Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
kiner_shah
Wow, what a movie! It was so well made.
This is the second movie of Ghost in the Shell that I watched.
I was surprised with the art work in the movie. The city, the buildings, the streets, the festival, people, technology, everything was so well made. There was also a bit of 3D in this one, which enhanced the experience. Paired with that music, made the experience so surreal.
It's a crime-mystery in a futuristic era. The story was very interesting and kept me hinged until the end. There was a lot of philosophy related conversations which would make anyone slow down, listen and think. Lot of quotes from various literary works too.
Character-wise, this one focused more on Badou and Togusa. It showed in details their personalities, their priorities and also their troubles. Their pair isn'…
Read at the sourceNobody4213
Well color me surprised, I actually liked this a lot more then the first. Don’t usually feel so intellectually stimulated by a movie, there were so many ideas, maybe 2 conversation total between characters where they weren’t philosophizing or even directly quoting someone, I’m a fan. I actually couldn’t keep up at points, plus letting the kinda convoluted plot just sorta slip by me was easier than usual cause the vibes were truly *immaculate*. Some of the discussions on the nature of perception and self were right up my alley, but here it actually got ahead of me, perhaps even a little freaked out sometimes, god I love Mamoru Oshii!
Read at the sourcetwopence
This is a really boring sequel to a really boring movie. Like the original Ghost in the Shell, this is a Blade Runner knockoff mixed with every generic Hollywood cliche you can think of because that's all the creators of this movie wanted to make. It tries to appear deep and philosophical by having characters ramble about meaningless drivel for almost 3 hours. The CGI is overused and in your face to the degree of being obnoxious. There was an overly long and drawn out scene where a bunch of people were standing around and chanting or something like that, I don't remember very well because despite my best efforts I couldn't stay awake through the entire scene. When I woke up 15 hours later, it still wasn't over. The original Ghost in the Shell movie was also excruciatingly boring and pointl…
Read at the sourcefh1478
My Guardian Is In The Wire
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence Is the movie about two detectives, trying to fight out why pet robots are going berserk, and cutting their owners head off.
The movie excels at detective work and philosophical dialogue, but that is what I would expect from the director, because he is the master of it, and sometimes the main character gets bored, and destroys a yakuza hideout.
It also uses style and atmosphere in every moment of it, it is made with such a texture to the background with the sadness of the main character life, but at least he has a dog.
The music and sound effects have a good deep sound to it, and heavenly crier is as hypnotizing as always. The dialogue of the characters are just so well written and the dub does it truly justice.
The animation…
Read at the sourceNever_Know_Best
Oh yeah I saw Innocence on the big screen, at long last. Dubbed, to better soak in the experience. Some stray thoughts:
*An Oshii film is much like a warm, contemplative bath. You find yourself diving into an endless stream of thoughts, sensory information and vivid potentialities. Never a wasted endeavor.
*4K restoration is mostly stunning. As expected though, some of the CG isn’t quite up to snuff (not that it ever was quite there)
*of course Ghibli worked on this. The background characters are alive!
* The fridge logic of Batou and Togusa quoting philosophy at each other is hilarious: they could be brain-googling much of it as they speak
*Best Oshii Bassett, no contest.
*You forget how nasty Batou can be in his righteous indignation. What did you expect the poor girl to do?
*Unfortunat…
Read at the sourceDanTheMan2150AD
People are like puppets; they perish in a flash. Taking the cyberpunk foundations of the original and turning it inward, Ghost in the Shell 2 never feels ostentatious, instead it evokes both the terror and wonder of things that lie beyond the grasp of human understanding. Despite my familiarity with this franchise, I've only ever seen Innocence once over a decade ago; rewatching it now has only helped facilitate a better appreciation for it, opting for a dense meditation on consciousness, identity, dolls, souls, and what it means to be human in a world where bodies and minds are endlessly replicable. At times, the blur between cyber-reality and reality is hard to discern, but Oshii's visual artistry is to die for, an extended, hypnotic montage of images that feel more like a dream or ritua…
Read at the sourceKiidCathedrale
Everyone in town is crying.
His memory tries to make its way to the edges of his mind. Electrified, the scar stretches, swells and scratches; he tries to remedy this by sticking the barrel of a gun into his eyes: his eyeball is as cold as a spoonful of vanilla ice cream.
