Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
bergars
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 sourceNervin
There is an abundance of American procedural cop shows nowadays in which most basically develop, or proceed, in the same manner with no real change either structural-wise or its characters, which may leave some viewers with no real impact. Then there is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which manages to create a much more intriguing story by having its setting in a cyberpunk future where complete mechanization of the human body has become a reality, and associated with it, crimes. Furthermore, world building is done magnificently through the numerous stand alone episodes. However, as I am no fan of this type of show, there were some issues at a personal level, which I will try to depict in this review.
~Story~
The story of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, or GitS in short…
Read at the sourceCauthan
(This is a spoiler-free review adapted for this site)
[Synopsis]: In the year 2030 cyborgs as well as the use of prosthetic bodies are common and humanity has become integrated in ways it has never been before. In this technological world, Section 9, a secretive special-ops force, works to solve various crimes. Headed by Chief Aramaki Daisuke (Saka, Osamu) and Major Kusanagi Motoko (Tanaka, Atsuko) the team investigates a variety of cases as well as the mysterious Laughing Man incident involving a renowned hacker of formidable skill and possible government corruption. The show invests itself in a myriad of different cases throughout and divides the episodes that focus on the Laughing Man incident (Complex) and those that focus on more self-contained stories (Stand Alone).
[Characters]:…
Read at the sourcerenegadeviking
Fans of the films might be disappointed. But Stand Alone Complex lives by it's title. Its stands alone from the original movies. But what makes SAC so much more entertaining is the fact it's a series.
In this form GITS becomes more like the manga it was inspired from. Sure there isn't a Puppet Master plot, but now we get to see the inner workings of Section 9 and the role they play in this cybernetic future where the line between the real world and the digital one is too closely blurred.
Everything about this series is top notch. The story's are written in classic science fiction form. The 3-D animation is near flawless. And of course the biggest praise has to be the soundtrack.
But mostly the characters bring out the most in this show. Everyone knows Motoko. But Batou is her complete o…
Read at the sourceFleure
The relationship between man and machine is one often fantasized by artistes in diverse mediums. It’s a subject matter that fully intrigues and it's not hard to deduce why: it parallels heavily with our own society. The unwavering quench to advance collective technologies and the relative dependency on machines has drastically grown with the ages. Authors, artists, social critics, and scholars from all walks of life have adopted this framework and produced some of the most imaginative works that not only entertain, but step beyond the fictional realm to perhaps foreshadow a similar tomorrow not too far away…
One such examination is the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (GitS) series. Revitalizing the cyberpunk genre and honing in on various veins of society, GitS is a series that re…
Read at the sourcektulu007
I've talked about Ghost in the Shell before. Both the first and second films. Now, it's time to look at the television installments, or at least one of them. Stand Alone Complex ran for a full year, from October 2002 to October 2003. So, it was released after the first film but before the second. Like the films, it was handled by Production I.G. It was written and directed by Kamiyama Kenji, who was not involved with either the first film or Innocence. What's his take on the material? Let's take a look and find out.
Story:
Our tale opens with a hostage situation in an android geisha house. The Japanese foreign minister is among the hostages, because of course that's the most likely place to find a politician. That isn't even me being facetious. Show me a high class sex work establishment…
Read at the sourcebellellis
Previous to watching this, I had seen the famous Ghost in the Shell film from the 90s, as well as its sequel, several times. Not because I liked them though. Rather, due to my lack of willingness to accept that I truly did not like a lauded combination of philosophy, anime and cyberpunk; three things which I'm very fond of. It didn't make any sense. Despite some interesting, and obviously influential visuals, as well as some nice actions scenes, it seemed to me too much like the worst of European art films. It was unnecessarily slowly paced, and constantly making meaningless references to literature and philosophy which it went nowhere with. Stand-Alone Complex has been criticized for not being as deep as the movies. I would argue the opposite. It's not as shallow.
For the most part, what…
Read at the sourceNachteule
I once read that war is supposedly the most efficient way of pushing technology on a higher level. This doesn't seem to be too untrue in the universe of Ghost in the Shell since it already has four world wars in total behind itself - one being a nuclear one; hence the technology within itself has sky-rocketed to incredible dimensions.
