Anime: Innocence

THIS MOVIE IS NOT AN ANIME. This movie is an art film that happens to be animated.

First, the production values are outstanding. Oshii blends cel animated characters with CG backgrounds, and the result is stunning. The hand-drawn animation is top notch, and the CG work is insanely detailed. The music and sound are excellent, and the english cast are a solid team. I strongly strongly recommend watching this film on the biggest screen you can find.

On to where everybody has trouble: the story. As I mentioned, this is an art film. Think Godard. That's clearly Oshii's main influence. Characters in dialogue while looking in different directions, the Noir ambiance, then philosophical soliloquies, out of nowhere. If you don't like Godard, (your're a philistine, and) you won't like this movie.

Regarding content. Familiarity with Descartes and Buddhism are probably most important, with Nietzsche and Donna Haraway along for the ride. If you don't recognize at least 3 of those names, you won't get the same enjoyment out of this movie. But if you have the intellectual and aesthetic background, you're in for a treat, because this is a great, great movie. Not anime, movie. Cinema. Get it?

Where the big problem with the film is that it over-reaches. Its characters are people who don't exist yet, and pulling the audience into their view is too much even for Oshii, I think. However, after a few viewings the film hangs together better, and the depth of the drama and what Oshii is getting at start to sink in.

So this is not an easy movie, but it is breathtaking, fascinating and a true work of art by a master auteur.

I'm going to be as afast as I can about reviewing this. The movie speaks for itself in ost departments:

Animation:
Masterpeice. tons of the art is CGI, and while all of the characters are cel-drawn and many items are overlapped Cels with the CGI as backgrounds(this can, at times, be obvious and a little irritating) the cel art hardly takes away from the overall high-detail look of the movie. the art is top-notch, hands down. No wonder it took them so long to make.

Sound:
Sugoi. The voices, even in the english version, are very well doene and while they used some recycled themes from the original movie, they just seem better here. 10/10, I man, it's almost perfect. When it coems to sound, "you have entered the kill zone."

Story:
9, ONLY because you really need to have a grasp on what's going on in the ghost in the shell world to understand what's going on. Otherwise, the story is much better done than the original and while the philosophic quotes get annoying (they pile up after a while) the movie's cornyness rating stays low as we expect from ghost in the shell. super-serious, intellectual, morally driven plot, with a great climax. Even if you hated the first movie (which I did) watch this, you'll like it.

Character:
Most of the movie focuses on Batou and his partner, but even their personalities are strong while still being marginally original. 9, because with so few characters it was hard to get diversity and continuity like the original movie had, but, really, the characters that had screentime were very well developed.

Value:
It's well worth your time. Originally I thought "Why in the world am I torturing myself with a SECOND two hours of ghost in the shell when the first was so awful?" and then I was all, "it's over ALREADY?!" ...that was colloquial I know. but nnonetheless, you'll love this movie, as long as you can stomach the exhibitions it goes on here and there when the writers decided to be philosophical or let the artists go buts with extra footage of just random junk. Personally I appreciated that, but, it does take a bit away from the action I suppose. 10/10.

Enjoyment:
What it lacks in action it makes up for in plot, and it's just a whole lot clearer than the original movie. I haven't seen the TV series, and I was almost going to not watch it until I sawthis movie. now, there's no way I'm missing it!

Animation [5/5]
The animation of the show is fantastic, the amount of detail never fails to impress. The characters in the show had individualism, not like common anime series with everyone looking the same. The Background scenes were imaginative depictions of the not-so-near future. My fave was all those futuristic and high detailed machines. The choreography of the fight scenes were also pretty good.

