スカイ・クロラ The Sky Crawlers by Ōgai Mori

In an alternate world where carefully managed wars are fought as entertainment, a corps of near‑ageless fighter pilots—childlike in appearance but lethal in skill—carry out endless dogfights while life at the bases drifts between banality and quiet cruelty. The narrative follows one pilot's return to a squadron and his rekindled ties with comrades as he confronts the hollow rhythms of a life in which death is temporary and identity is repeatedly reset; through aerial combat and intimate, understated moments on the ground the story probes themes of youth and stasis, the ethics of manufactured violence, and the aching boredom and longing that accompany immortality without meaning.