The line between man and machine gets blurrier with each day and if Ghost in the Shell is popular for something that is not being a stellar piece of cyber-punk it is for the question what even makes us human. Broken body-parts can be just replaced by nano-technology, whole minds can be stored on external devices called "cyber-brains" basically replacing a "broken" and error prone human brain, whole bodies can be switched in literally almost an instant. But t…
Read at the sourceRakiRaki
My view of anime, broadly speaking, might be called hopeless. I don't expect great things from the medium, and I am rarely given any reason to. Despite the insistence of the Anime News Network types, I don't think anime is particularly exceptional in the scope of its content, thematically or otherwise, and so the notion that these abstract forces ("moe," "loli," "otaku pandering," etc.) could ruin the entire medium borders on the absurd. Much of anime is very much genre fiction, and replacing one set of generic conventions and tropes with another is progress, if anything. With that said, I have no problem with good genre shows, and I personally prefer the so-called moe genre to mecha and action—it is what got me into anime in the first place, after all. There are occasions, though, when th…
Read at the sourceNotenSMSK
Everyone has their choice which are to be respected but to critique or review means to consider from an unbiased and logical point of view. Thus, due to my affiliation with the original movies and the characters, I would give it a 10 but if considered technically, there are things to be mentioned. Slight as they are, they will be mentioned. This review contains some spoilers.
Story:
GiTS is a combination of a major plot complimented by what seem like sub plots but they combine - not all of them - to produce a grand finale. This is an interesting but risky approach - fillers appearing every second episode can easily affect the pace of the viewer and annoy him. That is gladly not the case with GiTS - its fillers are not exceedingly boring.
The story is about a Super A-Class Hacker that sur…
Read at the sourceGonzyChan
Science Fiction has come a long way from stories involving the unknown reaches of space by the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to stories that draw social implications of our society from famed authors George Orwell and Phillip K. Dick. There is little doubt that anime productions have tackled a lot beneath the limits of the genre ranging from Space Opera to Cyberpunk. One series that is often considered one of the most popular in the anime Sci-fi genre is Ghost in the Shell. After the movie's success, directed by celebrated director Mamoru Oshii, we now have Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, but this time without Mamoru Oshii involved with the production. Considering how well Oshii directed Ghost in the Shell, people were skeptical about whether Stand Alone Complex could get th…
Read at the sourceUncannyDoom
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex had long been one of those anime I always heard about and knew about. It seems the reception is nothing but varying positives and even though it came out years ago, I never got around to it when I really should have. But now that the time finally came and went, I have to say, better late than never.
Stand Alone Complex, despite being nearly a decade old, still holds up as a fantastic anime today. It follows an episode structure that I find to be masterful when done correctly, which is involving a main plot combined with not really filler, but not really character building stand alone episodes peppered into the series. The result is an extremely plot-driven anime, regardless of whether or not it's the main plot or a side one.
Story - 9/10
Between t…
Read at the sourceggultra2764
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a title I never had a chance at seeing in its entirety during its run on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block and being on a Netflix subscription, I decided to rent the series throughout this month. And for a sci-fi action title, the series tackles a lot throughout its 26 episode run and impressed me heavily for the complexity of its storyline and looking into the future world that it takes place in.
But before I get to those, I want to compliment on the characters for this series. One of my biggest beefs with the movie adaptations of Ghost in the Shell was that the characters appeared to be lifeless and lacking in personality thus making it tough to relate to them. Here in Stand Alone Complex, the characters do display a decent amount of personal…
Read at the sourceno_forehead
There are several things I don't appreciate in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
Spoilers included by necessity:
I found it really disappointig that the final solutions to the main mysteries didn't actually have anything to do with the technology of GITS's world like would have expected. Why not explore the chance that, for example, the EXACT replicability of things electronic input/output to brain allows could result in different minds processing the raw thoughts to a same conclusion as the results of human minds being at some level identical? Instead the "copies without original" were explained through memetics, despite the fact that the concept of memes doesn't have much to do with random people deciding to do the same thing randomly after witnessing some event.
