS3 – I donated a nicely dressed fansub to the club, but it’s high def so you need a computer with some horsepower to play it. Sorry. (The file for the movie is as big as a dvd, took me two weeks to download due to scarce sources.)
PS4 – Yes, this is a very positive review. Yes, it gets a little weird at the end there. Writing these during club showings is the equivalent of staying up all night for me. Yeah.
PS the edit - Alrighty, I forgot one thing. This movie was good enough that I was totally willing to overlook whatever flaws it had, which doesn’t happen very often. That said, there’s a lot of english in this movie, but it’s that weird english like in Beck. Thankfully it was subtitled.