Sound [5/5]
Well....did you expect something else from Kenji Kawaii? I liked the opening theme..........sounds like some kinda Buddhist chant

Story [4/5]
The story actually requires you to think a BIT, it would certainly help if you had watched GITS1 and the TV series. As with most of Mamoru Oshii's work, he likes to work with very bleak and dark stories. In GITS, he pretty much is trying to decriBe the co-evolution of artificial intelligence and humankind. The show picks up from where it left off the 1st movie, with Motoko Kusanagi "Major" integrating with the 'NET'. Batou seems to take over Kusanagi's role in Section 9, and they crack down on an illegal cyborg production industry which installs the "Ghosts" of kidnapped children into its cyborgs.

Character [4.5/5]
The main characters have individual developments, both from the last movie and the current one. Batou seems to Be the lead in this show and partners Togusa now. He now owns a dog that seems to have cameo-ed in the 1st movie. And oh! if you are wondering what i'm thinking, YES! he still has a crush on Kusanagi. Togusa still relies on his revoler 'Matever', despite the fact that everyone else are using advanced weaponery. An interesting fact is that Togusa is the least mechanized being in Section 9(only his cyberbrain) and i believe the only one that actually has a family(1wife and a daughter).
The only missing factor was that Kusanagi's appearance was only that short, it somehow seem weird w/o the 'Major". Although i liked Batou, i strongly think that GITs is not complete with "Major" as the sidekick.

Enjoyment [5/5]
Pretty entertaining, But i personally feel that this movie lacked something that the 1st one has.........juz couldn't really put my finger to it.....mayBe its the aBsence of "Major" or the originality the 1st movie had...im not sure.....

Hmmm what should I say.... Well my #s tells all... Everything seems ok just the story kinda messed up... You could say I understanded 80% of the story when I 1st watched it. I would perfer watching GITS over part 2. And I'm not so surprised that Batou was the Main character since he is the most active one in the story. But GITS just don't feel like GITS without the "Major" in it. Overall it still cool. I hope a sequel comes out to make up for this... I may be giving this anime some points it don't deserve though but "hell" I love GITS.

sucbz4's review of Ghost in the Shell 2: Mediocrity- er, Innocence:



"me·di·oc·ri·ty
n. pl. me·di·oc·ri·ties

1. The state or quality of being mediocre.
2. Mediocre ability, achievement, or performance.
3. One that displays mediocre qualities."
~ Oxford New World dictionary


IN THE NEAR FUTURE - CORPORATE STUDIO NETWORKS REACH OUT TO MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTORS WITH PHILOSOPHICAL PRETENSIONS.
BIG BUDGET ANIMES ARE PRODUCED AT A HYPEREXCELERATED RATE.
ELECTRONS AND FANBOYS FLOW THROUGHOUT KNOWN CYBERSPACE.

THE ADVANCES OF GRAPHIC COMPUTERISATION, HOWEVER, HAS NOT YET WIPED OUT THE NEED FOR PLOT STRUCTURE, DRAMATIC LOGIC, AND NARRITIVE COHERANCE.
[/i]



Except of course, in the minds of the Japanese.


This movie has a thinner plot than The Matrix Revolutions, The Phantom Menace, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy 9, or even the borderline softcore porn that was Final Fanservice X2. The film is essentially a 90 minute plus videogame CG with creepy (yet quite recycled) music. I will admit of course, that the CGI scenes do look absolutely incredible and mind blowing... that is they do until the actual hand drawn cell animated characters (who are supposed to be the stars of this thing anyway) are pasted into the scene.

The problem with this anime, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the visuals. It is the script, which seems to be adapted less from Shirow's manga and more from Barlett's 'Popular Quotations'. The characters don't talk so much in dialouge as they do in fortune cookies, spouting Descartes, Darwin, Confucius, Sun Tzu, Lovecraft, Shakespere, Einstien, Poems, Haiku, and The Kabbalah just to name a few. The original GITS had only one quote, from 1 Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass, darkly". This verse worked beautifully as a both a metaphor for the limited scope of human conciousness, a companion thought to the reflective imagery used in the underwater scene, and then expanded on later ("but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known") it gave Motoko's final transformation much of its haunting subtext. The absolute quote overload in the 2nd film (at least half of the subtitled dialouge is framed in quotation marks, I kid you not) is merely numbing for the viewer. Any real meaning attached to biblical deluge of quotes become lost, turning what could be a powerfull thematic device into a homework assignment (and possibly a frathouse drinking game).

