Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
fh1478
Should Our Tanks Think For Themselves?
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is the story about a major, who can't stop wearing lingerie on the job, but maybe her excuse, is that she's very mobile in skimpy outfits.
In a cyberpunk future, where Japan is the best at Cyber Warfare and cyborgs are normal things on the street, what do you do about cyber warfare and cyber crime? Well, you do section 9, and the many different types of cyberpunk stories are explored extremely well, and because of the amount of episodes you can get many different explorations.
The episodic structure is amazingly done, because writing is interesting and because of the Sci-Fi settings there are such a very selection of topics, they can tackle.
One of those shows where is professional solving cases, and just bei…
Read at the sourcetyler_dbz
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex presents the cast in their most entertaining form thus far. Characters like Batou and Togusa feel fully fleshed out and realistic within this dark and gritty world, and the main cast shine brightest during the show's "Standalone" episodes.
Whilst the series tackles dark and mature themes, it still allows itself to have fun. The characters share natural banter, and the Tachikomas ended up being one of the most enjoyable surprises of the entire show. Their character arc towards the end of the season was unexpectedly emotional and added greatly to the show's central themes. This is where Stand Alone Complex shines the most in my opinion: when it slows down and explores its ideas through character-driven drama and emotionally engaging stories.
Where th…
Read at the sourceKilljoy_Kora
Can you believe they got this on Criterion Channel?
Stand Alone Complex is almost the perfect cyberpunk anime. It's got everything going for it: realistic character designs, interesting philosophy, complex worldbuilding that deeply considers the implications of its SF concept, fantastic procedural episodes, funny robot sidekicks, brilliantly choreographed action, and compelling and likable characters. Unfortunately, it's also plagued by the worst main character design I've ever seen. Motoko Kusanagi has never looked worse in her bizarre backless leotard with oversized leather jacket combo. She looks like she's been pantsed! And that's not even talking about the awful off-white/pink stockings. Whenever Motoko shows up it takes me out of the show--it is genuinely distracting.
But putting…
Read at the sourceAsy_
Chat, It has come to my attention that the hate towards the Netflix adaption may have been warranted. Having just finished ghost In the shell stand alone complex GIG 1, and theres no other way to expressed it then the fact that they simple cooked. The fatal flaw with a lot of slower detective style grand mystery shows is that they often drop the ball with either pacing too slow or leaving too weak of a breadcrumb trail. This show certainty did not come anywhere near that. Yeah, the series does feel like its a bit on the older side and you can see in certain aspect of the animation and art in that regards but never had that ever been unpleasant or even all that noticeable because you’re here for the story and over arching plot and it sure as hell is a damn good one.
What keeps you hooked…
Read at the sourceScanerior
Ghost in the Shell: SAC is a terribly contradictory series for me, I hardly got the first half of most episodes, but I was always surprised in the end that I gradually started to get my bearings and usually got some nice plot point at the end of the episode. This futuristic anime crime series is made up of separate cases (Stand Alone) and a more developed story (Complex), which also took me a good while to understand and honestly, Stand Alones were generally better for me. The path to the characters is thorny, but you will find them as you go along, and although I have a rather lukewarm feeling of acceptance (very high average, almost even less), I did enjoy the series quite a bit in places.
Read at the sourceJoe_Devaney
Note: This will be a review of both seasons, plus the movie.
Overview:
When it first aired back in the 2000s, "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (much like the 1995 movie that inspired it) gained a huge amount of acclaim for its deep, philosophical themes and great cyberpunk action, with even those who weren't fans of anime praising it. Two decades on, however, and the series is beginning to show its age, with multiple parts of it not holding up as well as they used to. That's not to say that it’s a bad series now- far from it, in fact. It's just that it falls a little short of being the ingenious masterpiece it was once hailed as.
Story (8/10):
"Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" is set near-future Japan, where cybertechnology is now widespread and many people have been con…
Read at the sourceLightningComet
When I contemplate Kenji Kamiyama’s Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (heretofore “SAC”), I’m reminded of the ending lines of the morning routine monologue from American Psycho:
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense that our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.”
Coldness aside, it’s as though SAC itself spoke these words to its audience. For all its flair, for as meticulously crafted, honed, and maintained as it is, and for as much as it presents itself as something especially valuable through these specifically material lenses, there is an underlying emp…
Read at the sourceZanryu1337
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a classic, and for good reasons. It blends the serializes "Stand Alone" episodes with the story focused "Complex" episodes very well together. And even tho they can be classifies as serial episodes, they contribute to the world and story in meaningful ways; either through tone or details that the complex episodes revisit.
