The Sky Crawlers

[Akilae]

Yeah... Oshii's films are love it or hate it, coupled with the hit or miss factor...

[Bri]

Saw the movie today. It's slow pace, atmospheric scenery and dystopic outlook are typically Oshii indeed. He manages to redefine hell byshowing the life of Suito Kusanagi. The dog fights were as good as anything I have seen sofar. The character designs take getting used to but have grown on me.

[uminoken]

Just saw it today and loved it. Fortunately I knew what I was in for, as the box art and back make it sound like some sort of Flyboys adventure movie. It was an interesting choice to hear Engrish during the dogfights, while retaining Japanese for all the other scenes. Another indication of their 'social lives' being so far separated from combat? Regardless, if anyone much more talented than me knows of, or has made any screencaps, I would be hugely grateful. Also, has anyone heard on any more progress of the Wii game making it stateside? Nobody seems to know anything

[F-ZeroOne]

English is generally regarded as the "lingua franca" of the international aviation community, though I would imagine it would have been a little bit unusual in the kind of retro-setting of Sky Crawlers. Yukikaze also featured English dialogue during many of the aerial scenes.

[wolfx]

Finally seen it yesterday on BD. Kept hearing how boring it was but by the end of it, i kinda liked it. Much more than GITS2 Innocence anyway.

It definately was slow paced and some scenes felt like they could be cut down or totally removed to make the movie fit 30-45 minutes. The plot twists were pretty nifty though revealed abit too late. I'm really curious about The Teacher though. Who is he and why is he the ace? Is he even from the enemy's side?

[Keith]

There was no real "enemy," just 2 companies churning out clones for war/entertainment, etc. As for the teacher, I think he was Haruhi Suzumiya!

[wolfx]

The Teacher

was apparently the original sample for Yuichi from which he was cloned from and the person

Makoto Kusanagi had a child with before he defected to the rival company Lautern.

[Vile]

I've seen the model kits around for a while, and they are very pretty - I would probably check this out just for the dogfights. As it is, I also like most of Oshii's stuff, so I hope we can see some fan screencaps soon. Or, hey, even an official version would be fine by me.

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Anyone else try out the Wii game? Namco's Project Aces is behind it so it feels like Ace Combat...with fictional prop planes. Once I switched the control scheme to expert mode without the motion control, I had a great time with it. I just couldn't get used to the nunchuk/wand motion control combo.

[Scream Man]

If it wasnt on Wii Id try it.

[wolfx]

Anyone else try out the Wii game? Namco's Project Aces is behind it so it feels like Ace Combat...with fictional prop planes. Once I switched the control scheme to expert mode without the motion control, I had a great time with it. I just couldn't get used to the nunchuk/wand motion control combo.

Could you do the cobra maneuver like in the anime?

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Could you do the cobra maneuver like in the anime?

I haven't seen the anime yet, but one can automatically do all sorts of maneuvers to get behind an enemy at the press of a button. There's a meter that fills up once you stay within the direct vicinity of an enemy. Once the meter reaches a certain level, all you have to do is hit a button and then an auto pilot will kick in that will do anything to get your plane behind the enemy for an easy kill. Fun, but it felt a little chintzy. One time I tried not to use that feature when I repeated a mission-I ended up getting a lower rating. As for doing a cobra manually, I'll have to try it next time I'm around the Wii. But anyone craving some new Ace Combat action should give this game a shot.

[wolfx]

i guess that button is the thing that mimics the anime. Manually is probably impossible......