If there's one series that I like besides Ace Combat and Yukikaze it’s The Sky Crawlers.
If you heard about this series then you probably have watched movie released in 2008 which
features stunning dogfight scenes but at the same time is slow and boring as hell -
because seriously, who takes forever to get inside a car???
But apart from the movie, there's also the Sky Crawlers book written by Hiroshi Mori
and the game - The Sky Crawlers Innocent Aces that was also released in 2008, just like
the movie, for the Wii and was also created by Project Aces.
I will be using these three works as the sources to this video and although there are some
contradictions between them, I will show you all the major variations.
If you look from the outside The Sky Crawlers looks like a typical series about young people
in the military living a life of adventure and dogfighting - but there's more to the
series than just the dogfight!
I personally think that The Sky Crawlers has a great story, however the problem is that
its story isn't well explained - especially in the movie - and so my goal with this video
is to explain The Sky Crawlers series with a timeline so I can unveil the dark story
behind The Sky Crawlers.
Unlike the Ace Combat series, The Sky Crawlers doesn't take place in a different planet like
Strangereal, instead it takes place in Earth, more specifically in Europe, as we can see
in these maps from the game and from the movie as well.
This means that at some point there was a split between real life history and the history
of The Sky Crawlers universe, and judging by the book this happened in a time frame
that starts prior to World War I and ends after World War II since we know for a fact
that the two world wars happened in this particular universe.
After World War II, there were two huge corporate conglomerates in Europe: Rostock, our protagonist
corporation, and Lautern, the enemy corporation.
Rostock is known to have a very powerful genetics division and sometime after WWII they conducted
experiments with genetic control agents for its new product called “Kildren”.
However something in this experiment went wrong and so the “Kildren” were created.
The Kildren are genetically enhanced teenagers who don’t age and are very resistant against
diseases, as a result they can’t die from natural causes, they can just die in battles.
As a matter of fact, their abilities surpass the average human being because they react
and think faster, making them perfect fighter pilots.
The last thing left to mention in the purple area of the timeline is that at a certain
point a war erupted between the two companies, Rostock and Lautern, and everything I have
said so far can only be found in The Sky Crawlers’ book.
Now that we are finished with the purple section let’s go into the next section which covers
the events of The Sky Crawlers Innocent Aces, the Wii game.
During the beginning of the conflict between the two corporations Lautern was winning and
the player of the game has the task of changing the tide of the war by playing as Lynx, a
young male adult who just joined the Cougar Squadron of Rostock’s air force.
Still in the beginning of the game, five young recruits join the squadron and they are all
Kildren, with Orishina and Ukumori being the most important of the five.
Rostock was now deploying Kildren to serve on its air force under the supervision of
Deputy Chief of Intelligence Mozume who was responsible for them and in addition to that,
Rostock was also developing a superweapon to change the tide of the war: Wolfram, a
giant armoured airship.
Continuing with our timeline, Captain Yamasaki, leader of the Cougar Squadron, is eventually
shot down and Lynx is promoted to squadron leader.
Later on, the squadron members even change Lynx’s nickname to Cheetah given that Cheetah
sounds more aggressive.
For all this time, the Cougar Squadron, including Cheetah canonically, had been flying the Suiga
which was Rostock’s main fighter, but Rostock was already developing a new one: the Sanka
- the one we see in the movie.
In one mission of the game, Cheetah is asked to perform a mock battle against Orishina,
who was the best pilot amongst the Kildren, in order to collect data on the Sanka prototype.
In the game that particular model is called the Sanka Mark II, but in the book it is called
the Sanka Mark A, however that is not the same Sanka that we see in the movie, that
one is the Sanka Mark B. Anyways, Cheetah and Orishina start the mock battle but shortly
after they are interrupted by some Lautern pilots.
After shooting the Lautern planes down, the mock battle is cancelled however Orishina
got very upset because she was having fun fighting against Cheetah.
It was because of this rivalry between Orishina and Cheetah that Orishina defected to Lautern
and became their ace pilot since she wanted to battle against Cheetah again.
