Sky Crawlers

The series of novels by Hiroshi Mori about the Kildren fighter-pilots in an alternative reality was deliberately published in the Noughties in non-chronological order. The complexity of ideas this implies is honoured in Oshii's ravishing anime adaptation. The Kildren fight wars for private companies as adult entertainment in a counter-universe that skilfully mixes retro and futuristic ideas. 'Oshii commented that the societies of highly developed economies have fostered a certain state of arrested development [in] young people...This sense of stasis, cultural amnesia, and immediacy also pervades the consciousness of the genetically engineered, perennially adolescent Kildren fighter pilots...the film is a brooding and densely philosophical exposition into the nature of love, war, memory, aging, and identity.' (Acquarello, Strictly film school)

Thanks to Manga