Mamoru Oshii builds a world where young pilots are bred to fight wars that never end, then forces you to watch them accept it. The dogfights are rendered with such precision they feel like ballet, but that beauty is the cruelty, the film makes you complicit in loving something designed to destroy its own participants. Most viewers miss it on first watch because the coldness is intentional; the second viewing breaks you because now you understand what the distance was hiding all along.

In an alternate timeline where peace has finally arrived, wars are no longer fought between nations but staged by private corporations as a kind of show business. The pilots who fly these battles are Kildren, humans genetically altered to remain teenagers forever until they die in the sky. Yuichi Kannami, who has no memories from before his arrival, transfers to a frontline base as a contracted fighter pilot and soon proves himself an ace. The longer he stays, the more mysteries surface around the Kildren, his predecessor known as Teacher, and the base commander Suito Kusanagi, a former ace who is a Kildren herself. Based on Hiroshi Mori's novels, the film is a psychological drama about young fighter pilots caught up in dogfight warfare.