Product Details

• Actors: Artist Not Provided
• Format: Animated, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Manga Video
• DVD Release Date: October 2, 2007
• Run Time: 106 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000UR9TM8
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,197 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Animation > Characters & Series > Ghost in the Shell

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The OAV Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex--The Laughing Man (2005) consists of footage from the 26-episode Stand Alone Complex TV series (2002), recut to tell the story of a police battle with an über-hacker. Writer-director Kenji Kamiyama oversaw the re-editing and rewrote some of the dialogue for greater clarity. The main arc of the first season of SAC, The Laughing Man is complicated tale of cyber-espionage and government corruption. Major Kusanagi, Batou, Chief Aramaki, and the other officers of Public Security Section 9 must untangle an intricate web of deception to discover a hidden scandal involving a bogus cure for the debilitating disease of "cyberbrain sclerosis." In the original series, this story was interwoven with brief adventures involving the black-market sale of human organs, the growing consciousness of the Tachikoma robots, and Chief Aramaki's colorful past. The Laughing Man, a title borrowed from J.D. Salinger, is interesting enough to stand on its own, but at two hours and forty minutes, it feels very long. Bandai has re-recorded the dialogue with a new cast, which sounds jarring to audiences familiar with the series. The Laughing Man may appeal to viewers who didn't see SAC in its initial release: otaku who know the original may find the reworking feels like a gimmick. (Rated 13 and older: violence, violence against women, grotesque imagery, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles Solomon

Product Description

Studio: Starz/sphe Release Date: 10/02/2007 Run time: 160 minutes Rating: Nr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great story with just one flaw for hard core SAC fans, October 8, 2007

By	M. Sewell - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pass on it, get the episodes instead, January 26, 2008

By	Brian C. Miller (Everett, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still a good buy, but original voices would have made it worlds better, October 12, 2007

By	B. Brown (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.