It involves pilots, planes, war, lots of English lines, kids, cigarettes, sort of a mix of old and modern. A slow paced, mostly quiet movie.
Finally get to watch this one. I didn't quite understand the story at first, and sort of found a
spoiler in the middle while trying to find out who got killed in the middle. orz It was an awesome movie. Great pictures, pretty good English accent (compared to the usual Engrish, at least) Having read that post after finished watching the movie, I kind of understood better.
The movie starts with planes being shot by "Teacher". And then the main character showed up, Kannami. He's a new pilot in the base. The base only has 4 pilots including him, 5 including the base boss, Kusanagi. Kannami wonders who was the owner of his new plane. But the base boss refused to tell him. His roommate, Tokino, took him to a brothel that night. There he learned that there was a dead pilot, named Jinrou, and he's the replacement. Later revealed that Kusanagi has a daughter, and implied that Jinrou is the father. During an attack, Yudagawa, one of the pilot, who always fold his newspaper neatly, was shot by the "Teacher". All of the pilots are "Kildren", children who can't grow up. And supposedly, "Teacher" is an adult man, the only adult pilot, and the most skillful one, no one survived facing him.
I got a bit bored a bit after the middle of the story. They joined forces with other base. And when they return, there's a new guy who has exactly the same quirk as Yudagawa (clone!). One night, the new girl, Mitsuya, came to Kannami's room. And she said how she can't really remember what happened in the past. She mentioned how Jinrou's memory is planted into Kannami. Then she tried to kill Kusanagi. Kannami barged in and stopped her. Kusanagi asked that it's Kannami's turn to kill her, since she's killed Jinrou in the past. But he urged her to stay alive and to grab the change in the future.
On the next flight, Kannami shouted "I'm gonna kill my father" and went for the "Teacher". He was shot down. After some time passes, a new pilot came, and when he greeted Kusanagi, she said "I've been expecting you". Not sure why Kannami said "father", is he really "Teacher"'s clone. But Kusanagi seems to be hoping for a change, by the way she talked.
So yeah, the story is sort of looping. The dead kept on being cloned back to life again. Made to war. Having the same scenes again and again. Agggh, I really can't explain this nicely. But I'm awed with the idea of the story.