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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Now, in the Comfort of Your Own Home..., December 20, 2004
Ghost in the Shell was one of my first exposures to Japanese feature length anime. It was at its time a superb technical and artistic achievement, and still is today, despite the number o anime series that have borrowed from it. Now a new venture brings the same contest to the more intimate television experience. And once again the durability of the plot and ideas are demonstrated to a new audience.
The context is a time not far in our future when heavy cybernetic modifications of the human body are possible. For some this has gone to the point of using a totally artificial both with an implanted human brain (the ghost) and it's associated quirks and personality. The star of this series is one such, Major Moto Kusanagi, both beautiful and deadly. She is a lead investigator in Section 9, a special police branch headed by Chief Aramaki. Her and her team are often brought in when a case involves national security and the intermixing of cybernetic and human consciousness. For the fans of the original film and the manga, the whole crew is present - Batou, Togusa, and the ever-present Tachikoma robots.
The continuity between this series and its origins is excellent - although Kusanagi has a habit of being even less dressed than she appears in the film. The world of the series has been updated a bit to cover for the change in public awareness of digital possibilities. The premise for this is that the events leading up to Kusanagi's transformation into a creature of the net simply didn't happen. Director and writer Kenji Kimiyama has set out to create a slightly more down to earth story with more components of a police procedural than deep philosophical moments. Although the issues of what is human and what is not still continue to haunt the stories it not longer dominates.
The four episodes on this disk cover a police cover up about a hacker incident, a military cyber-tank that suddenly develops an alarming amount of intelligence, a unique form of bait-and-switch in a geisha house, and a series of suicides by beautiful but obsolete androids. Each story manages to explore the tension at the human machine interface, revealing a sometimes chilling vision of the human and AI experience of a world traveling at Internet speed.
Of note is that the music for the series is by Yoko Kanno, one of Japan's most significant composers for the film. She has been responsible for Cowboy Bebop, RahXephon, Escaflowne, Wolf's Rain, and a host of other successes. Ghost in the Shell is another proof of her skill at matching music to concept. Put this whole effort down as a must of Ghost in the Shell fans.
The base DVD includes two excellent interviews. One is with director Kenji Kimiyama that reveals a lot of his intentions in the series. The second is with Atsuko Tanaka who is the Japanese voice actress for Major Kusanagi. It is a shame that the US audience is often totally unaware of the real dramatic forces brought into play by the original cast, but goes along with dubbing that is often too flat and poorly translated. Tanaka is a force of her own, and the listener should at least take the time to listen to the Japanese with subtitles to get a sense of Kusanagi's intended voice.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Vol. 1 Review, June 18, 2004
The Ghost in the Shell name is best known for the animated movie released in Japan and the United States in the mid 1990s, based on the popular manga by Masamune Shirow. In 2002 Production I.G. started ambitious work on an evolutionary animated series heavily based on the manga, with more input from Shirow. In June 2004, the series will make its American debut on the Cartoon Network, followed by this DVD release in July.Stand Alone Complex then is the title for the TV series, which takes place independently from the manga and theatrical movies. Crafted wonderfully, the series features a balance of intelligence, technology, rebellious counter-culture, sadness, action, and cerebral plots that, while typical of Japanese manga, go far and above what American viewers typically receive. Movie watchers will see some familiar characters and settings - the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is the tactical commander of Public Peace Section 9, a described governmental "offensive force against crime" led by the older Daisuke Aramaki. Section 9's members are nearly all cyborgs - military-grade constructed bodies and cyberbrains that host the human brain imprint (essentially the soul or "ghost" of a person, the "shell" being the body). Batou, the muscular gung-ho cyborg, and Togusa, the semi-normal relative newcomer (he's essentially a human with some cybernetic implants) should also be familiar to movie viewers, as is Ishikawa. Other more one-dimensional team members, like Saito, Pazu, and Boma, will probably be more familiar for manga readers. The Tachikomas (Fuchikomas in the manga) round out the active Section 9 staff, sentient AI tanks that provide a bit of humor with their child-like, yet compelling, mannerisms, personalities and voices. The overall series plot and title stem from the Laughing Man case, though there are plenty of individual one-episode stories. The episodes are frequently introspective, while highlighting and sometimes amplifying various human flaws through technology. Another theme involves a kind of revolutionary counter-culture fixating around the cult figure of "The Laughing Man," a seemingly ingenious hacker whose apparent crimes in the past may or may not have spawned independent imitators for common causes - the "Stand Alone Complex." The show's writers seem to be well versed in alternative or counter-cultural ideas - the Laughing Man frequently appears in the guise of a rotating smiley-face icon quoting from J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," while the name "The Laughing Man" itself is from one of Salinger's short stories. The quality of the artwork varies by the episode - there isn't one unifying art style as in other anime series. That said, the animation is generally quite good, with a generous mix of 3D graphics blended with the 2D characters. Likewise the music direction and composition is amply offered in