Preview: The Sky Crawlers

The Sky Cawlers

I am surprisingly given a chance to preview the movie, “The Sky Crawler”, before it’s release on the 27th Nov 2008, in all GV cinemas.

And so let me give you a bit of a preview and mostly what I think of the movie.

What can I say, it’s not boring, it’s not that exciting…. but it sure can keep your attention, and have you asking for more, but not of the same thing…

No wonder the director, Momoru Oshii will say that this is the hardest adaptation that he had ever made…

The storyline itself is already up to your own interpretations.

For many of the film’s mysteries are never revealed, leaving audiences who went in knowing a little, coming out still knowing that little… if they are that bad at inferences… (Ha! Social Studies) This film is made so that nothing is spelled out clearly…

For example, are they really fighting a war of company dominances or just a show for the world? Which I think is the easiest to answer of the many that I thought of, yes, even the questions are to be thought of yourself.

Weird… huh… How much you understand of the story depends alot on your IQ, and Inferencing abilities.

But It’s something that can keep you thinking for bit, like “is War really necessary for maintaining peace”, for the philosophical or “If they have such high tech thing, what the hell are they doing in that upgrade Raiden copycat?!” for those technologically adapted.

Graphically, the sky is not the limit in The Sky Crawlers. With very beautifully rendered planes going at each another in the very well done skies of Europe.

But… that might be all for the many lower tier Anime Fans… who are not exposed to the Artistic films like Ghost in the shell(Movie), and Blood, The Last Vampire. Where the style of drawing is quite different from their Naruto, Gintama or Bleach.

If you are exposed, then the way the characters are drawn might be interesting, not beautiful like Kannagi but rather amaturish… with the baggy cloths and overly round head… which i believe is to show their differences from the adults.

Sound wise is very nicely done, from the sound of the gun fire to the engine of the plane itself. Then the OST althought technically is only a few but is superbly edited to fit the many different settings.

Of cause, the dubbing, the one I previewed is the original dub. Which consist of English and Japanese. Yes,  The Sky Crawler uses English, and rather extensively too. With all the in flight speeches and commands given in good standard and perfect English English. It has the best English dubbing I have seen recently, atleast the Japanese VAs are capable of speaking English.

Overall, The Sky Crawlers, is a very entertaining show that will leave the audiences going WTF… And thus it deserves from me a 3.5 Star Rating a upon 5.

You guys can go watch it with quite high an expectation, but like I said, the higher your IQ, the better you will enjoy/dislike the show. It’s all about your Interpretation, really!

PS: After the movie, if you wanna know more, go get the novels.