Story: 9
Animation: 9
Sound: 10
Characters: 8
Enjoyment: 10
Total: 9 The isn't much a have to write about GitS: SAC. The story has many twist and turns I liked, even when I feel that the story felt rushed in the end, especially the resolution.
The animation is solid and blends 2D and 3D very well together, especially for the time period it was made in. Which is kinda ironic considering the opening and how it aged so badly.
Th…
Read at the sourceMoomochi
Out of 100 Nobles watching…
95 were impressed!
5 didn’t like the one filler episode and old car CG
I was certainly apprehensive to dive in watching Stand Alone Complex after watching the original film and finding it to be such a masterpiece. Most of my memories of the show were from days of my youth watching adult swim. At that time, I would usually watch the Inner Universe OP, vibe to the strange lonely wistfulness it would instill in me, and then watch something else because I found the episodes too slow for my kid brain. Returning to watch the show properly now I found it to be an engaging and thought provoking episodic sci-fi crime show.
To get what little bad there is out of the way I will say the show was (obviously) not budgeted the same as the film and as such doesn’t always hav…
Read at the sourcebergars
This is a very... diverse series, I'd say.
I had an introduction with the "Ghost in the Shell" with the very first film. A masterpiece in philosophical future thought. Since the story was perfect as a 1-hour and 20-minute film; a series with 26 episodes was a tough ask from me. It didn't deliver as much, but maybe I can't really compare.
These are two very different stories, tackling a different world, and another message. One is that of the mental questions of how can the world work with these sci-fi concepts, and this series worries itself more on how people deal with those concepts, with a bit of fun.
The story becomes a cop show, crime of the week, with an overarching narrative that slowly becomes the focus. I really wish I could've just experienced that story instead of the entire…
Read at the sourceDmAnimeguy
This review too me some time to put together because it was not easy to describe a show like this. This show provides you with everything you can look for in a show. It has the best character development I have ever seen. Some of the most complex story lines that could be enjoyed on multiple viewings. The world building is so vast and interesting that you always learn something new every time you watch this series. The art style in the entire series is absolutely breathtaking, the move is a work of art that could be enjoyed for years to come. (please note the move does have multiple re-releases, I would recommend watching the one that has the original drawings and at a higher rez). This is what I would consider a true masterpiece.
Imagine a world where distinguishing fact er between bio-…
Read at the sourceCivilwarfare101
Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, an anime I have a huge soft spot for. It's one of the anime back 10 years ago that got me into the medium again after having a weird hiatus from it back in 2008. I always did like the show even though teenage me might've not have 100% grasped what is going on, but watching it now, I feel like this show is even better than I remembered when I watched it the first time and the second time.
Honestly, many have praised this show a lot and it's anime that actively rewards the viewer for paying attention to it especially when I try to spot little details in all my favorite works. I knew this series was something special when at the end first episode Kubota asked the Geisha who was hit in the head of the start of the first episode if she was alright after…
Read at the sourceANT4
THIS SPOILER FREE REVIEW COVERS BOTH SEASONS OF SAC+SOILD STATE SOCIETY!!!!!
In the world of anime and manga, reboots are often just cashgrabs. They are often made for popular anime just to earn more money, never considering how good the reboots themselves are. Fortunatley, Standalone Complex is an exception.
Ghost in the Shell:Standalone Complex is a story different form the original GitS film, but with the same characters. Members of Section 9 solve a number of seemingly unrelated cases which turn out to be related, hence the title of the series. There are two types of episodes in SAC:Complex episodes and Standalone episodes. Standalone episodes are seperate cases, which are usually there to flesh out the characters' personalities or to present some themes tackeled in the show(I'll co…
Read at the sourcestar_lover
There are many dumb sci-fi shows out there, pretending to be smart. Ghost in a Shell: SAC is a smart show knowing it's smart.
The worst sin a sci-fi show may commit overindulging in "technobabble": introducing technological concepts for the sake of it. Pseudoscientific concepts that may sound engaging, yet often stay vague and undefined, causing more frustration and alienation than enjoyment.
