Ghost in the Shell 95

Someone very slowly and carefully explain to me what apparently makes the original so good. I'm seeing all these reviews mention the original as if it was some sort of masterpiece.

I've watched when it released on Manga Entertainment in the UK, when everything anime still seemed cool, and I've watched it again in prep for the remake, where my opinion changed for the worse.

Aside from the initial opening and it's animation, there's nothing interesting about it. No relateable or sympathetic characters bar Batou, which meant there was barely any emotional investment in the action scenes. Then it has the has the most inane dialogue, pontificating about souls, ghosts, tech, at any given moment. There are close to no real conversations in it either, and no effort is made to define or flesh out character relationships. Almost every moment is setup just so some can start spouting drivel.

Batou is the closest thing to a heart the film has.

Tell me where I'm wrong Sup Forums, tell me why GitS is good aside from nostalgia when it was one of the few anime films avaliable.

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>muh relatable characters
Go back to capeshit

I've been in the it's-not-good camp too. I think it's just edgies who get a huge boner for anything that doesn't have the power of friendship.

Or sympathetic asswipe.

Tony Soprano is a psychopath but the writers we're able to make you sympathetic towards despite all the fucked up things he does.

Well your first problem is considering the live action movie a "remake", its an adaptation of the original manga.

Cool but I would still like to hear why it's held in high esteem at least among anime fans

Because the original movie is kinda hyped.

I'm a big fan, but what really got me was the series - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Great mistery, plot, character development, beautifully drawn and really raises a lot of questions regarding AI, the human brain in the future, androids, politics, hacking and all kind of related stuff.

It's in the top as far as sci-fi anime goes, along with Cowboy Bebop and NGE.

Animation + worldbuilding + interesting philosophical quandaries + a pretty innovative vision of technology (for the time). The original movie doesn't have particularly good characterizations, but you can look to the show for that.

The new movie is not any closer to the original manga then it is to any other GitS media, what are you basing that statement on?

wait, are you telling me the movie is closer to the original manga than the animu?

No.

What's the point of world building if there isn't anyone to inhabit it?

What's the point of raising interesting philosophical questions if they make no attempt to explore it? Like they just put out some points and ask why.

IN 1995 it was groundbreaking

>NGE

Opinion disregarded.

It's literally and unironically 2 deep 4 u

You're right about the dialog which is clumsy and awkwardly direct. However...
> No relateable or sympathetic characters bar Batou
>and no effort is made to define or flesh out character relationships.
Are you autistic or something? Motoko is completely the heart of the movie and her interactions with Batou are why you understand and sympathise with her.

>What's the point of world building if there isn't anyone to inhabit it?
Just because a movie doesn't do one thing well doesn't mean it can't be praised for the things it succeeds at. Blade Runner doesn't have particularly interesting characters either, are you going to make the claim that it wasn't a hugely important film for what it did in terms of cinematography and storytelling?

>What's the point of raising interesting philosophical questions if they make no attempt to explore it? Like they just put out some points and ask why.
You're making a nonsensical circular statement... the act of raising philosophical questions IS the exploration of those topics. That's literally what philosophy is.

>Just because a movie doesn't do one thing well doesn't mean it can't be praised for the things it succeeds at.

Didn't say it couldn't be praised for certain elements, but taking the film as a whole these elements are wasted.

>You're making a nonsensical circular statement... the act of raising philosophical questions IS the exploration of those topics. That's literally what philosophy is.

Maybe I aimed at the wrong thing but just flat out stating things doesn't make GitS particularly deep but the writer seems to think so.

Only retards thing GitS is deep.

This.

>Batou is the closest thing to a heart the film has.
That's very much intentional.

it's a 7/10 movie. pretty good (if you like the themes it deals with). that is all.

"people" (weebs) say this is a masterpiece because, lets be realistic, 90% of anime is utter trash. so a 7/10 stands out as a 10/10.

>t. someone who has seen 0.1 of all anime

Can we all agree scojo was the wrong choice?

One thing they never really make clear in the original...can the Major reproduce?

The Puppet Master says he wants to merge with the Major so that he can spread his seed around the net. If she's just a brain in a cyborg body, how will she be able to help him out?