Still, even if you overlook the leaden dialouge, the plot itself is a mess. It skips from one country, scenario, or location to the next without so much as an explanation (In one case without even a cut-in or establishment shots). The actual tone of the movie itself seems to jump around as well, expecially in the begining. It actually starts out seeming like an episode of CSI, then takes turns toward film noir, buddy cop, black comedy, cheesy action, spy thriller, and in one agonizingly bad sequence, an Altman-esque Batou character study. Movies like this just reinforce the stereotype that "good" anime aren't supposed to be plot driven, that fans only watch them for big robot battles, action-fiqure characters, nudity, and cool CG.

I know this is going to sound horribly nitpicky and geeky, but the most pathetic thing about it is the fact that it's based on a (essentially filler) story from issue six of the manga, whereas the last movie essentially ended at issue ten. The story (which actually takes place before pretty much anything from the first movie even happened) was simply "modified" to convince viewers that it's a sequel. Everything seems to build up to something but then at the end, everyone is essentially back where they started. If anything, it feels like a step backwards. Compare this to the original GITS where characters learned, lived, died, were reborn, and transcended whole planes of conciousness between acts.

But even if you haven't read the manga, even if you don't follow the plot or read the subtitles, and even if you just want to take it all in as a visceral stoner experience, let me break it to you: Remember that badass naked chick who blew s--t up from the original? She's back, but only for ten lousy minutes of screen time, easily the biggest waste of a leading character since Metal Gear Solid 2. And on top of that, it's only ten minutes of screen time of a portion of Motoko's 'ghost' downloaded into the 'shell' of an ugly white sexbot with absolutely no nipples. That's right, there are NO nipples in this movie whatsoever, just a ridicuolous climax with Batou and Kusanagiinside the hull of a secret government submarine quoting the bible and chatting about old times while gunning down wave after wave of horny murdering erotibots with human ghosts 'dubbed' from little girls trapped inside on a mission to save the perverted fanboys of Japan from sex terrorists.

Right now I wish so deeply that I were joking that I think I'm actually gonna cry.

Well this movie was amongst most anticipated anime movies this year. Can it win "most dissappointing anime of the year" award?

[Animation] 10
Yeah, animation is superb, very expensive production, extremely detailed backgrounds, contains some of the most impressive (visually) scenes amongs anime movies. 10/10 no doubts.

[Sound] 8
Overall good. Sometimes very good. But definately not excellent. And I personally found the music to be way too similar to the first movie.

[Character] 5
Here goes the first weak spot of this. Characters... Damn are there any REAL characters at all? Or that damn dog should be considered the main character of the movie??? Counting out the dog, we came to conclusion that Batou is the main character... Cause all the rest are way too shallow and are more like decorations, not real persons. They don't show any emotional bonds at all! (no sings of love, hate, frienship, rivalry, respect and so on). Most of the times they just talk and man, they DO talk TOO MUCH for the movie.

[Value] 5
The whole movie is pain in the butt to rewatch. Though 3-4 visually impressive scenes can be rewatched on their own (just 20-30 minutes, not more)

[Story] 4
Short description: LAME. Long description: REALLY LAME. It took a while since gits1 to produce a sequel (I mean full-length movie of course), and why so stupid story? It's not interesting at all, and I hoped thru the whole movie that the story would be deeper... But it failed. Definately a failure for such acclaimed director and script writer. Don't take me wrong: I really liked the story in gits1. That story was much better.

[Enjoyment] 7
Due to many flaws, it's rather mediocre.
I don't recommend this to anyone who found gits1 boring -- you will fall asleep while watching this one. And if you go to cinema to watch this:
KEEP YOUR EXPECTATIONS REALLY LOW.