Ghost in a Shell: SAC avoids said mistake. Every technological novelty brought to the table is absolutely essential and explored throughout the anime. Prosthetic bodies and cybernetic implants? Essential to the psychology of all acting characters. Cyberbrain sclerosis? Essential to the plot. The concept of hacking cyberbrains? Essential to the plot.
What Ghost in a Shell: SAC portrays is a believa…
Read at the sourceSargossa
*Spoiler Free*
This show stands up remarkably well, and I consider it a must watch.
I've been on a Ghost in the Shell binge marathon lately, and going into this I barely remembered anything from the show apart from the main characters. In fact, now that I've binged it, I'm not even sure if I had ever seen the first season in full. I didn't realize how old this show was, it certainly doesn't feel like it was made in 2002, apart from maybe the intro which uses poorly aged CGI (but the intro song EASILY makes up for it - The whole soundtrack is bangin')
Ghost in the Shell can be most accurately described as: "CSI: Blade Runner - Spec Ops"
It takes place in the alternate future, where "cyberizing" your body is becoming the norm, and androids have become common place in daily life. It follow…
Read at the sourceAryaragi
It’s an undeniable fact that the way information is delivered, received, and processed has gone through a drastic change in the last couple of decades. With the advent of the Internet, the urge to know just about anything echoes in the manifolds of the Internet. Available information is acquired from various sources, where each source has a different story to tell on the same subject, even when the possession of such information can be considered unethical or even illegal. What’s more, the load, or even overload of available information; the dependence on various sources; and the ease at which information in various format (story, witness accounts, films, photographs) can be falsified makes it increasingly difficult for one to tell apart what is real and what isn’t.
Set in a futuristic so…
Read at the sourceMr_Yaz
Reviewer's note: This is my 2nd entry into the G.I.T.S. franchise unless you count the live-action film of 2017, starring Scarlett Johansson.
✪ Genre: action (gunfights), detective, mecha (power suit, robot), science fiction (artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, cyborgs/human enhancement) seinen, along with some other themes: law and order (cyberterrorism, police, special squads), nudity, political corruption, virtual world
✔Positive Aspects✔
◧ Soundtrack: It's very unusual for an anime series to have a soundtrack that is as varied as that of S.A.C.'s. It's is comprised of pieces from various genres, such as ambient with and without vocals, trip-hop, instrumental rock, piano ballads with vocals, slow tempo guitar pieces, some goofy tunes akin to cartoon themes, salsa, funky hip hop, or…
Read at the sourceN44K00
From the final dialogue, one can see, when squinting, a connection between this and Kojima's meme theory as explored in MGS2. I bring up this link for a specific reason. While Kojima takes a linear approach to his themes (scene, meme, gene), in that he'll set up within the diegetic world, explicate formally, and then just sort of leave them hanging, presented by never pursued, Stand Alone Complex has a more complex take on the same issue. Meme can be read as an antecedent in thought the concept of a Stand Alone Complex, as the additional layer of proper systems theory is added into the concept of a Stand Alone Complex. A meme, as explicated in the final dialogue, moves through humanity and its this movement that is the concern of the previous twenty five episodes. The tachikomas make for t…
Read at the sourceGhost-Cell
While perfection may be unobtainable, Stand Alone Complex is probably as close as it comes in my opinion. Every episode is punchy, nuanced, and holds significance in some fashion. The series is largely broken into two halves; stand alone and complex episodes.
Complex Episodes are the core of the series. They follow the ongoing investigation of The Laughing Man case and its effects on society. Each complex episode inches you along bit by bit with their placements being dotted around the series until the final episodes, where everything wraps itself up.
What's impressive is the way the show flows between stand alone episodes and complex episodes. Each stand alone episode is, as expected, self-contained and focused on a unique plot. Sometimes this involves members of Section 9 that aren't…
Read at the sourceRyanSpring
Watching this for the very first time mere weeks away from 2019- well over a decade and a half removed from its original release- this anime had several things working against it in my mind before I even inserted the DVD. Dated (by today's standards) graphics, a viewer who has never cared for episodic anime and a story concept that was probably way more fresh/mind blowing/cool back in 2002 than it is now since we've seen a million movies and works of fiction about artificial intelligence, cyborgs, cyberpunk futures, etc between now and then. So, obviously, I was going to watch this anime and find it overrated and move along, right? While I'm not prepared to give it a 10, as it does have some nitpicky flaws, this anime is simply very good. I don't see how any objective critic could end up w…
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