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Determining the Best Ghost in the Shell


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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 9:23 am Reply with quote
I'm surprised, and pleased, to see SAC ranked #1. I have to agree with the reasons given in the article, and the extra time to get to know characters and the world is why I typically respond much more favorably to series over movies in general. Granted, it's hard to fault a movie for not being able to focus as much on these things as a show given the disparity in screen time, but still, the extra effort didn't go to waste when it comes to SAC.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5407
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 10:18 am Reply with quote
I have only watched the 1995 movie and both SAC seasons. The first movie is my favorite Ghost in the Shell anime. Also, the 95 movie is among my favorite anime movies of all time.
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Wrangler



Joined: 11 Nov 2007
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:13 am Reply with quote
I've watch all of them, its hard to choose in some ways.

Television show fleshed out the modern plot of the show, getting character development down and growing the universe.

1995 film is peak of 80s/90s animated movies, where everything was done by human hand/artist. What drew me into anime in the first place. It had more depth to it than most shows/films today. Audience has changed, but doesn't mean people don't want something like it.

Late films were good in their own right, but they complimented their releases they were following, such as the SAC films rode what television set. I'll be honest, I'm not fan of CGI. Show itself wasn't, but intro was.

Aries is good, but it lost something in translation of twenty years.
spoiler[Major is bi-sexual, she was with a woman in her holiday when it was interrupted. I'm bothered by it that they felt they had to change it due to reasons. Mainly episode, but focus was cyber identity can anything or anyone.]

Anyways, Aries story telling was clumsy in comparison to SAC. Animation was good blend of old style animation and cgi, but it was as good. It as limited television series, bother me. Are sales so bad they need chop up OVAs just make television show? It took alot of out my enthusiasm of the show for doing that.

Aries did try honor the past, the Manga. There alot of blips from the original in there. Some insertion of humor, which most of animated franchise really does lack in.

Hopefully the Aries movie will be good story. I doubt continuation of the television series or ova series will result of the movie release.
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1767
Location: South America
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:24 am Reply with quote
Out of the stuff I know it is the old manga. Very Happy Also, I think it is hard not to say that Ghost in the Shell (1995) is not one of the foremost maserpieces of animated films. Though it's hard to compare a manga to a film and a film to a long series.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:38 am Reply with quote
The first film had the integrity of feeling like it was Un Filme Du Mamoru Oshii, in the same sense as Sky Crawlers or Patlabor Movie or Beautiful Dreamer--
The sense of a good manga genre concept that Oshii wanted to distract with long shots of rainy streets, staring up the sky, and characters having genre-deconstructively deep metaphysical discussions about the meaning and purpose of their life and role in the manga-verse.

Which unfortunately, is the reason that GITS2 is considered a bit of laughingstock in Japan. (Well, maybe not "laughingstock", more like that Lone-Ranger "What if Joss Whedon had put the Thor's-vision subplot back into Avengers 2? Shocked " feeling of a director who'd snapped his tethers on the long fan-awaited sequel.)
Oh, WE praised it to the skies in the US, back when the studio's answer to the "anime craze" was to import every single unfathomably surreal arthouse rambling by directors who wanted to escape the TV industry, and the anime-illiterate mainstream movie critics sent out to review them thought they were "bold" because they'd never seen one before and couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. And then fans started getting rebellious or guilt complexes about "Why does everyone keep praising (xxx)?", because we were the ones who could see through it.
I still keep associating it, though, with that gag-ref from Oh Edo Rocket, where a character in a folktale has to choose a sleep spell (ala an RPG), and has to choose between the Angel's Egg and the GITS2:Innocence spell to send his enemy into dreamland. Razz
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:09 pm Reply with quote
Seriously you couldn't just say 'the Japan one, not the Hollywood one' or something along those lines? I hope when some one asks which version of SnK you enjoyed watching more that your answer is along the lines of "The anime one, not the Japanese one with assorted Asian people." Scarlett Jo's name is plastered all over it, so I get that part, but was the bitter sounding, racial follow up necessary?

I haven't seen the newest movie, but I do agree with the ranking for what I have seen.


Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2858
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:09 pm Reply with quote
glad to see one reviewer not inslulting arise , it looks like it's the cool thing to hate it even if it's really, really good by it's own merits.

Wrangler wrote:


why are you calling arise/alice aries ? just a question no animosity.
and yes, teh random subtle references to other gits are really good in that one.
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Dfens



Joined: 08 Feb 2013
Posts: 459
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:57 pm Reply with quote
Wow the reviewer summarized and put into order what I would have if I made the same list.

As someone who bought and read the manga way back when I was in middle school in the late 90's when the first film came out and I saw it for the first time it didn't blow me away as much as I thought it would.