This.
Anime can't compare to film and literature but fans want it to so the few "classics" get hyped up to be generational master pieces when they're really just pretty good. If they acknowledged this it would expose the medium.

Ehh...she was just a tad too chubby for anime character. It's a grab-worthy ass IRL though

You have to realize two things OP: the movie dropped both JUST before the internet was a truly wide, everyday thing, and also JUST before animu went mainstream at the turn of the millenium with pokemon etc. It was basically a demonstration (in principle) that you could make animated movies for adults (leaving manchildren legbeard jokes aside).

Also it got a favorable rating from Roger Ebert IIRC which is always helpful AF.

Space magic.

Apparently their real bodies are still in storage BUT she is put into a child bot for some bizzare reason.

Her 'real body' was destroyed in the fight. If you mean her 100% biological body, she has fuck-all ideas about its whereabouts or if it even existed in the first place.

My opinion of it was pretty much the same.

Animation is impressive and the soundtrack is great but I just didn't really give a fuck about anything that happened in it because the characters were not engaging.

>Also it got a favorable rating from Roger Ebert IIRC which is always helpful AF.

Dude clearly didn't know enough about jap culture as to why the major was naked half the time. He thought it was about strong femininity rather than the jap filthy mind of shirow.

>What's the point of raising interesting philosophical questions if they make no attempt to explore it?
The movie is asking the audience these questions, not trying to answer them.

protip from not an idiot: no medium can compare to another

That was how it was in the manga.
In the film I get the feeling that she just didn't feel any association between her body and herself, so she didn't care.

>He thought it was about strong femininity rather than the jap filthy mind of shirow.
No he thought it had to do with sex starved salary men who project onto strong female characters.

>What's the point of raising interesting philosophical questions if they make no attempt to explore it? Like they just put out some points and ask why.
Because if they did you would cry about them being pretentious and wrong for not agreeing with your view on the matter. Besides, nobody but ego strokers wants to watch a fucking philsophical dissertation in a movie.

I'd be more willing to accept this point if Sup Forums ever actually had an intelligent discussion on masterpieces of film.

Why not write an article rather than bog down an entire film. Seriously, the whole world stops just so the characters can blather on. Like that boat scene where Batou asks what she sees in the dark and rather than like a normal person, she instead waxes on about memories and souls, where at one point she literally turns to the fucking audience and talks at them.

>Besides, nobody but ego strokers wants to watch a fucking philsophical dissertation in a movie.

And yet, that's what we got.

well i agree. it is a very shallow story. the whole point of the movie is in the title and there's no subtlety that would make it interesting

>Why not write an article rather than bog down an entire film
Because it's the point of the entire fucking movie.
>Seriously, the whole world stops just so the characters can blather on
Again, those conversations along with the visual direction are pretty much the crux of the entire movie and its themes.
If you think GiTS is a philosophical dissertation, then you are a complete fucking brainlet.

So it's purposely crap and empty and should be reviewed again.

Maybe to an idiot like yourself it seemed like it.

Watch this:
youtube.com/watch?v=l9v8FzQ2btg

Maybe it will help you to understand some parts of the movie.

>I don't like this movie with more dialogue than action, therefore no one else should
You're a complete idiot. Stick to capeshit

Dialogue? Lol. There very few points in the movie where there is actual dialogue. Most of the conversations are almost practically monologues.

wow it's almost like a movie's story is told visually or something

This. Underrated post.

The movie is great but not for conventional reasons you'd think. It was groundbreaking at the time because anime was never really treated seriously as a medium for adults, and how cyberspace as a concept was just booming. Then there's the fact that its vision of the future felt more grounded in reality than you'd readily expect especially for an animated work, e.g. the cityscape being based on Hong Kong architecture since the creators felt like the future would look more like a clusterfuck of rundown buildings.

Then there's the characterization of Major, in which Oshii was borderline autistic in his portrayal of her compared to the manga, which made for an unconventional take on cyborgs/androids having an existential crisis (even though it was all pretty straightforward by today's standards).

Just because it seems underwhelming taken out of its time, doesn't mean it had no impact for doing what it did. By its lonesome, it's just a nice and simple one-shot GITS story (with its own ending!) paired with some pretty scenery/animation.

