Sky Crawlers Series

This is quite a unique military love story ended with a heartbreaking scene. The story was described only from the main character's point of view and nothing was told about whom and why they were fighting. The romance of Kannami and Kusanagi was unusual. It's one of the driest and most tragic love stories I've ever read.

Killdre (kill+children?) are ever-young and immortal pilots unless they are shot down. So they don't persist in their lives and never be afraid of death. They regard the sky as their true place for living and take the lives on the ground as "the bottom of the sky". The description of the Kannami's mind and the dogfights were so much in detail that I deeply empathized with the pilot although he was really weird in character.

As a mystery novel, this is incomplete. You have to read the rest of the four volumes to understand all the secrets and the backgrounds. But even without knowing them, you can enjoy this volume because all you know is just exactly as much as Kannami knows. You see the world subjectively through Kannami's eye and feel like unified with him.

I repeated reading this many times and found the impressions were different in each time. There are lots of foreshadows hidden in the dialogues. At first I couldn't understand the last scene well, but I started to grasp Kusanagi's despair after reading it several times. The end of Kannami and Kusanagi's romance firmly choked my heart.

If you are looking for a exciting military novel or a heartwarming love story, this is not your taste. But I strongly recommend this to those who wanna try something new and original. I'm sure you cannot help moving on to the next volume "None But Air".