Customer Reviews

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The Laughing Man

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you think you might be interested in Ghost in the Shell SAC this would be a great introduction to the series beyond the film, however, I could not give it a 5 star rating because the english voice cast is not the established voices from the SAC series. I would rather recomend the 26 episode box set or individual disks from the SAC series first because while the Laughing Man story arc is great, the additional stand alone stories from the 26 episode series are equally entertaining. In summary I would not recomend this disk to established fans of the series but, I would to anyone who is interested to a great story outside of the movie and has a mild curiosity about Ghost in the Shell SAC.

I hate to have to say that I was dissapointed with this buy, but I was. And it's difficult to find any redeeming quality in it. The idea of condensing the GITS Laughing Man series into a feature length movie was a great idea. The story arc is a complex one, and I jumped at the opportunity to re-watch the story in a continuous format. However, one of the first issues arises in the editing. People who watched the complete series will see the editing choices the producers made when splicing together the various episodes -- and will very likely notice just how disjointed the results are. Those who haven't seen the original episodes won't notice the uneveness, but will probably be completely confused as to what the heck is going on within 20 minutes. So who exactly was the audience for this product? Old fans or new ones?

If the answer is old fans, than the producers will have given them plenty of other reasons to be upset about this product. For one, the original character voices have all been changed. In some cases, like Aramaki and Ishikawa, the new voices are close approximations of the original. But in the case of Motoko, it takes a while for the ears to accept the nuances of the change. With Batou and Togusa, the voices are so off and generic that my ears were too distracted to even finish the movie.

Again, if new fan's were the target here, the change in voice actors won't be an issue, but I'd still be curious to know how many of them will be able to follow this already complex plot which is made even more complicated by choppy editing. For such would be fans I would recommend just buying the entire season in bulk and enjoying the Laughing Man story and the miscellaneous stories that punctuate it.

To paraphrase another movie, this is not the DVD you are looking for.

The series was edited and basically slaughtered to make the Laughing Man "movie." The editing leaves out too much of the original Laughing Man episodes, and makes the story very choppy. The voice actors are not from the original cast, and their performance and dub-in is not good.

I bought this 2 DVD set because I thought that it would be neat to see the whole Laughing Man story arc as one complete movie. Unfortunately, the editing leaves out too much of the story line, and the voice acting is not good. I couldn't watch it at all with the English soundtrack, and I had to switch to the Japanese and subtitles.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the highest quality anime series of the past few years, and to an extent "The Laughing Man" lives up to this quality. This DVD isn't really a must buy, as all of the material (except for one Tachikoma Days short and one interview) is taken directly from the first season. Thus the animation quality is just as good as the television series, and as such is a joy to watch. The laughing man story arc of the first season is well modified to fit into feature length movie structure, with segments of some of the stand-alone episodes still present to provide introduction and characterization. Although the plot is harder to follow in this format then it was as a television series, it is still rich and complex.

So far, so good. The place where it doesn't live up to my expectations is the voice acting. I went in expecting the tried-and-true cast from the television series, but instead it sounds like a bunch of cheap knockoffs. Most of them aren't bad, per se, but they all leave a lot to be desired. The Major's voice actor doesn't have the intensity that the television series voice actor had, and the movie suffers for it. The Movie voice actor for Batou is also a factor that detracted from my enjoyment, as the television series voice actor was made for that role. Any substitute can't live up.

Overall a good addition to the Stand Alone Complex series, but if only the voice actors from the television series had returned this film could have been a great deal more enjoyable for me.

After enjoying the first two Ghost in the Shell movies, I purchased this movie along with "Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd gig: Individual eleven", knowing that these were summarized versions of the two seasons of the television series. I watched them both a few times and was very impressed. Since then I have become a huge fan of the entire Ghost in the Shell movies and television series, and I have a much better apreciation for it all now. Just recently I purchased both of the full seasons of Stand Alone Complex, and I was totaly blown away by how poorly done these two 'movies' are. The tv series has soo much more depth and complexity and feeling than these two poorly edited summaries do. Also, they have used different voice actors in this than in the english dub of the tv series, and i feel that this even further takes away from the quality. I also feel like in these two edited movie versions the characters seem a bit stale and not as connected as in the tv series.