Those who refuse to see the truth also refuse the beauty that comes with it; a premium package for augmented cyborgs. It made me laugh when he settled quietly into his well-appointed flat, still with that dog, so dear to Mamoru Oshii, skimming the floor and almost tripping over his own ears.
In the cold room, a completely different scene is unfolding. Hundreds of disarticulated robots hang from metal hooks, like dreary legs of lamb with grooves stuffed with bitterness. The dead don't lie; they no longer have anyone to i…
Read at the sourceChanrey
Ghost in the Shell 2 expands the universe of the previous movie with more elements of sci-fi, expanded the characters from the previous movie and introducing new characters, and giving us rich sci-fi worlds mixed together with hand drawing and computer generated Images. and along with an incredible soundtrack.
When you're reading this, you may be wondering why I am giving it all this praise when I gave it a 5/10, and that is because I feel like the movie fails to make me think of anything meaningful, when I watched the original movie the movie felt very meaningful, it explored concepts of A.I sentience, gender identity, etc, but comparing this movie with the original, I didn't feel or think much when watching the sequel.
Read at the sourcetheo1763
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence had a great deal to live up to after the first film, and while I would not say that it is bad, it did not move me the same way. The movie sees Batou and Togusa looking into a case of malfunctioning gynoids, and the premise of the film itself is really very interesting. My problem with it was how it was done. This movie leans heavily into philosophy and long, abstract conversations, and I simply don't have a care for that kind of thing. Instead of pulling me in, at times it felt like it was dragging the story down or even making it harder to stay involved. Compared to the first film, which was tighter and more well-balanced in its action, plot, and theme, this felt a little too dense for its own good.
That being said, there are moments that I just loved. Bat…
Read at the source1stDecame4Danime
Following up GitS with a sequel centered on that cybernetic incarnation of blandness, brick shithouse soldier guy, Blando was definitely a choice they could've gone without, especially since we get to watch his story play out with almost 0 stakes since he's now plot-armored by god of the machine Major... God there is so much wrong with this movie.
Starts off very slow with a bunch of directorial vomit of more chopped in environmental shots and more bodies bodying, (it's just so goddamn unsubtle with its hamfisted symbolisms/quotes, juvenile philosophizings/dialogue, and yes copy and paste the entire sequence of constructing machine bodies bodying again for minutes just like the previous movie for blatant nostalgia fanpandering, but I digress) The sexdoll murder mystery police-procedural i…
Read at the sourceHalalex
“We weep for the bird’s cry, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those who have voice.”
Does the one sensible thing that a sequel to one of Japan’s most internationally influential pieces of media could ever do. Swapping out the protagonists and approaching this as more of a spin-off than anything else works wonders for the film, as not trying to one-up its predecessor is one of its greatest strengths.
That being said, this certainly has enough meat on its bones as to warrant its existence. I might have my qualms with the poorly aged CGI that’s present in most of the scenes, but it’s evident that no expense was spared either way. Just as much of the provocative existentialism is still there, and it finds new ways to comment on humanity’s primal foundations and the seemingly hypo…
Read at the sourceXOArama
I've gotta say this one does a lot of things better than the original, thanks in part to it building off of it. The philosophical arguments proposed in this one are displayed in a much more conveying and interesting way, with the scene in the mansion in particular really blowing me away. This one was a bit more grounded as a buddy cop movie at its most basic providing a stable plot to keep it going but I found that the overall plot itself was less intriguing than the first but it more than makes up for it with the great action and great discussion along the way. In some ways this movie scares me in the fact that the philosophical arguments in this will most likely become reality in my lifetime, and that just makes this movie all the more relevant.
*Watched in subbed*
Read at the sourceViolentPete
Feels like a parody of the first one. The story is the same general "We have to catch this villain with mysterious motives" plotline that shows up in half of Oshii's movies, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Issue is, GitS and Patlabor 2 were a lot more interesting and I just watched both of those, and by comparison this just doesn't have the extra spice to make it stand out. Batou's the main character this time but he isn't nearly as interesting as the Major, and a solid 50% of the script is dedicated to quoting philosophy. You could ask Batou what he had for breakfast today and he'd probably give you a Bible verse followed by a Confucius quote, then that wailing music would suddenly start playing for 30 seconds or so. The first movie actually brought up some interesting ideas about wh…
Read at the sourceMoomochi
Out of 100 Nobles watching…
75 were impressed!
