Ghost in the Shell 2 in Theaters Late This Summer

Peter Williams writes "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is due out in theaters late summer 2004. The english website can be reached here."

Comments

Ghost in the shell

[Psymunn]

Man, that movie is my favorite naked assassin movie ever. Can't wait!

wtf? I didn't even type anything

[nebaz]

bash$ boo
bash: boo: command not found
bash$

Spirtuallity and Philosphy are the keys

[Midnight Thunder]

In order to appreciate films like this and Final Fantasy, you definetly need a better understanding of spirtual beliefs. The ghost, is the spirit or soul of the machine, in the same way a ghost is the bodyless soul of a person.

Final Fantasy, lends itself to the Gaia Theory, and taking it further to suggest that planets are living enties with their own soul.

Japanese animation has plenty of philosphy in them (not all of them admitedly), and can be very deep, so it takes more to appreciate them than your average american cartoon, which in contrast are very shallow.

MTV attention spans

[SuperBanana]

That said, I saw Ghost in the Shell 1 and never was as bored in all my life.
[snip]
And I got halfway through the film and still hadn't figured out what the hell they meant by a 'ghost.'

Ghost in the Shell does not pander to MTV attention spans, and like the Patlabor movies, there's a complex plot. And a "ghost", while a vague concept, is quite obviously(if you pay attention) "what makes a person a person and not a machine". It's your personality, memories, etc. Part of it is that nobody seems to quite be able to put their finger on what a 'ghost' really is; hence the scene where Motoko wonders with Batou whether or not she's really human anymore. Are her memories manufactured, she wonders?

Watch Cowboy Bebop instead. It's a lot more fun, the animated cityscapes are stunning, and it doesn't take itself very seriously.

Cowboy Bebop is one of the all-time greats, but there are those of us who do enjoy serious anime.

There were a lot of complaints about Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex too- a lot of immature people complained there wasn't enough "action" and there was "too much talking". Well, guess what- that's -exactly- what GITS has always been about, right down to the manga, which sometimes has -paragraphs- of narration.

If you don't like philosophical anime, fine- go watch mindless shit like [shivers] Dragon Ball Z, [gets sick] Naruto, or [throws up] One Piece. But don't try to make every anime fit your tastes and complain when something doesn't.

The slashdot crowd might really enjoy PlanetES, about a young girl full of ideals who goes into space to work in a debris collection department- and finds space isn't quite as romantic, and astronauts not quite as valiant- as she thought.

Last Exile is about two kids serve as couriers, piloting a flying machine in the midst of a war and hoping to some day find their father(s) who were lost delivering a vital message.

Read or Die(watch the OVA first) is a fun series about three detective-sisters(named after martial arts starts, incidentally- Anita, Maggie, Michelle; there's also a Lee, a dove named Woo, etc :-) who are "paper-users" like the famous bibliomaniac Yoriko "The Paper" Readman, who worked for (heh) the British Library Special Forces. The OVA is particularly strange in a fun way. Kinda girly and -very- moving towards the end.

Oh, and lastly, Spirited Away is fantastic. Not nearly as preachy as Ghibli's earlier stuff(which is also excellent, but extremely heavy-handed in environmentalist ways. Princess Mononoke, Nausicca Valley of the Wind, etc).

Notes from the SIFF Premiere

[Batlord]

I was lucky enough to be at the North American Premiere as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. Brief impressions below:

The Crowd
The theatre (Cinerama) was packed. The rush line (people who didn't buy tickets in advance) wound around the corner. I don't think many got in.

The Presentation
Subtitles. Hooray!

The Movie
One of the few films that's substantially better than the original. I re-watched the original a few days before seeing this to refresh myself of the story (not necessary).

I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll just say that it's some of the best feature-length anime I've seen in a long time.

The things that bothered me with the original (like the gratuitious nudity and slow pace) were left out.

Overall
It's great that this film is making it to theatres, in any case, it would be a big hit on DVD. The big screen was a big help.