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Ghost in the Shell 2, 2004 |
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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. 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. |
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| Originally posted in the update March 6, 2006. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
