Blu-ray Movie Reviews

A group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds. With his only childhood memory consisting of intense flight training, the fearless teenage pilot Yuichi's dogfights coexist with his struggle to find his missing past. When his beautiful, young female commander Suito is reluctant to discuss the fate of the pilot that Yuichi is replacing - or the strangely perfect condition of that pilot's former aircraft - Yuichi's curiosity becomes heightened.

Mamoru Oshii reteams with his Production IG counterparts from the popular Ghost in the Shell films for this new mind trip. Like the Ghost films, The Sky Crawlers plays a lot of mind games and can leave the viewer guessing at times. The trailers make it out like a pretty intense action film but there are only a few, yet dazzling, action sequences. Instead this is more of a character tale that leaves little clues throughout but ultimately doesn’t impress with its rather odd twist. While I loved the film visually, the story left me a bit dry.

Production IG remains one of the best anime studios out there in my opinion and this Blu-ray presentation shows off every bit of work for this film. The animation is a bit of a contrast with very simple character designs installed in detail rich and at times photorealistic worlds. The dog fight sequences are by far the highlight and the animators did a remarkably job with the realistic skyscapes. I didn’t see any distracting artifacts and the slight shimmering that is ever so present with most anime films is just nowhere to be found. Colors have a life like quality and the softer focus effects can make this a smidge soft compared to most animation features on Blu-ray. Still, this is a pretty remarkable looking feature with plenty of rich eye candy.

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and offers some intense demo worthy sequences that really push the envelope of dynamic range. The dog fight sequences have great bass extension and the post production work of Skywalker Sound is in full display here with rich spatial design, incredible surround use and plenty of deep infrasonic range. I’m sure you’ll be seeing several sequences from this film used as demo material for some time to come. Sony includes both the original Japanese dub and an English dub for those that don’t care for subtitles.

Extras include a look at the animation and sound design along with a feature on the research that went in to the project’s animation.

An interesting piece of anime that can be a bit slow from time to time. I was hoping for more given Oshii’s involvement, but his works are always a bit bizarre. The A/V presentation is outstanding though so fans of the genre may want to give this one a look.