Even when it came out i didnt see the hype around it. i know back then anime was rarer and i think that played into it even so i did really rate it.

Eh.. This guy is a little too sure of his own interpretation. Not a huge fan of analyses where someone basically just says "X means Y" so assuredly. Not everything is a blatant metaphor and there are other techniques of conveying themes present in the film.

Pretty fucking wrong.

>Then it has the has the most inane dialogue, pontificating about souls, ghosts, tech, at any given moment. There are close to no real conversations in it either, and no effort is made to define or flesh out character relationships. Almost every moment is setup just so some can start spouting drivel.
This is why I can't watch a lot of anime. They don't talk like real people, it's always some contrived scenario to let them spout philosophy101 shit. That image with Miyazaki talking about anime writers all being autistic really rings true.

Maybe explain why

I think it's a 10/10, it has a Bergman-esque quality.

To be fair, Oshii (the creator of the original film) is a self-admitted autist that has barely had social interactions in his life, and it comes across in his take on GITS with everyone being very subdued and borderline robotic.

I hope you get raped

I don't consider the original a master piece, I consider it a good movie. I think characters in the movie were too different from the original manga. It could be worse, nobody is forcing you to watch Ghost in the Shell Innocence let alone read the Innocence lite novel.

It's surface level observations. The symbolism, the metaphors and the subtlety are still there. 20 years later and anime or even movies (the popular ones at least) are still incapable of doing that.

It comes across in all his films, especially since he does so many adaptations.

It's why the boat scene (and the post-spider fight) annoyed me a lot. They're on a boat and they're drinking, do we get any real character interaction? Nope. Batou justs let her go off on a tangent.

I love this meme. Anime was widestream as fuck in '95. I was born in 1990 and I had seen fuck loads of things my then cause my sister was into anime from about 8 on wards. Anime in the 80's and 90's is no different to the shit you see today. The ONLY difference is that what YOU think is popular isn't as popular as it actually is because the internet is around. Oh wow, people talk about "muh waifu in [insert anime] FUCKING MOE SHIT" when in fact that anime is barely popular in Japan. People like the characters, maybe, but it isn't popular. It's not breaking records. You're conflating memetic content (by it's original Dawkins definition btw) with popularity. While the two are often linked, that does not make them the same. Pepe is not mainstream, even on the Internet it's not mainstream.

There are fuck loads of GOOD non-moe, harem, kiddy shit or whatever meme buzzword you want to use to justify "Back in MY day" excuse, but shit that is good =! shit that is popular. A anime might become popular because it's good but it does not mean it's good because it's popular. Etc.

Will we ever get something like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, a 300+ episode where it isn't 10-20 episodes of 'Monster of the Week' fights before another 10-20 episodes of 'Monster of the Week' Fights ala One Piece or Naurto, again? Probably not.

Does that mean that anime is all moe shit that is only 'kiddy harem moe shit' as you fucks keep saying? Nope.

You're right only by proxy. That the internet makes wide access to thousands of peoples opinion easily obtainable. So if Sup Forums says "it's shit" then you won't watch it, even if you would really enjoy it if you did. That means stuff which is good, is ignored. Stuff that is popular is assumed to be good, whether it's good or not. Like, I dunno, Attack on Titan. It's not a good show, but it got popular because it's 'le mature' so people think it's good cause it's popular.

>subtlety
Wat?

You know stuff happens after she leaves the water and before her monologue, right?

its most likely both.

The film isn't about their relationship user, and despite that fact we still get plenty of interaction and characterization between both characters.

>Anime in the 80's and 90's is no different to the shit you see today
Well for one it used to be a lot more violent while nowadays it's very censored and they can barely even show blood(and not much anyway)

It's deep bro, so deep it's at the bottom of the mariana trench.

>anime is barely popular in Japan

You have no idea what you're talking about. Just look at the highest-grossing films in Japan.

>before animu went mainstream
>This. Underrated post.

stuckman. stfu and gtfo.

nah senpai

Don't forget the proliferation of moeshit.

