Well, glory be. I am an absolute, unabashed fan of Japanese film maker and animation genius Mamoru Oshii. He is, after all, the man behind Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, Avalon, Jin Roh and more and is very well deserving of a place in the absolute upper reaches of the global film hierarchy. He's just really, really good. Since his last proper narrative feature, the second Ghost in the Shell picture Innocence, Oshii has produced an immersive art installation and a feature film that was essentially an extensive in-joke among peers to blow of steam - and muck about with one very cool new animation technique - following the intensely philosophic work of Innocence but he's back to more straight forward story telling now with Sky Crawlers, an adaptation of the five novel series by Hiroshi Mori.

Oshii has promised to set his normal messages and philosophical concerns to the side here to focus on telling a more accessible story, one driven by a romance at its core, and is also moving more deeply into the world of 3D animation with this feature than he ever has before. All I want to know, really, is what it's going to look like and, to that end, have been visiting the official website at least a couple times a week for the past few months. And today I was rewarded. There's a new sixty second teaser available. The buffer times at the official site were lagging badly when I tried to view it there so I have since captured it and you'll find it embedded in the Twitch Player below the break. You're welcome.