the varied and frequently eclectic style of Yoko Kanno, and resembles her mix in Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop. Frequently the combination of art, music, and plot mesh quite well. Viewers may question Kusanagi's dress code, the quick bouts of graphical violence, or the complete lack of action - this show is definitely not for children. The Special Edition DVD set features 3 DVDs: the first features the first four episodes with extras, the second features the first four episodes with DTS sound (and extras), and the third features the original soundtrack for the first season. Only the first disc is featured with the regular set. Here is an episode summary: SECTION 9: The series is introduced after a short encounter with a rooftop criminal as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and party is suddenly held hostage in a robot geisha house. Aramaki quickly takes control with Section 9, but nothing about the hostage situation, the aftermath, or the army's involvement is as it seems. The entire team is introduced, some albeit briefly, as is Aramaki's long-time friend Kubota. The plot generally isn't too complex and is easy to figure, but it's a good start. TESTATION: At the Kenbishi Heavy Industry's Maneuvers Dome the company's new heavy multi-legged sentient AI tank seemingly goes berserk, blasts itself out of the Dome, and gets on the highway - but where is it going? And why? It's Section 9's job to follow and if possible stop the tank, while discovering why it went berserk. This episode really introduces the Tachikomas and involves one of the most sentimental and nearly tearful stories in the entire season. It's interesting how the direction focuses on the cyborgs of Section 9 as Togusa details how Kago wanted something similar for himself and could never get in life. ANDROID AND I: Old-style "Jerry"-type androids begin self-destructing in spectacular ways en masse, bringing Section 9 into the case, fearing a connection to an earlier case in the capital. While the case doesn't seem as vicious, the investigation quickly brings Batou and Togusa to the apartment of the perpetrator - a film-buff apparently in love with his android. Reportedly one of the show creator's favorite episodes. INTERCEPTOR: The fourth episode begins the main story arc with the Laughing Man case as a police investigator on the case and acquaintance of Togusa is killed before he can tell Togusa something about the investigation - not with the case itself but something going on at higher levels of the investigation and the special investigation branch formed to solve the case. Before long Togusa discovers the illegal use of interceptors - microscopic cameras implanted on the surface of the eye - on the team itself. A scandal unfolds, and before long the Laughing Man himself makes an "appearance." Honestly the first set should have the next two episodes as well as they are all linked but nevertheless these four show a fairly impressive range of what Stand Alone Complex is all about. Highly recommended.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Food for thought, September 29, 2004
The issues concerning the internet these days may well be considered as precursors to GITS:SAC. Privacy, access, surveillance, information, internet morality, and humanity are all problems dealt with in "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex", except that the implications and legal ramifications are well established and things of the past. You will be compelled to outgrow the technological adolescence of the present very quickly to deal with the maturity and depth of the world of GITS.
I've seen the entire series, and it is by far one of the best anime series I've seen. The original movie was quite revolutionary by itself, but I have to say that the creators, producers, and studio have outdone themselves by a long shot with this series. The original characters are all there, Major Kusanagi, Batou, Togusa, etc., with the addition of several others who provide support and round out Section 9, a futuristic FBI/CIA organization, as a unit. The series is very much like NYPD Blue, in that you get to know the characters and their cases quite well.
What's astonishing about the series is that the creators have provided an amazingly detailed premise: the world has gone COMPLETELY digital, and the world's population is now linked to the future version of the internet with implants to the point where the line between personality/self and this alternate space has blurred considerably. They then ask the mind-boggling question: what could possibly happen in this kind of world? They answer, of course, with half-hour case studies of cyber-crime, political intrigue, digital culture, and philosophical soul-searching.
Each episode is self-consistent and follows very stringently the physics upon which the series is based. By this I mean that this world has been constructed with a basic set of rules, and each episode tells a story based on these rules, but without bogging him/her down with details about the rules. Instead, the episodes tell their stories and the viewer is thus thrown in the proverbial deep end, inadvertently learning to read the fine print in between the storylines. The extrapolations, implications, and possibilities of such a world are explored to an incredible depth and detail that only anime can provide.
Of course, given the opportunity to explore, there are some episodes where the script becomes a bit too self-analytical, and that might detract the viewer from the storylines, but I think when you create such a world, you are somewhat obliged to delve into those issues.
Can a machine ever have a personality? If your ghost (read personality) can be hacked, how can you tell what is real and what isn't? When your personality can be digitized and you can live immortal in cyberspace, what meaning is there to having a body? What kind of crimes will criminals commit and how will they commit them given such unlimited access? What will be the shape of politics in a wired world? Can computer viruses infect human beings? How do you define love/emotions in cyberspace? If you could choose to be a cyborg, would you?
If you've ever asked yourself these questions, find the answers in this technically brilliant series.
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