Ghost in the Shell 2 is widely considered to be one of the best Anime films ever made. It is the sequel to (take a wild guess...)
Ghost in the Shell. That film was released in 1995, nearly a decade before the sequel, though it was directed by the same man, and based on the same ongoing manga (comic book). Both films are very cerebral and intellectual, and both cover similar ground in their philosophy. This can be to their detriment, with far more words than action, but if you enjoy the words, that's not a problem.
To the scores.
Ghost in the Shell 2, 2004
Script/Story: 7
Characters: 6
Combat Realism: 9
Humor: 4
Horror: 3
Eye Candy: 9
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 6
Overall: 8
Both Ghost in the Shell films are set around 2030, in Tokyo. They both star anti-terrorist police officers as they battle crime and debate philosophy, in a futuristic world full of incredible technology, humans covered in cyborg implants, wielding new weapons, and dealing with incredible computer technology of all kinds.
In the first film, Bateau, a male human detective and Major, his female cyborg partner, chase down various bad guys while engaging in long, poetic and philosophic debates about what it means to be human, what are souls (the ghosts referred to in the title), do machines have ghosts, and where does the human end and the machine begin in cyborgs. The sequel is set three years later, and in it the Major no longer has human form. She has vanished entirely into the matrix of machines, and her former partner is still carrying on, while various injuries turn him more and more cyborg himself.
Both films are marked by incredible visual styles, but with the sequel being made 9 years later, it of course has much more technology. The visuals are frequently amazing, blending 3D computer generated art with traditional 2D characters in almost every scene. It looks odd at first; the flat hand drawn figures on top of the sharper 3D, but I got used to it quickly, and began to enjoy it. It's very well-blended; the 2D humans are drawn with lots of shading and depth, and the 3D is done expertly, with fuzzy textures and rounding; it's not the old, low-tech style where everything is hard and angular and sharp.
For example; the woman (doll, actually) is 2D art on top of the 3D CG background, but the style makes them mesh nicely. To my eye, after seeing the full film, at least.
The film is just chock full of awesome visuals, from incredibly-detailed background textures with thousands of individual moving humans or lights, to eye-popping and surreal 3D scenes, with flocks of glowing birds, or elephants made largely of neon lights. It's impossible to describe with words, so check out some examples. Here's
a decent gallery, though all of these shots look much better full size on your TV, especially because they are made up of moving parts.
This one, and
this one, for instance, both come from an incredible street parade sequence, and if not for the fact that it's far more vivid and visually-impressive than any real world event could be, you might think it video footage, rather than completely CG. All of the floats are made up of moving pieces, all of the people in the crowd are moving individually, the confetti is falling, etc.
The DVD itself is
quite reviled (due to the ridiculous subtitles and lack of extras), and for good reason, but in the one and only bonus feature, a short documentary on the making of
GitS2, one of the 3D artists talks about the work they had to put in on the film. Two short scenes take place in a corner store, and the director insisted that they map and plot and create every single item on every single shelf in the entire store. They couldn't just texture map a wall of boxes; they had to actually animate and plot the locations of every single individual box of dog food, and can of soda, and stick of beef jerky, etc.
That level of obsessive detail pays off when there's a shoot out in the store and half the shelves fall over, spilling their items in every direction. The physics are glorious; the random spray patterns of broken glass, the way the boxes fall at different rates and in different directions while bouncing off each other, etc. I didn't give this film a 9 in Eye Candy for nothing.
As for the plot and the philosophy... it basically worked for me. The movie is intelligent and full of quotes from classical literature, and they're worked in nicely. It's surprising that they do; quite often the two lead characters, both cops, simply
quote proverbs at each other. It would seem ridiculously pretentious in almost any live action film, but somehow it works here.
It's funny, since I saw
Ghost in the Shell 1 years and years ago, and I didn't like it at all. I liked the visuals and the infrequent action scenes, but thought the 90% of the film that was talking with pretty scenery was boring, I didn't get into the philosophy at all. I hardly remember it at this point, but my main recollections are endless scenes of the Major slowly pulling on body armor while spouting off about ghosts and machines and artificial consciousness while I just wanted them to get to the damn action.
My reaction aside, most people hold Ghost 1 as a true Anime masterpiece. I haven't seen it since, so I don't know if it would work for me now, or if Ghost 2 was truly different and better. At the time I saw Ghost 1 I knew nothing about it, and had recently seen and absolutely loved the action-packed Ninja Scroll. So I went into Ghost 1 hoping for and expecting more along those lines, and when it was very different; 90 minutes of philosophical talk and 10 minutes of action, of course I was disappointed. I'll have to watch it again at some point now, since I enjoyed the sequel so much.
You don't need any experience with the first film to enjoy this sequel though; Malaya liked it a lot and she's not a big Anime fan and had never seen a second of the first film.
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