Sometime after it is revealed that Mozume was rebelling against Rostock and he attempted
to defect to Lautern together with Wolfram, Rostock’s new superweapon, and the Kildren
technology.
Cheetah was sent to intercept and Wolfram and as result Wolfram was destroyed and Mozume
died in the process.
The last mission of the game is a large scale aerial battle between Rostock and Lautern
and in that battle Cheetah faces Orishina once more on a duel.
Despite Orishina’s skills, she is shot down by Cheetah and the mission is over.
On the last cutscene of the game it is revealed that Cheetah won a new nickname - “The Teacher”,
and if you watched the movie you should know what this means.
Before we proceed with our timeline however I need to explain the Kildren cycles since
this is a key factor for you to understand the story.
In the beginning of their cycle, the Kildren are assigned to a squadron belonging to Rostock’s
air force until they eventually die in combat, because remember that their body doesn’t
age and they don’t die from diseases.
As time passes, the Kildren will eventually die in combat and another Kildren will be
sent to take the place of the dead Kildren.
The interesting thing is that, the replacement Kildren is almost identical in terms of appearance,
behaviour and skills when compared to the previous Kildren, indicating that they are
clones - although the replacement Kildren always as different name and only a few differences
when it comes to appearance.
The first complete Kildren cycle we can see is about this Kildren here (his name is either
Hagami or Rokuroh), he is shot down in mission 4 but in the cutscene after mission 4 we see
see his replacement clone which is called Hiroto, that is when we start the second cycle
for that Kildren and I believe that eventually Hiroto will get killed and will be replaced
by Tokino from the movie.
And that doesn’t mean that Tokino is the third cycle, he could be the fourth, the tenth,
the twentieth and so on.
Now let’s take this logic and compare to other characters, Ukumori will eventually
become Yudagawa, and once Yudagawa is shot down he will be replaced yet by another clone
called Aihara.
Now things get interesting when we talk about Maumi Orishina, because she was an incredibly
high skilled Kildren and after she gets shot down I believe that she is replaced by Suito
Kusanagi, maybe Kusanagi isn’t her second cycle but eventually it will get there.
Now you know the Kildren cycles we can go into the green section of our timeline, the
inter-work period which serves as the bridge between the Sky Crawlers game and the movie
or the book, since the movie and the book cover the same period.
All we know from the inter-work period comes from the book, but there’s one important
exception which is the first thing in our timeline.
According to the movie, reason why I wrote the text in blue, Kusanagi fell in love with
the teacher and they did those adult things if you know what I mean and as a result Kusanagi
became pregnant of Mizuki.
By that time Rostock had made a lot of progress in developing the Sanka and Rostock adopted
it as its main fighter.
Before this, Rostock’s main fighter was the Suiga which canonically was the one being
piloted by Lynx, Cheetah or The Teacher (whatever you want to call him) as you can see in the
first mission and in all cutscenes of the game.
When the Sanka became the main fighter, Rostock also withdrew all tractor aircraft (aircraft
that have their engines in the front) from service in favour of pusher aircraft due to
higher efficiency, but guess who got really pissed off because of that?
The Teacher.
The Teacher absolutely hated this sudden change and its was because of this that he switched
sides and went to fly for Lautern.
Honestly, I expected a more elaborate reason for his switch to Lautern but that is what
the books says, it also mentions that pushers didn’t really fit into the Teacher’s flying
style since only a tractor aircraft could allow him to maneuver his plane during a stall
- something that had become his signature move.
After the Teacher had defected to Lautern, he once met with Kusanagi on a dogfight.
Kusanagi, who was an extremely good pilot, managed to shoot the teacher down first but
as the Teacher was going down on fire he managed to pull a cobra, fire against Kusanagi and
shoot her down as well.
In the end, both of them survived that battle.
Eventually Kusanagi got promoted to base commander and stopped flying.
Also sometime during the interwork period Rostock had introduced the Sanka Mark D. The
Mark D is only mentioned in the book and it is not flown by the main characters, they
are still flying the Mark B. Instead, the Mark D is only supposed to be seen during
the big aerial battle as mentioned in the book.