Yes it was good but not enough for me to want to own a copy or re-watch it anytime soon.

The SAC series too me was the best adaption that made you want to watch more and experience everything the world of Ghost in the Shell had to offer. It was close enough to the original source material while at the same time still being able to be it's own thing without all the techo-mumbojumbo that bogged down the manga for some people.

To this day if I can find time still watch my copies of SAC but didn't bother purchasing the rest of the franchise.

Arise was a case of a little to late, and a reboot, somewhat prequel it was just all over the place while trying too hard to pay homage to all the other previous releases. It was a ok show but not a great one that was going to boost the franchise again with new fans as they hoped.

I'll catch the new movie when available but I'm not expecting too much as the OVA since those were a let down.


Last edited by Dfens on Wed Jul 01, 2015 3:48 pm; edited 2 times in total
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2404
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:59 pm Reply with quote
I chose Stand Alone Complex: 2nd GIG from the listed which is a are "Masterpiece" while Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface is a "Weak" so there you go. Unless i can count Kōkaku Kidōtai Nyumon Arise. WTF?
Arise (both cuts with identical content are listed but not the different in content and in continuity Sleepless Eye manga Confused ) is as good as season 1 of SAC, has the best version of Motoko to date and is my anime of the years unless the autumn/winter season pulls a rabbit out of hat.
Solid State Society is the "worst" animated story but even that one got a "very good" so well done IG and i will never get how they managed to turn a rather messy 89 manga into such a respectable franchise. I blame the impressive amount of top of the line directors and writers involved... It may be my favorite long running anime franchise overall and i look forward to more reboots and so on after the Arise team will be done. I am very excited for the movie´s Blue- Ray.

None read the novels right? These are the only part of GitS i skipped that wasn´t a game besides the alright PSX game. Here are the PSX cutscenes by IG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkOvNDhO_Y (what an intro!) and the utterly unkown alternate opening to 2nd GIG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Tvf8gWEFE. Only Monster has a better one.
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DragonSpikeXIII





PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 1:04 pm Reply with quote
Nice list but I wouldn't really call the first GITS movie a 2-hour film.
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Blankslate



Joined: 30 Jun 2015
Posts: 425
Location: Atlanta, GA
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 1:04 pm Reply with quote
I never understood why people like SAC so much. It spends way too much time in "Monster of the week" land and never amounts to anything more than CSI: Cyberpunk edition. It didn't keep many of the elements of the original movie that I liked; instead of an introspective look at what makes us us in a world where our entire bodies are seen as commercial goods, SAC focuses more on the surface-level "future terrorist hunt" aspects.
SAC is probably the few anime I've seen where I just don't understand why it's so beloved.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 1:23 pm Reply with quote
Blankslate wrote:
I never understood why people like SAC so much. It spends way too much time in "Monster of the week" land and never amounts to anything more than CSI: Cyberpunk edition.


I see your point, but for me at least, it is choosing between not enough time and too much time. SAC did have a lot of padding, but I still felt overall that they did enough good things with the extra time they had.
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Blankslate



Joined: 30 Jun 2015
Posts: 425
Location: Atlanta, GA
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 1:46 pm Reply with quote
SilverTalon01 wrote:

I see your point, but for me at least, it is choosing between not enough time and too much time. SAC did have a lot of padding, but I still felt overall that they did enough good things with the extra time they had.


I can see that. The ending of the movie did feel rather abrupt, and SAC was certainly more entertaining moment to moment. Hell, SAC even had a larger tonal range. However, while SAC might be more successful as a piece of entertainment, I got more out of the focused nature of the movie.
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Shar Aznabull



Joined: 12 Jan 2015
Posts: 236
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 2:04 pm Reply with quote
Personally I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to GitS, Masamune Shirow's original manga remains the best to me. As far as anime goes Stand Alone Complex season 1 is my favorite. 2nd Gig is great as well, but the Individual Eleven storyline didn't grab me quite as much as the The Laughing Man storyline. All of the GitS stuff is enjoyable though with the possible exceptions of Man Machine Interface and the PSP game (definitely not the PS1 game which is absolutely fantastic).
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penguintruth



Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 8458
Location: Penguinopolis
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 2:17 pm Reply with quote
I think both Stand Alone Complex and Arise did more with the GitS concept than Oshii did, in terms of everything coming together, plot, themes, and characters. As groundbreaking as the first GitS movie by Oshii could be at times, its extraneous, ham-fisted overreaching is frustrating in retrospect. It's a good movie, but it's nowhere near as brilliant as SAC.

Innocence doesn't even deserve to place.
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