Review of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) by Dylan F — 16 Sep 2010

As a fan of the original movie and the two TV series, I found this movie disappointing. I was expecting the animation style of the series, with the same decent voice acting, interesting (if convoluted) dialogue, multiple complex and well-conceived plot-lines, and some of the trademark amazing cyber-feats of the series characters.

As it turned out, it over-delivered on animation, which is to say it often employed spectacular use of CG. However, everything else was lackluster. The dialogue was fraught with endless quoting of increasingly unchallenging idioms, the plot was neither complex nor very captivating, and there is no English dubbed track for this film.

To make matters worse, the whole thing felt like a short episode from the series stretched out into a feature-length film, making the tempo noticeably slow. The main character, the Major, played only a bit part.

There were a few scenes comprised of showing off amazing cybernetics skills, but, quite surprisingly, these did not have the flair I expected from the series. Batou gets hacked at one point - a truly rare occurrence in the series which thus stretches belief and interest just a tad.

In sum, the show was a moderately-entertaining but utterly unnecessary companion to the other Ghost in the Shell works, acting only as bonus eye-candy.