Talking about the Kildren, Tokino, Yudagawa and Jiroh Kurita were assigned to the base
during this period, but Jinroh’s cycle didn’t end because he was shot down, instead it ended
because Kusanagi killed him and the book leads us to believe that Kusanagi killed Jinroh
because of love.
♫Love is reason♫
And you are probably asking: Why the heck would you kill the one you love?
That is because we need to understand the Kildren’s perspective, they only live to
kill, the are clones created to kill others and their live is just an eternal repetition.
They get assigned, they go on sorties to kill others until they are eventually killed in
this meaningless corporate war.
Of course I should mention that whenever they are not flying they are only smoking, drinking
or having fun (if you know what I mean).
The longer the Kildren stay alive, the more they realize that their lives have no meaning.
Kusanagi, who seems to be the oldest Kildren of the story and who had been alive for about
14 years, is the first one who starts thinking like this and she even attempted to commit
suicide a couple of times - but she failed in all of them.
Jinroh Kurita also started thinking the same, even though he had only been assigned to the
base for 7 months and he begs Kusanagi to kill him to end his misery, Kusanagi agrees
and does so.
As you can see, the story of the Sky Crawlers is pretty dark and all of this happened before
the events of the movie and the book.
Now let’s continue with the timeline, four days after Jinroh Kurita was killed by Kusanagi,
Yuichi Kannami is sent as Jinroh’s replacement and this is where the story of the book and
the movie begin.
There are some minor and major variations between the book and the movie and because
of that you can see two timelines in different colours.
I’m not going to talk about the minor differences but when it comes down to a major one you
will see that there’s a split in the timeline.
Which one of them is canon?
I will leave that up to you to decide but I will explain both of them here.
Three days after Yuichi’s arrival we have the scout mission over the dam, the drive-in
dinner and we meet the two girls, Kusumi and Fuko, all of this in the same day.
Sometime after we have the first major split in the timeline, according to the movie Yuichi
handles the tour of the airbase as asked by Kusanagi, and according to the book Yuichi
has an oil leak problem with his aircraft, however this doesn’t mean that there’s
no airbase tour in the book, it still happen but only later on.
After that we come back to the same timeline, we have that scene where Lautern’s bombers
attempt to bomb the base but end up missing it.
Because of that, Kusanagi gets angry and drives together with Yuichi to talk to Rostock’s
high command since they didn’t issue an early warning on the bombers.
After that there’s another split in the timeline, in the movie Kusanagi takes Yuichi
to the guesthouse immediately after the drive to talk to Rostock’s high command.
In the book, the airbase tour happens in another day and Kusanagi takes Yuichi to the guesthouse
as her thanks since she hated doing the tours.
I should mention that by reading the book, Kusanagi’s cooking sucks and they end up
eating frozen food.
After that we have the patrol mission when Yuichi flew together with Yudagawa, callsign
“Westy”.
In both versions Yudagawa gets shot down but guess what?
There’s another timeline split!
In the movie this scene is the first encounter with the Teacher.
Yuichi sees him and then quickly dives into the clouds to escape.
On the following mission, Kusanagi sorties instead of Yuichi, sees and pursues the Teacher.
After battling the teacher alone she is shot down but manages to stay alive even after
crash landing her Sanka.
Fuko ends up finding Kusanagi by a chance, rescues her and brings her back to base.
When Fuko arrives at the base she talks to Yuichi and then there’s the flashback of
Kusanagi and the Teacher that I mentioned before.
But do you want to know what happens in the book?
Nothing of this happens because the Teacher just wasn’t there - at all.
After all of this, the squadron is ordered to move to another base.
This is when we get introduced to Mitsuya, the ace squadron of the new base.
Sometime after arriving at the new base there’s that large aerial battle between Rostock and
Lautern.
Rostock was going to attack Lautern with over 100 aircraft including light and medium fighters,
attackers, medium and heavy bombers.
In the book it is mentioned that the newer model of the Sanka, which I believe is the
Sanka Mk D, was present in that battle.
Again, there’s a split in the timeline about this battle.
We know that the Teacher was present in that battle but in the movie we only hear about
him during the debriefing.
In the book however, Yuichi and Tokino face the Teacher initially.
