Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite anime franchises. I haven't had an opportunity to watch the new series of it, though.

new series is kinda great, it has that feel of the manga where you don't have any idea what is going on.

akira the manga is freakin glorious if you get a chance. the film covers the first book... out of eight

I'm overdue for actually reading a manga, and I just ordered vol 1 to remedy that.

I liked the movies, but the series, like Stand Alone Complex was a tad... pretentious? Yeah, that's the word I'm thinking of. I mean, there's a lot of filler, but I remember one episode where the major spent 20 minutes real time talking to people in a chat room. How fun.

I don't want to be an asshole when I say this, but, to me, Blade Runner hit all the same notes more effectively and in a shorter span of time. but then again, a lot of ghost in the shell was inspired by cyberpunk movies and literature of the late 70's into the 80's, like Neuromancer and Burning Chrome, RoboCop and most of Phillip K Dick.

I guess it's just the format that most anime works in, a kind of slow, pedantic pace, not a lot of action and whole lot of wallowing about 'muh humanity'. Which is why I love Akira and still think of it as the best thing Japan produced to the genre of Sci-Fi--it was just absolutely crazy and made no sense, which is why I loved it, all killer no filler bby.

A lot of the 'filler' helps to create a rich detailed world for the characters to inhabit, but I agree that someone should have reminded the writers on SAC "show, don't tell".

Anime just can't win. It's criticised for being just mindless action cartoons, but when one adds a good story in between action scenes it's criticised for having too much talking and not enough action scenes

I dunno, I was kind of late to the table with Blade Runner, having seen GitS and read Neuromancer and other short Gibson and DIck before I actually watched that movie, but cool shit like this never happened, which was seemingly promised in the books and premise. And when it did, like in Johnny Mnemonic it didn't work right either (the Japanese cut's salvageable but it's still not a good movie). Guess what I'm saying is I'd much rather see Neuromancer as an anime than another adaptation-gone-bad of one of my favorite writers.

Or if it's built-in. For those who don't know, Major Kusanagi, the "chick" in question is a cyborg.

Her brain is human, encased in a self-powered armored life-support capsule. Her body is a military-grade robotic body. That's why she's able to hop up onto tall buildings from ground level. It also means she's much heavier than an organic human. That's why that roof dented in when she landed on it.

Her skin is thermoptic camouflage. It's also high-quality stuff and very expensive. The organization she works for, Section 9, pays for the installation & upkeep of her cybernetics, as they do for their other members.

It's a really excellent movie and well-deserving of the "anime that doesn't suck" tag.

Better answer, more in line with what the artist of the manga was once quoted as saying...

"Why is she a lesbian?"

"Because I don't like drawing men's asses"

In anime, bullets (as with blood) are an unlimited resource until the plot requires otherwise.

It had a solid premise with a consistent vision that was actually fairly forward-thinking in it's aesthetic.

As you say, this hasn't aged. It's vision of the future in the early 90's is still a common vision of the future today, with the grime mixed with the glamour of technology without falling into too much of the cyberpunk tropes.

This series, minus the weird lesbian prostitute thing and the baby-voiced talking tanks, created a fairly believable post-singularity universe that doesn't wear the decade it was dreamed up on it's sleeve like other cyberpunk stuff. That that doing so would be have been bad, but it would have aged it.

I rather liked the more anthology-style episodes of Stand Alone Complex quite a bit too. No really a lot of new ground, but solid if sometimes cliqued ruminations of self identity in a post-singularity world.

Yea; not the best movie, but an enjoyable one that has stood up to time and age.

That scene was amazing.

It's why I have a tachicoma model to built this holiday season.

Fuck flying cars, I want a tachicoma to cruise around in.

I wouldn't even mind if it came with a little girl voice (Although if they could make it sound like Christopher Lee, that would be awesome.)

Ghost in the Shell is a lot like Gundam in that the best parts of it were made by people other than the guy who created it in the first place. The original manga is good, yes, but when Masamune Shirow is allowed to do whatever he wants, we get shit like Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, which holds the distinction of being the worst manga I've ever read.

Look up "Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn." And then drink, and cry, and dump your computer in a tire fire

Yeah I really liked his live action stuff too like Stray Dogs and another one I'm forgetting. Usually that never works but Oshii did a great job.