released 01 feb 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Fans of Japanese manga (comic) writer / artist Masamune Shirow are no doubt familiar with his GHOST IN THE SHELL (GITS) series, a cyperpunk adventure featuring Major Motoko Kusanagi of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Security / Section 9. Major Kusanagi is a trim but deadly combat cyborg who leads a team to counter cyber terrorists and rogue government agencies. Two movies have been made of GITS, and of course a TV series was a logical follow-on, which has now emerged as GITS: STAND ALONE COMPLEX.
The first GITS movie was a serious piece of work, and a TV series would be hard-pressed to match it. STAND ALONE COMPLEX doesn't, but from a production standpoint it still does its best, with artwork and design generally ranging from good to very good. STAND ALONE COMPLEX also has a generally exciting cyperpunk rock score by Yoko Kanno, with a soaring intro piece with lyrics mixed in English, Latin, and what may be Russian or some other Slavic language. The intro itself, however, is one of my biggest complaints, since the producers decided to use computer graphics instead of artwork. I think it would have worked much better to have simply done a super job using artwork: although some of the computer graphics is exciting, the character designs are reminiscent of Barbie and Ken dolls and not very impressive.
I could live with that, but STAND ALONE COMPLEX suffers from the major fault of 21st-century anime: scriptwork that doesn't match the production values. The actual storytelling varies from OK to weak; some of the "stand-alone" episodes, for example when Section 9 rescues a Patty Hearst type prisoner of a gang of vicious terrorists, were mildly interesting, but unfortunately the series ends up bogged down in an "arc" about a hacker named the "Laughing Man" who is at the center of a conspiracy. The conspiracy and all its elements end up seeming like dull contrivances, forming a machine that spins its wheels a lot but doesn't really do anything.
I did enjoy the "tachikomas", the spider-like intelligent robots / combat armor (translated as "fuchikomas" in the original GITS manga), who are screwball comedy-relief beasts with shrill toylike voices. I found them plausible in a way: if we ever created artificial intelligences, they wouldn't likely have the same instincts that humans have, and their ideas and impulses might seem very strange from our point of view.
I might warn that when I picked up the V2 DVD of STAND-ALONE COMPLEX, I ordered the deluxe edition with a music CD, thinking it was a soundtrack disc. It was, but it was all quirky little tunes relating to the loopy tachikomas and of no great interest. The deluxe edition of the V1 DVD actually has the main soundtrack; I picked up the music CD separately and found it enjoyable.