At that moment the battle was balanced but when Mitsuya’s squadron arrives to help
them fight the Teacher, the Teacher manages to escape into Lautern’s territory - and
that is the single and only appearance of the Teacher in the whole book.
After the huge air battle, Tokino, Yuichi and Kusanagi go explore the city of the new
airbase.
They first play bowling but then Tokino ditches Yuichi, so Yuichi stays alone with Kusanagi.
After the bowling, the two go to a restaurant and have a very philosophical talk.
Two weeks after that they are ordered to return to the original base together with Mitsuya’s
squadron.
In the movie, when Yuichi arrives at the base he sees a new pilot - Aihara.
Aihara had just been transferred there and this is the first time in the movie that we
see the complete Kildren cycle since Aihara looks very similar and fold the newspaper
in the same way when compared to Yudagawa.
At the original base, there’s a very important conversation between Yuichi and Mitsuya, Mitsuya
only now realizes that she is a Kildren and that her life has no purpose, instead it’s
just a meaningless repetition of the present.
The person watching the movie or reading the book can only now understand that the Kildren
are basically clones that are replaced one after the other and that they come from a
failed genetic experiment after WWII.
As a matter of fact, the memories that they Kildren possess had been apparently implanted
into their minds, that is why they can barely remember their childhood or how they joined
the military or how they even learned how to fly - instead they were created with these
fractured memories and abilities within them.
Up to this point there is one additional section of the timeline that I haven’t showed you
because it pertains only to Yuichi’s memory.
According to his memory, and you can only know this if you read the book, his mother
and elder sister had passed away, he had been a pilot for five years and some of other stuff
- but the thing is that this an imaginary timeline created only in his mind because
all that stuff didn’t actually happen.
After talking to Yuichi, Mitsuya finds out that Kusanagi killed Jinroh and goes on to
face Kusanagi in order to kill her.
Mitsuya was emotionally shocked and couldn’t aim the gun at Kusanagi but she fired one
bullet.
Yuichi hears the bullet from his room and goes to Kusanagi’s office and asks what
is going on.
Mitsuya tells that she is going to kill Kusanagi and Kusanagi agrees to it because during all
that time Kusanagi wanted to die, Kusanagi was actually pointing a pistol to her head
just in case Mitsuya didn’t kill her.
As a matter of fact, Jinroh and Kusanagi had made made a deal to kill each other, and since
Yuichi was Jinroh’s next cycle, it was actually Yuichi who was supposed to kill Kusanagi this
time.
Yuichi convinces Mitsuya not to fire and to hand him the gun saying that he is the one
who is going to kill Kusanagi and so Mitsuya agrees and hands the gun to him.
Right now we have arrived at the final split of the timeline.
In the book, Yuichi aims and fires the gun at Kusanagi’s heart, killing her instantaneously
- and that is where the story ends.
The movie however has a very different ending.
Instead of firing at Kusanagi, Yuichi saves her and convinces Kusanagi not to commit suicide.
He tells Kusanagi that she has to find a way to break these repeating cycles of life and
death.
The next scene on the movie is when Yuichi encounters the Teacher during a mission and
faces him alone.
Yuichi mentions that the Teacher is his father - and I honestly still didn’t understand
why or how the teacher is his father - and in the end he ends up being shot down and
killed by the teacher.
Kusanagi waits for Yuichi’s return at the base but that doesn’t happen since he died
and the movie ends.
But not really!
After the credits there’s another scene!
A new pilot is assigned to the base, his name is Isamu Hiiragi and he is the replacement
of Yuichi and therefore the replacement of Jinroh thus continuing the Kildren cycle and
repeating the story.
So this was the story of The Sky Crawlers series, obviously there are significant differences
between the book and the movie, but that is something I will cover on another video.
I hope you have enjoyed and understood something of this very complex series and if you have
enjoyed please like the video because this video took a lot of work including reading
the book twice and doing the editing.
Also before you go, let me know which ending you like the most, the book or the movie,
and if someone knows please explain to me how the teacher is the father because I honestly
have no idea how that happened there!
This was Ace Combat Fan and stay tuned to the channel for more Ace Combat and The Sky Crawlers!