The Sky Crawlers’s Review

Thunder, thunder, thundercats… Upps, wrong show 😀

Another film by Mamoru Oshii. Known for his philosophy-story telling, The Sky Crawlers thankfully isn’t as complex as his other work, the worldwide phenomenon Ghost In The Shell.

As a whole, the movie itself is so-so. No over the top machinery or city buildings could be found here. Well, it’s a drama flick as I said earlier, guess there’s not much room for that. The story itself is mostly sob, even though the whole atmosphere can be considered as mild and light, thanks to the calm color tone that mostly consisted of blue, white, grey and brown.  That kind of color tone and screenplay might be something new and challenging for Oshii san I guess.

The aircraft design is really intriguing, with WWII aircraft as its basic design, it should be able to attract the aircraft fans interest. The battle, especially the dogfight scenes were fun to watch. The last air battle however isn’t as epic as I thought it would be. Despite the fact that they didn’t use much lines here, and most of the lines sounded “normal”, I like how the characters have “depth” in them. The facial expression was a bit stiff but somehow they could express themselves so well. Again, that’s what you could at least expect from a worldclass director.

The Kildren however caught my attention, human who can’t get old and can be “reproduced”. The term gave the movie a sci-fi touch. What’s more, the complexity, dealing with sosial, moral, and emotional issues surrounding the Kildren’s life, put more twists to the story than I expected. At least, that’s what I felt while watching the last part.

For some people, The Sky Crawlers might look like a boring and “flat” movie. However, if you have watched Oshii san’s previous works before, you might see it as a totally fresh and out of box one. I just want to warn you, do not ever start watching it with high expectation, and you’ll be surprised by how “mature” the movie is.

Well, this fighter-pilot drama flick undoubtedly brought elements that’s definitely Oshii’s. If you’re expecting an action packed film, just skip this one.

Last but not least, what’s with all those smoking scenes?

No Game No Life’s So Far

Six episodes so far, this surprisingly full of scientific related things anime had taken over the throne from Black Bullet. Now, it’s undoubtedly the strongest candidate to be the season’s best.

Started off like a big time jokes series, No Game No Life has proved itself to be the most complex and well written series this season offered. The concept of challenging God that would likely enable the winner to take over the world, no, the whole universe, is totally cool. Many new games appeared that mostly “out of this world” were intriguing. How the heroes won over them is even more intriguing.

As I mentioned earlier, many scientific related therms were used. Mathematics, Physics, Biology, History, Geography etc, this series almost covered them all. The way those terms presented were pretty clever too. Many people, especially those involved in educational field, would probably agree with me that they should have done this kind of things in classes to keep the students attracted. I’m a math teacher and mathematics have always been an inevitable part of my life, but I’m still surprised how mathematics could look so cool in an anime.

Well now, as the Imanity’s last hope, how the duo will survive those absolute law-created by god-games of life? Stay tuned!