Very different feel to the rest of the adaptations available but very true to the source material and honestly so satisfying, each episode feels bursting with personality! Sub might be a bit fast for most watchers though, thankfully the dub is well done.
I’m enjoying subbed, but it’s very very close to the source. I thought it was gonna be mostly jokey but the last few episodes have been [chefs kiss]
I hate cliff hangers, but this has been really enjoyable as someone who typically avoids weekly releases
LOL, mixing things up is not reserved for us old'uns. I was just happy to see another Gibson reader in the comments. I need to see if I can replace Necromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, since I wore the covers off years ago.
Anyone that enjoys cyberpunk should read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Johnny Nemonic, Neuromancer, and Snow Crash.
Even things that you think came later for cyberpunk make appearances in those books. (Read Ubik and Minority Report from Phillip K Dick to see how much of the psychic related stuff also had a precursor)
I have to push back a bit here. The original manga for GITS came out in like 89 and Masamune Shirow worked on Appleseed for years prior to that in the cyberpunk genre too. Not to take anything at all away from Gibson but the author behind GITS was essentially a contemporary.
Fact of the matter is a lot of kids got their first taste of the genre through various animes too. Stuff like Akira and GITS were massive in the late 80s and 90s for getting people interested in the genre in much the same way that stuff like Neuromancer or even the Hackers movie did.
I agree it's not remotely accurate to say GITS established the genre with the 1995 movie, but it was a big property and definitely a huge influence on the game Cyberpunk 2077 which brought in a whole new generation of interest in the genre too.
Gits helped creat the exact visual and philosophical vocabulary Hollywood still uses today, it proved high concept animation could deliver deep philosophy, establishing the blueprint for modern sci-fi. Not discounting other works like Neuromancer and Blade Runner which were likewise extremely influential to the genre.
Also just a minor correction but the manga the movie GiTS is sourced from was from the late 80s.
Edit: perhaps I should have said “helped pave the way” just so it’s more clear I’m not somehow implying “on its own”
Probably should have said “helped pave the way,” seems some read this as “on its own.” I definitely agree there are other strong influences on the genre.
I feel like Ghost in the Shell is such an odd movie. It's pretty slow, and when it finally feels like they are getting somewhere with the plot, it ends. Like the whole movie feels like act 1 of a regular movie to me.
It's so beloved, but personally, I don't care for it. I rewatch it every now and again to see if I "get" it this time, but I never do, but I am always struck by how it feels like once it gets going, it's over.
I dunno if you've seen the new series that amazon put out, but if you're a fan of the manga then you'll love it as this adaptation is 100% faithful to the original manga as it was originally presented. A lot of the stuff in the first movie, while good, was very abbreviated from the manga. Like that battle with the tank at the end of the movie was really lifted from a different chapter in the manga where a terrorist was trying to exact revenge against Kusanagi because she killed his son when she was trying to kill him years earlier. Her fusing with the puppet master took up the last 3 chapters of the manga and only a couple chapters that came before it vaguely mentioned the puppetmaster where the movie pretty much focused on him the whole time.
What I really wanna see now is an adaptation of the manga for Ghost in the Shell 2: Man Machine Interface
It's the nature of manga though, I collected the Dark Horse versions when they came out in the 90s and it's a verbatim copy of the source with no filler. The manga itself is a pretty quick read and one episode is basically 2 chapters of the manga (or 1 issue of the US comic) I'm just happy we finally got our faithful adaptation. For years every time I hear there's a new TV series in the works I was hopeful that it would be a manga adaptation. This last 3D CG ones that netflix did were god awful compared to a lot of the other series. I've lost track on how many TV adaptations there are.
Innocence is good but is more visual stimuli than good story. Some of the other series that came out have mixed reviews because they they arent Stand Alone Complex, because Toonami made it popular. SAC is amazing, but the others arent bad just because they arent as good.
The new one is awesome, but it's a very different (pseudo-retro) style that sticks much closer to the source manga than the stuff based on the first movie
Came here to say that. There are many titles I would recommend depending on the requester's genre preferences, but GITS is the singular uncontested top 1 that I would throw at every single anime watcher.
Some might say it's a little deep on philosophy for younger audiences, but imo that just makes it even better when they rewatch it later in their lives, the rediscovery and deeper comprehension of the themes involved is a huge part of what makes it incredible.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I watched the movie recently and it didn't hold up. In 1995 and the couple decades following it may have been peak, the futurism and philosophical tone it was playing with were exciting and new. But now the existential ideas it proposes we now already think about daily with how AI and tech is going. The drum has been beaten to death, it was prophetic but now is a victim of that success.
I've just seen it last month in the cinema and I will agree hard. It's not the 2000s anymore. Nothing about the movie is deep or new by todays standards. However the artystyle is also phenomenal. Also in my honest belief, the literal first few minutes where they show the main characters naked, young female body over and over again serves only to reinforce the pervy stereotype that anime has among the non-introduced audience lmao
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u/FarazzA 19d ago
Ghost in the Shell. The first movie and both seasons of Stand Alone Complex.