So to sum things up, and it's already been said by other reviewers below, on the surface these seem like really cool movies, however true fans of Ghost in Shell the will likely be dissapointed at how poorly this 'movie' and the other one (S.A.C. 2nd Gig: Individual Eleven) are edited and produced. It's truly a shame, and at the very least these two movies/summaries should be redubbed and updated with the original voice actors that did the english dub of the tv series. It would be an easy thing to do, and it would go along way in improving the integrity and quality of these two movies.

If you are a fan of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and you already own some of the DVDs from the series, DO NOT BUY THIS DVD!

I bought The Laughing Man and as I was watching it, I kept thinking, "I've seen this before. I've seen this before too. Wait a second. I've seen ALL of this before!"

If you own any of the DVDs from this series, you already own The Laughing Man because this "new" DVD is nothing but a compilation of all of the previously released Stand Alone Complex programs. All they did was blend them together into a feature-length DVD. You do get a few changes in dialog and a totally new (and not nearly as good) voice-over crew, but otherwise you get nothing new here. The only good thing about this special version is the DTS sound. A step up from the other DVDs.

If you have never seen the series before, this would be a great introduction to the series. Otherwise, save your money.

The description doesn't mention this, and this is important: EVERY notable character's voice actor is replaced with some lowest-possibly-paid nobody. One of the many draws to the GITS series is the collection of voice actors and their acting capabilities (even if the ubiquitous one-voice Crispin Freeman is involved), and this gets thrown right the hell out with the two OAVs. There is literally NO reason to buy either OAV since both SAC and 2nd GIG are reasonably and similarly priced nowadays, and the OAVs don't add anything to the story, either. In fact, some of the cobbling together of story for these rehash pieces are incongruous and inconsistent with compared to the in-story timeline established in the series, and since no new material surfaces in either OAV, these let-downs should be completely ignored by everyone.

Furthermore, while the music IS from the soundtracks, it's forced into scenes that it doesn't belong in with the OAVs, unlike the carefully-crafted two series. Both OAVs feel like an amateur fan's project who couldn't afford the original voice actors, shoddily compiled in Adobe Premier. To restate the subject: DO NOT BUY THIS; just buy SAC and 2nd GIG instead because not only are they (in my opinion) the most intelligent and well-written cyberpunk anime to date, they can also be bought fairly inexpensively and worth exponentially more in a dollar to quality content ratio.

This same review was posted for the Individual Eleven OAV for identical reasons.

I should state that this is more of a summary than a movie as some may suspect. It summarizes the main story of the first season. If you are looking to get into Ghost in the Shell I would recommend watching the tv series first for a complete look. I recommend this for those looking for a different perspective as an interview in the extras state.

This is another perfect summary movie, just like the "Individual Eleven". Loaded with high tech weaponry and equipment. I like this one in particular because it has twists and turns that make it more interesting for anyone who stays glued to every detail of the story. If u love anime summaries, BUY IT!!

"Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" is one of the greatest anime series of all time. Like the two impossibly cool Mamoru Oshii movies that preceded it (the first of which was the main inspiration for "The Matrix" trilogy), it's based on the fantastic manga series written and drawn by Masamune Shirow. This movie, "The Laughing Man", is actually a distillation of the first season of the show, condensing the main story arc into a coherent feature-length movie.

Every facet of this production is first-class. It's beautiful, exciting and very thought-provoking. There's political drama, gun-fights, fist-fights, sexy cyborgs, awesome music by Yoko Kanno, and my favorite book "The Catcher in the Rye" features prominently in it as well.

Watch this movie and I guarantee you'll want to buy the whole season. While you're at it check out the second season, "GITS: SAC 2nd Gig", which is actually even better, and was also condensed into an excellent movie called "The Individual Eleven".