Review of Ghost in the Shell (1995) by Alec D — 21 Jul 2010

A visually spectacular tale of cyborg cops, set in the future. A quick synopsis: In the future, or 2029, the world is connected by a global electronic network. A network security force dubbed Section 9 is on a mission to arrest what seemed like a hacked known as the Puppet Master. Major Motoko Kusanagi is leading the investigation and she discovers that the puppet Master is effectively hacking human brains and implanting fake memories into them.

This movie has a hella balls to the wall professional plot. The story will have you questioning what is reality and who you actually are, kind of like in The Matrix. In fact on that note the Wachowski brothers actually got a lot of their inspiration for The Matrix from this movie.

The action is another high point. Lots of the gun scenes utilize really cool future technology and they bring you into this future world. I'd even go as far as to say that this movie may have gotten some of it's inspiration from Bladerunner and Robocop.

The definite best thing about Ghost In The Shell is just the beauty of it. How artsy it is makes me want to compare it to a movie like Let The Right One in. It's very tech-noir kind of like The Terminator and Bladerunner again. Just everything looks amazing in this movie the animation is very advanced for it's time. It's like the Avatar of animated 90's movies.

Although this movie is very likable the character development is a little out of whack. There isn't much for the average movie watcher to like about these character's and this causes the average movie-watcher to not care about these characters. This ends up making a few sacrifices that the character's make seem not all that significant in the long run.

For a conclusion this is definitely a beautifully crafted breath-taking tale, but the character's are not developed enough because it's a very short movie. This is a must see for avid anime fans like myself. For all you normal people I'd still say it's worth watching at least once to see the spectacle it is. Re-watchability however is a little low because the characters are not charismatic enough to do anything special with the fucking awesome story.