Mamoru Oshii is best known as the brains behind international anime movie smash hit Ghost in the Shell its spin-off TV series’ and its visually spectacular sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Although still better known abroad than it is in Japan, there’s still a lot of pressure on Oshi to pull something magic out of the bag to prove there’s life beyond the Major’s leotard.

Based on Hiroshi Mori’s novel of the same name, The Sky Crawlers (スカイクローラー) is making a splash at the Venice Film Festival where it has garnered a great deal of attention and will compete for the Golden Lion award. The reasons for this go further than the fact Oshii deliberately pushed the movie to European critics and hoped for it to be taken seriously as a work of art. The movie itself is largely Western in set design and plays out with Bergman-esque European art film sensibilities. The dialogue is sparse to the point of discomfort and a constant howling wind adds to the existentialist angst. One would imagine that if Mamoru was to read Jean-Paul Sartre and accounts of the battle of Britain for a straight year, The Sky Crawlers is exactly the kind of movie he’d make.

The story concerns an an alternative history in which eternally young “kildren” wait on a quiet air-base for their time to fight and die in a corporate war. Although the trappings are distinctively World War II inspired, the story actually involves eternally young pilots who are bred and destined to take part in dogfights over Europe for the entertainment of adults.

The gang wrestle with ennui, angst and world weary sexual politics with a keen sense of their own expendability. Although the tone is reminiscent of new wave existentialist European cinema, the gangs own struggle with identity comes not from the absurdity of existence preceding essence, but from the fact that some of the pilots are in fact clones of their deceased former selves. The survivors have to deal with their feelings towards someone who is so familiar and yet so alien to themselves.

Thematically and stylistically the movie shares a surprising amount with Mamoru’s Ghost in the Shell oeuvre. The characters have a deliberately doll-like manner. They stare wide and silent while the last spoken word reverberates in the air like a delicate hanging cadence. Batou’s basset hound from Ghost in the Shell, closely resembling Oshii’s own pet, is back and as ubiquitous as ever. Even Ghost in the Shell’s clockwork music box and fish eye lens combination return in a scene that looks like it could almost have been lifted from the Innocence out-takes. These motifs scream “I want to be seen as an auteur” in a time when all memory of what that word entails is hurriedly being erased from the late-capitalist cultural lexicon.

Almost all of the dogfighting scenes are rendered in beautiful 3D that is soft edged and naturalistic, unlike much of today’s flashy CGI work. All of the figures are largely hand painted and a combination of the two is used to give some humanity to the airborne scenes. In interviews Mamoru has expressed doubts over whether or not hand-drawn anime can thrive in an age where quality is low on the priority list and most made-for-TV pulp is farmed out to cheaper labourers aborad. It will be interesting to see how the anime world deals with the disjunction between the two artistic styles that battle for supremacy in the skies over Oshii’s latest work.

For a fan of Oshii this is a fascinating and mature work. It begs to be watched not as anime, perhaps not even as an art film. It will remain to be seen whether enough viewers remain to appreciate the influences and nuances that make The Sky Crawlers an occasionally sublime viewing experience. Of Rice and Zen rather suspects such viewers are few and far between in the anime-watching community.

Oshi was brave and correct to try to promote Skycrawlers to the non-anime crowd. Whether this is a break out hit along the lines of the Nintendo DS that can attract new audiences to the hermetically sealed special interest niche of anime with a movie like The Sky Crawlers is hard to say. It is far more likely to end up a cult hit with film students/critics and Mamoru Oshii completists than a mainstream smash hit.

Perhaps, dear reader, you sometimes find yourself bemoaning the lack of originality and brains in today’s fan-service oriented anime market. Perhaps you hanker for the days of high quality, hand drawn animation. Perhaps you’re an art film lover that has found nothing to interest you from the mainstream recently. It could be you fell in love with Ghost in the Shell and you want to know what else the director can turn his hand to. It may be that you miss the days of the auteur. Possibly you’d like to test your buttocks to see whether can withstand art that unfolds at a more leisurely pace than the Hollywood default of “please don’t get bored, look at these pokies!”

If you think you fit into any of the above categories Of Rice and Zen highly recommends you put your money where the quality is. Undertakings like The Sky Crawlers don’t come about as often as we’d like, so we should reward handsomely those who risk being shot out of the skies. While you’re waiting for it to appear in the west, take a look at Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, Oshii’s last gem to win over Venice.