Production I.G. has announced that famed animation director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) will direct a new feature-length anime, The Sky Crawlers, which will be released in Japan in 2008.  The film is based on a series of novels by Hiroshi Mori, which has sold over 8 million copies in Japan.  The novels are set in an alternate world where a group of eternal adolescents known as 'Kildren' are caught up in a web of mortality created by the adults in their society who direct the Kildren to fight in gladiatorial-type contests that feature 'war as entertainment.'  

According to Oshii, the abundance of modern life has left a 'vacuum in our hearts.  It's time to face this new perception to our existence through the Kildren, who live indefinitely in eternal adolescence.'  Leave it to Oshii to provide some 'dogma with his dogfights' and create a philosophical movie out of a sort of aerial Battle Royale, though this time he has considerable help from screenwriter Chihiro Ito, who has specialized in depicting the angst of adolescence in two popular live action films, Crying Out Loud, in the Center of the World (2004), which is based on Kyoichi Katayama's novel (published here as Socrates in Love by Viz Media -- see 'Viz Launches New Fiction Imprints'), and Spring Snow (2005), which was adapted from Yukio Mishima's novel, the first in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy.