Summary: >

In the future there are no nations. All borders have been broken down and the world survives on a more local level tied together by a vast computer network. And in the information age, information itself is worth more than anything. The ministry of foreign affairs knows this, and in order to retrieve information; it created an intelligence that exists inside the net. It should have been the perfect spy. But something went wrong. Major Kusanagi works for the Internal Bureau while attempting to find the psycho hacker named the "Puppet Master". But it turns out that the Puppet Master is actually the very spy created by the Ministry of Foreign affairs. Through all of this Kusanagi begins to question not only her tasks, but her humanity. The Puppet Master however has a proposition: one that could answer all of her questions.

Thoughts: >

Okay so in a way my review is somewhat unfair. Why is that? Well it comes down to seeing the wrong anime at the wrong time. Around the late 90s Ghost in the Shell was billed as this awesome revolutionary anime that was sooo deep. To me it didn't state much I hadn't read in science fiction books before. Besides there was all this cyber-everything crap in the 90s. We were all going to do cyber everything. Have cyber pets, the Internet was going to do everything for us, and we'd spend our days in "virtual reality". Hey, it's the 21st century. Where's my freaking flying car? Anyway I was already burnt out on the who virtual reality garbage everyone seemed to be buying into for no good reason. It's unfortunate that I happened to watch Ghost in the Shell during the middle of that.

But even so, the story and theme is really pretty solid. Unfortunately you have a hard time getting into it because all of the characters are so emotionally detached. And by that I mean that the anime comes across so seriously that you have a hard time relating to people who have few or no human elements in their characters. And that is indeed the sucky part about this I suppose. It sort of cuts the point of Kusanagi questioning her humanity when she doesn't seem to act particularly human herself. Maybe that was the point? People had integrated with machines to the point where we had almost become machines ourselves? *shrug* I donno. Not to say I'm not philosophical in ways, but I do demand a story with characters I can relate to.

Now animation wise Ghost in the Shell delivers. I mean this stuff is big budget, and very well executed. Now personally (for the reasons I stated above), I'm just burned out of the whole cyber-punk genre, however if that is up your alley; then I would say that Ghost in the Shell is a must watch title. And actually it's a pretty safe bet for people who are just all around sci-fi fans, or want good animation. The philosophical points are often also a plus to many people. The drawbacks are mainly with the characters. Aside from that the story wasn't as deep as it could have been, but for a title that has the time constraints of a movie - that's forgivable.

Screen Caps: >