This reminds m…
Read at the sourceGR3YF0X
What? Ghost in the Shell.... only 6 reviews? Indeed?
We're speaking of the anime of the most famous movie that was ever created since humanity.
First of all, the anime looks like a typical plot: The future with robots and technologie. It may be a mainstream story that was used in other anime. This time we're in Tokio. Thing's didn't change. There are just robots and people with cyberbrains. There are no galaxys with aliens etc.
As you can read, the story is about a group called 'Sction 9'. They do their job but later, they have to deal with a hacker. Not a normal hacker, a pro. That's all you have to know since it's the mainstory. The story is divided in 'Stand Alone' episodes and 'Complex' episodes. The SAep's tell story's about the section 9, about the protagonists. The Cep's tell the…
Read at the sourceArchaeon
Many anime fans consider the 1995 movie "Ghost in the Shell" to be a classic of the first order so when the Stand Alone Complex series was released six years later, many were sceptical as to how good it would actually be (and I will admit to being one of those people). Production I.G. managed to put everyone's fears to rest though, just not in the way we all expected (I'll explain in a bit).
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a series that really doesn't need any introduction. The original movie proposed a disturbingly plausible future for mankind that is akin to the work of Philip K Dick and William Gibson. The series however, deviates from the movie's premise in a number of ways, some of which are not obvious at first, partly because of how the series is laid out.
SAC isn't a s…
Read at the sourcemotoko09
Being myself a fan of this masterpiece made by Shirow Masamune, I can't find the words to tell you how much I enjoyed watching this wonderful series.
The story revolve primarily on the human obsession with technology and the changes he has made to be able to fight against diseases and how this resolution made him a slave of the technology itself.
The art design is extremely well done, and the mecha design is beyond excellent.
What was a surprise for me, was the characters, I don't know how, but the mangaka gave them a strange a strong personality especially the major Motoko Kusanagi ... it's like they are real people who exist.
I'd never get enough from watching this serie over and over again, the 1st gig was a huge hit in the world of animation and it showed how the human can be very…
Read at the sourceklemon_qhap
I haven't written any reviews for any anime so this may be a bit rocky. -.-
Story:
Stand Alone Complex is definetly not your normal anime. Just the name should give away the fact that this is a different kind of anime. What i have to say about the story of Ghost in the Shell is that it is really confusing. If you are looking for an anime that you can sleep through then keep looking because even if you are able to read the subs (i like to watch only subbed anime =) then there is still a high possibility that you won't get what's going on. The reason I didn't give GITS a high score in the story category was mainly because the plot wasn't steady as it should have been. I actually didn't even know what the plot was until the very end of the show. Instead what i got was a bunch of random episo…
Read at the sourceQwerkzy
The first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is absolutely brilliant. For those who are not familiar with this series, it's a spinoff of the 1995 movie Ghost in the Shell, which has influenced many directors, not least of which are the Wachowski brothers who later created The Matrix.
Cyberpunk anime is relatively rare, and in this chest of obscure goods, Stand Alone Complex arguably shines the brightest.
The main storyline, which follows The Laughing Man incident (per the Review Guidelines, I'm not going to elaborate on the plot details, if you really want them, see Wikipedia), is a gripping thrill ride through the dark underbelly of a fully cyberized society. The series explores a host of typical cyberpunk scenarios, ranging from sensory perception espionage to corporate…
Read at the sourceamaity
The 'Ghost in the Shell' movie was already a ground-breaking anime, inspiring such works as 'The Matrix' and 'Animatrix'; the TV series just takes it one step further.
Unlike the movie, the TV series focuses on Section 9 and their exploits rather than the deep philosophical quandaries presented in the movie. The over-arching storyline of "The Laughing Man" leaves you flabbergasted as it unfolds like a cherry blossom. Conspiracy and intrigue are the main strengths of the story where nothing is quite as it seems. Perhaps the only flaw are some of the convoluted dialogue that might put off someone who's looking for a typical no questions asked, "wham bam, thank you ma'am" kind of action anime. GiTS will make you think and recollect the minutest of details. The anime demands your full concen…
Read at the source