Anime, (Japanese-style animation), or ‘Japanime’ as it is sometimes called, is a very specific genre that has amassed quite a following worldwide. With its bigger titles such as Ninja Scroll and Ghost in the Shell, anime continues to see a multitude of financial success. Entering the fray in this category but on a slightly different level is The Sky Crawlers. It combines traditional Japanese animation with a fair amount of CGI (computer generated imagery). So will The Sky Crawlers soar above the competition or will it stall on the runway? Let’s suit up and find out!
Film
I was surprised to see that this film was two hours long. It’s not common for a cartoon film to have such a lengthy runtime. In addition, with the CGI it has, it leads one to believe The Sky Crawlers took quite a long time to make. Normally, this is where I introduce the characters, but there’s one small problem. I don’t know how to spell their names and the credits were in Japanese. In addition, this movie does so little to establish character development that you will find yourself not caring one way or the other about these kids.
Yes, they are in fact kids, known as Kildren, that don’t grow up in a physical sense. They reach an appearance of a teenager and can live forever, free from the grasp of death’s natural causes. As such, they are recruited to serve as pilots in a corporate air battle. You won’t find any warring governments here. This is a blue-collar battle of white-collar interests. Rostock versus Lautern. Those are the warring factions, battling for air supremacy over a fictional Europe with prop planes. Gee guys, where I come from, corporations just drop their prices to rule the day.
The immediate goal of these Rostock pilots seems to be the demise of the “Teacher.” This is a somewhat unidentified adult who is apparently unstoppable in the air who racks up kill after kill. More scenes of the “Teacher” in action would have been so much more welcomed over sleep-inducing dialogue. The CGI of the planes and the dogfight animation is absolutely spectacular. This is far better than anything Pixar has every brought to the big screen. You will find yourself wondering if some of the scenes are actual or just incredibly superb computer animation. The traditional ink animation is standard here and is really nothing to write home about, but it won’t offer any grimaces either.
My biggest complaint is the overabundance of dramatic pauses in this film. The first thing that came to mind was the old Talk Soup show on the E! channel, specifically its original host, Greg Kinnear. He would have these hilarious but silent expressions of disbelief. He retained the key of timing in doing so. In The Sky Crawlers, there is no sense of expressive timing. This film is absolutely infested with these breaks in dialogue where a character will be staring directly at the viewer or off into space. It is ridiculously annoying and shatters the quality of any possible story. Perhaps if more time was spent on content flow, a more solid delivery could have been established. Instead, we’ve got teenage top guns pointing pistols at one another hoping for death or sex, which ever is more readily available at the moment.
Video
Coming to us in a magnificent 1080p, 1.78:1 aspect ratio with an AVC encode, The Sky Crawlers truly shines when the film takes to the air. The colors remain consistently solid throughout the movie’s delivery, but the CGI is the Webster Dictionary definition of ‘perfect.’ I cannot brag enough about how positively satisfying these scenes look. True, the ink animation has zero grain and no flaws just like its computer-aided counterpart. However, it certainly loses its spotlight to the realism of the fighter planes. I will say the two methods gel quite well when you will find one style of animation sharing a scene with the other (i.e. the hand-drawn pilot in his CGI cockpit). With the exception of the Final Fantasy movie, I have never seen computer animation look so incredibly jaw-dropping.
Audio
If someone asked me to provide them with the finest example of surround sound from a Blu-ray disc, I would have them listen to this film. There was no audible detail spared when this film was assembled. I take my hat off to the folks behind this one because you will hear every mechanical aspect of a door knob being turned, released and clicking into place as well as the characters’ shifting weight on a creaky, hardwood floor. While the dialogue is delivered from the front, the approach of off-screen characters can be heard as their footsteps originate from the rear channels with every gravel-crunching step.
The air battles are just adrenalizing as your subwoofer repeatedly thumps from the rapid fire of the wing-mounted guns. While laser cannons can look cool on screen, there is just something that old black-powder technology can offer on surround sound that hot plasma can’t. If you don’t feel like you are part of the action when watching this, please check your pulse and have a phone near by. The well-versed usage of all speakers and the subwoofer will make you want to throw this disc in again just to hear another air battle.
Special Features
There are four selectable items under The Sky Crawlers extras, not including the BD Live feature, all of which are presented in 1080i.
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Previews – Blu-ray Disc in High Definition!, Dragon Wars, The Da Vinci Code Extended Cut, Passengers, Close Encounters of the Third Kind 30th Anniversary Edition.
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Animation Research for The Sky Crawlers – This segment follows director Mamoru Oshii and his camera crew around Poland as they get ideas for the cityscape of their film. While it may not sound all that exciting, it was actually quite intriguing and I found it more entertaining than the movie itself (30:52).
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The Sound Design and Animation of The Sky Crawlers – While this bit features more dialogue with Mamoru Oshii, you’ll also find interviews with the film’s animators and their visit to Skywalker Ranch for some sound implementation in the film (32:16).
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Sky’s the Limit: An Interview with Director Mamoru Oshii – A one-on-one discussion with the director (15:18).
Final Thoughts
There was so much potential for this film. Unfortunately, its greatest sequence lies in the very beginning before the title credits even roll. It’s not that I just want action on the screen. Of course I want a story, but this film lacked both overall and the story is paramount to a film’s delivery. The only good I can pull out of this film is eclipsed by the slow-moving, often-empty interaction between characters. What a pity that such a brilliant use of sight and sound is lost on the anemic dialogue. I switched around the audio to see if that would help. At first I had the English delivery, which I then switched to Japanese delivery with English subtitles. From this I discovered that no matter how little of a story there is, it is still universally empty in any language.