>
>I love this meme. Anime was widestream as fuck in '95. I was born in 1990 and I had seen fuck loads of things my then cause my sister was into anime from about 8 on wards. Anime in the 80's and 90's is no different to the shit you see today. The ONLY difference is that what YOU think is popular isn't as popular as it actually is because the internet is around.

Just because we're all autists that give a shit about anime, doesn't mean it was mainstream in the west. If anything, shit like GITS and Akira were pretty eye-opening for a lot of westerners (or more specifically, Americans). You can argue it was all about being a popularity contest rather than anything to do with quality, but that's well beside the point of why GITS is treated the way it is.

There's no relationships period. There's almost nothing driving the plot or film along.

I think you might just have autism and are incapable of understanding the relationships and what drives the plot.

>There's no relationships period
There clearly is though, and you'd have to be legitimately autistic to not see that.
>There's almost nothing driving the plot or film along
Really? You missed the entire motivation of the main character? Are you actually this retarded?

Holy shit this thread is cancer.

...

>Batou is the closest to a heart this film has.

Maybe it is because the film is about Motoko's alienation from her own body and Batou is the only one that tries to tackle her on an interpersonal level? I mean, most of your criticism is just the ways the film portrays its themes. Not really orthodox if you compare it to films of the same fame, but you're not even trying to tackle it on an analytical level.

This.

It's not about the characters, it's about the concepts.

This.
This whole thread is fucking pointless.
>Someone explain this movie to me so I don't actually have to think at all. And when you do try to explain stuff I won't bother thinking about that either bc I already made my mind up about how I feel about this movie.
Why does this thread still exist?

anime was basically unknown in the west until the combination of Akira, VHS, and cheap genlocks for fansubbing in the late 80's.

Also, if OP wants to see a more "humane" take on the concepts, he should try SAC, which has way more focus on the sociological portrayal of mass media, corporativism and the state and has way more interest in how the characters interact. Check it out, you, maybe you will like it more. Definitely don't try Innocence though hahaha

Since we're playing the age card: I was born in 1984. I have a meaningful living memory of what the world was like before the internet. You don't.

Ghost in the Shell was a fairly-well-marketed novelty when it was ported to the states, but animu wasn't /fucking everywhere/. Oh, Tarantino might wear an Astro Boy tie or somesuch for his interview, and Cartoon Network ran Vampire Hunter D a time or two late at night, but these were isolated instances in America. Further, the mid-90s internet had not just yet made video piracy available for easy mass consumption. This meant that people actually bought VHS video tapes. Yes, tapes.

I'm sure you know things about the animu you're discussing, but I honestly don't care by this point.

>I mean, most of your criticism is just the ways the film portrays its themes.

Most of critism is aimed at the way the themes are portrayed, just shoved in your face with no subtlety and not organically integrated into the dialogue.

exactly. few animes are known for being subtle.

>inb4 weeb rants

OP should not watch SAC cos it sucks and is cheaply animated. It also suffers from anime exposition. Static heads while voices talk. The movie at least has beautiful animations going for it.

Honestly that's something that manga doesn't do that well, yes its a great medium with innovative backgrounds but the concepts at the core don't really get explored. It's though provoking perhaps but you never get the ins and outs of a philosophical debate like you would in a classic novel.

I feel like a lot of anime and manga authors are semi-autistic fedora tippers.

thats because they are.

its really direct to be sure but its normally integrated pretty well story/pacing wise, it normally doesnt seems as out of place as when hollywood trys to be 2deep4u
thats japanese culture in general desu

I was talking about the post, which is entirely about how there's no connection with the characters, which is one of the points of the film, which OP clearly didn't get. Subtetly in the concepts put into play in Motoko's self centered mind are another story completely.

0/10

I like the manga because it presents the concepts in a more positive light than any of the animations.

Boobies

holy shit this is old ass pasta

ITT: I know more about anime than you do

It is?

I agree. I actually found the Scarjo movie to have way better pacing

yeah. old like old Sup Forums old. the birthyear is different though.

She was weirdly stiff in the opening though.

not him but you have terrible, TERRIBLE reading comprehension. Ask an adult to explain it to you, you're obviously mentally deficient, your handler should be around somewhere, did you go on his laptop when he was in the bathroom?