What a beautiful movie!

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Being new to anime, I watched this with no expectations and no background knowledge. This is one amazing, intelligent movie.The early scenes have a persistent, eerie, dislocated feel to them. Soon it's obvious that this is deliberate. What the characters do not say, and do not do, is more important than what the viewer sees and hears. The stillness and emptiness on screen hint at something very menacing off-screen.The hints gradually give way to answers. This is a horrific, predatory world where humans exploit perpetual adolescents - "kildren" - to keep the peace. By fighting and dying in stage-managed battles, the kildren help maintain a comfortable stable social order for the adults to enjoy. The adults also get to enjoy, vicariously, the thrills of warfare.The kildren do what they have been trained, engineered, and ordered to do - kill their own kind. But as they slowly, one by one, become aware, of the nature of their lives, the kildren suffer. Some turn suicidal. Some try to blot out the awareness with continual distractions, of chain-smoking, alcohol, sex.How do you live, when you realize you have been bred like cattle, for butchering, and your last day could well be this day? There are some thought-provoking themes here, and it's a nice touch, somehow very fitting, that the sex scenes are as sad as they are modest.Predation of the young, abuse of power, the pain that comes with awareness. These are difficult high-level concepts, skilfully handled in this artful piece of work.

I have to try to write a short review to avoid spilling out any beans But all I wanted to say is, this movie is like a bible - its hidden meaning is totally unlike what it seems from merely its outer appearance. If you cannot think outside the box or if you cannot treat this anime as coming from a surreal genre that requires a high level of intellectual thought to peel off its layers, then you are not prepared to embrace its true power.For those of you who are ready, just think of the Children and keep this thought throughout while watching this movie (which is understandably made at an ultra-slow pace). It forms the basis of the link between things happening in the movie against something that is already apparent in real life. If you need more clues, please read Oshii's interviews online on his intention of making this movie.Otherwise, if you get any of the mind-blowing revelation, once you uncovered something along those lines, that caught me off-guard like a plane shooting up sky-high, you will probably feel that 10 stars are not enough for this masterpiece either.

Mr Oshii is the kind of director you can't fully dislike; the man has some interesting ideas, he knows how to create mood, yet at the same time he suffers of a severe case of minimalistic obsesivus. Staring at a character staring at the sky for 5 minutes is not deep, is not provoking, is just...boring, and dull.There's little to no plot here, pilots that never grow old seem to be fighting in ambigous conflicts for corporations. They are mercenaries for hire, and we take a peek at their rather dull and not very interesting lifes. Fighting, going back to the hangar, visiting prostitutes and repeat. Character interaction, dialogues and, well, anything that looks like movement, or that could approach an engaging situation, remains as short as possible. What was the movie trying to say? That war is senseless and endless and it makes you feel nothing after a while and...something else? Who knows, and sadly, who cares, because it's impossible to care about this movie, or even remember much of it.

I just watched this movie and it upset me after the first 30 minutes. I'm not a huge fan of Mamoru Oshii but I loved the job he did on Ghost In The Shell 1 and 2 as well as Patlabor 2 (in a lesser way). I think I understood the movie pretty well, and I agree with most of the arguments of the reviews praising the movie, except that for me the plot is just inadequate for an animated movie. It's far too slow, the characters are quiet, boring, plus the character design looks so poor compared to the CGI, it's just not fitting at all. There is a lot of static shots, with pretty much nothing to think about. Okay, they give you some of the reasons why it was so slow all the way long, nearly at the end, but my point is that it's too late! It's not like I jumped off my seat, I was actually quite disappointed, so long for this! And what do I care? It's not like after 2 hours I really got attached to any of the characters... It just barely saves the movie.I understand it could work very well for the graphic novel (wouldn't get this issue with the different styles, plus you can read it at your own rhythm, and go back for another reading after the big revelation at the end), but here I just got the proof from Oshii himself that one cannot adapt everything to animated movies or movies. Sometimes it's just impossible. A movie HAS to entertain, and not only for the last 5 minutes.