15 fell asleep
10 died of unnecessary quotation
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was a pleasant surprise. Outside of Stand Alone Complex and the original film my knowledge of GitS is quite limited so it was quite the shock for me to discover that the original movie had a sequel. I think the craft shown in the film is of a similar quality to the first film, but being from a different decade there are some things to take or leave and the plot of the film left a lot to be desired.
The majority of Innocence follows section 9 member Batou during his investigation into a model of android dolls going banana’s. The greatest fault of the movie in my opinion is in the script. The original GitS had a story that was heady and full of sci-fi mumbo jumbo,…
Read at the sourcedeathead
I do not believe in the transcendent reality of systems. Systems are composed of individuals. Individuals are incompetent, Individuals fail. I do not believe in society. Society is composed not of rules or laws or norms or customs but of individuals, some of whom can be counted upon to do what you expect of them in a given situation and some of whom you cannot.
Transcendental anime as an art-form. Meaningful dialogue, haunting soundtrack, majestic visuals. A form of story-telling forgotten to time.
So good to live in a world where this was made, and the best Ghost In The Shell ever made, with amazing cyberpunk/Blade Runner vibes, trulhy philosophical questioning.
Read at the sourceZhaitan
I thought the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie was alright. It had a story that (eventually) made sense. People talked to each other in a way that could reasonably be considered realistic. The music had some variety. The visuals were pretty consistently decent looking.
Innocence has none of this. The story is terrible. What you read in the synopsis is the whole story. The answer to the question is given in the span of 30 seconds at the end of the movie. It was not interesting or exciting. The story is mostly delivered through long stretches of exposition where they drop 3+ names and 5 philosophy quotes. Something like:
"This crime family killed this guy who killed this guy who saw this guy but then this other guy got killed by these people for this corporation. let a man walk alone, let him…
Read at the sourceMeekk
i know, i know. most people don't really like the second Ghost in the Shell, with that said, i'm going to take a controversial stance here and say, 'i like Innocence more than the first'. yes, crucify me but i still stand behind the claim -- or the opinion.
Ghost in the Shell 2 is, in a lot of ways, copies from the original however the film does a better job in fixing the pacing which can be a little slider-happy in the first movie. the story is, again, a case which grows out of proportion. the animation is fantastic, the festival scene for me is a good example of early CGI rotoscoping. it really reminds me of Paprika in certain ways, which is maybe play a large part in me enjoying the scene and the anime as a whole. people have often said, "the story's [for Innocence] is a bit lacking",…
Read at the sourceephemerry
Like Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, Innocence is much more of a "Mamoru Oshii" film, than it is a "Kōkaku Kidōtai" production. It has all the makings of a Ghost in the Shell story, as far as the theme and setting goes, but the ambience is more idiosyncratic with the sensibilities of the director. Some of the fluid motions are much more advanced than anything I have ever seen in a cell-animated film, it appears much more neoteric than a movie made way back in 2004! And yet, the script gets stuck ankle-deep, in a pile of sludge.
⚠️ This review for Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence will have spoilers ⚠️
—Story/Characters
The way the center of the plot falls through, is like a bowling ball through a damp sheet of paper—it really bothered me! The cinematography, the overall message, and…
Read at the sourceMaskettaSenpai
I have my misgivings about the original Ghost In The Shell film, but the one aspect that is above reproach is its visuals. That film is so gorgeously drawn and animated that it set a high watermark that few films have approached since.
It is an immense disappointment, then, that Oshii's followup is so garishly ugly. The movie is an absolute eyesore, with primitive, unflattering CGI composited alongside stiff 2D animation. The fluidity and expressiveness that defined the original's animation is mostly absent from this entry. It's somewhat baffling, too, considering that the use of CGI elements in Stand Alone Complex was employed to mostly great effect - and often blended in very naturally with the traditionally animated characters and backgrounds.
The ugly, muddy visuals make the movie a…
Read at the sourceDavilane
It's hard to explain to its full extent the pure disappointment and even at times frustration I had watching this movie. It really is hard to believe it was made by the same director, mostly in part to how it lacks almost everything that made the original 1995 movie the classic that it is today.
Where the original arguably shined its brightest was in its brevity. It only had a runtime of 82 minutes, with a pretty short script to boot, but it got across everything it needed to and more in that time span. It had poignant philosophical themes, atmospheric and memorable music, great world building, through dialogue and visual storytelling, as well as some gorgeous animation and action scenes to keep it from feeling stale. Innocence seems to miss almost all of this completely, with decent 2D a…
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