The art style itself has the really huge contrast between super-detailed backgrounds and locations, while human characters are very schematic. Indeed, it can be often found in anime, but here, the scale of this contrast is striking. It fits autistic perception perfectly: many Aspies (people with Asperger syndrome) have unusually high attention to visual details, while their perception of other people is (not literally) schematic due to difficulties with interpreting non-verbal language, emotional reactions and other aspects of behavior.
As I said before, locations were painted with very high attention to every detail. And for me personally, these are absolutely great locations, since these large open spaces with cliffs, dividing land from the sea, remind me of ocean coast of Ireland and Brittany. Megaliths, heather, stone walls along the roads are just beautiful. It feels like someone spent many days thinking about all these details, showing up on the screen for only a second. I mean, for example, circular patterns on megaliths, definitely borrowed from the stones of Gavrinis tomb - mysterious megalithic site, located in Morbihan, Brittany. Same thing with aircraft, aerodrome equipment (being an avionics engineer, I can recognize many pieces of it), with architecture and atmosphere of the town, where pilots staying on their way to another base. It looks just like an old part of Krakow, Poland, with tiny details such as tramway or taverns.
“Kildren” - most of the main characters, definitely have autistic personalities. Physically, they are very young, but being a bit childish and immature mentally, they all bear a sign of being tired of life, fighting boredom in an own way. It resembles some psychological features of people with Asperger syndrome. Many other things fit the picture too: keeping a distance from life, having some odd pragmatic relationships with death. Interpersonal relationships are a kind of cold and awkward between them, but sometimes we can see, how strong their attachment can be, so they are not really cold psychopaths. Logic rules their everyday world, but emotions can burst out in their own special cases.
Description of suicidal thoughts is very natural. There is a study of suicidal behavior in Aspies, telling that it is a relatively common thing for them to think about suicide in connection with a purpose or “function” of own life. Often, it doesn't lead to an actual suicide, but planning and preparations could be made. In Sky Crawlers, we can see all that.
I honestly don't know, if anyone from film crew has this mental condition, but somehow, Sky Crawlers got so many different independent features, related to it, so it is hard to imagine that nobody knows about it from own experience. And I believe that for people, who have never met any Aspie, it might be interesting to watch Sky Crawlers keeping all that in mind.
As a disclaimer, I want to add, that Asperger syndrome has many faces, and I'm talking about only one of them, familiar to me. So, if it doesn't fit someone’s experience, I'm not responsible for that.
