Movie “The Sky Crawlers” – What Is the Present Age Youth Lives In -

Director: Mamoru Oshii
Writer: Chihiro Ito
Original: Hiroshi Mori
Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Ryo Kase, Shosuke Tanihara, Chiaki Kuriyama, Megumi Yamaguchi

Movie “The Sky Crawlers” is a work of director Mamoru Oshii shown in 2008.

The contents in work of Mamoru Oshii are always difficult.

After all, this work is also difficult, and I couldn’t understand only watched it once.

So I went to the movie theater three times and appreciated it.

I do not yet understand well, because there are big theme, and I think that it is the movie which I am made to think about very much after all.

Various themes including a “War and Peace”, “meaning to live”, “youth living in the present age” for mix, and one story is formed.

What would Mamoru Oshii want to convey through this movie ?

It is talked as follows in the official website of the movie.

I became 56 years old.

For a movie director, I am young and am not old either.

I have many things to have to do still, but came to notice that I lived in a year as the prime of life for the public.

Now there are only young staffs around me, and it may be the reason to have come to face the one daughter who became an adult.

What should I make as a movie director now? I came to strongly hold thought to want to say something for the young people who lived in now.

There is neither the starvation nor the revolution nor the war in this country now.

We obtained the society which could be valid until many people accomplished a natural life span without being troubled with food, clothing and shelter.

However, I think that — on the other hand it is very hard to live.

We are in the situation to have to live in the life lasting similar forever.

And there are some pitiful cases that is caused in sequence in that.

Parent murders a child, and a child murders a parent.

A youth cuts off own life without any reason.

Desolate mental burnt ground seem to be spreading in the heart of people living in this country now, though it is rich in materially.

What should I say to youths living in such times ?

To an NEET and a job-hopping part-timer, girls to sit down in a center street of Shibuya.

To the boy who murdered a parent.

People look down on them in the glance of adult and reach no essence at all, and they give the name such like disease.

I must listen to a voice from the depth of their heart, and think that I should say something now.

A chief character of “The Sky Crawlers” is children destined to live in by nature everlasting life.

They did not choose become an adult though could become an adult.

They always choose to fight with every effort being conscious of death as a pilot of the fighters as a pubertal figure forever.

And the movie greets a climax with the monologue of the chief character.

Still … … It is different from yesterday today
It will be surely different from today tomorrow
Even a course always being same, you can go steps on a different place and can walk
Scenery is not same all the time just because of a carrying way

It is different from yesterday today even if I will live in life to continue forever.

The noise of trees, the smell of wind, the warmth of somebody in neighbor.

Though it is small, I surely believe the thing which I can feel to be and live for it.

In that way, this world that we live in is not the thing which to be thrown away.

Though it is quiet, I want to convey reliable true hope to youths living in now, not empty justice to cry loudly nor conventional encouragement, through this movie.

What Is the Present Age that Youth Lives In

In this movie, there is two unrealistic setting.

One is the existence of “Kildren” which does not become an adult, and continues living in an everlasting life as a pubertal figure all the time.

The other is “the war as the show” that people demanded in the peaceful times one more.

Both is described as an important factor to express the present age when the present youth feels.

Why may it be said that they express “the present age when the youth feels it” ?

The reason is mentioned in the official website of the movie.

There is neither the starvation nor the revolution nor the war in present Japan.

It is like “Kildren” for the youth to live in the society where many people can accomplish a natural life span without being troubled with food, clothing and shelter at all forever.

And at the peaceful society, there is no idea how long can I live. (maybe very long time.)

Youths living in such a society cannot always realize that they live without “the war” that can be conscious of death adversely.

Through such a situation setting, psychology of the youth murdering another person as if totally okay, or committing suicide is described.

Furthermore, as for Motoko Kusanagi who is one of the characters, there is the scene several times that she is going to kill loving Yuichi because she loves him.

Is it because it is “the gentleness” to a partner to kill ?

Is ending the life that seems to continue totally forever ?

Is it that why a youth murders another person as if totally okay because it is “the gentleness” to a partner ?

However, as a message for such a youth, Mamoru Oshii completes it as follows.

The Sky Crawlers (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sky Crawlers – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia