Writer: Kazunori Itō
Studio: Production IG, Bandai Visual, Manga Entertainment
Watched on 13/06/20
***SPOILERS***
Watched on 13/06/20
***SPOILERS***
Absolutely scrumptious animation.
I seem to say this a lot about 90s anime but Ghost in the Shell isn't so much a story as it is a hollow vessel used to carry the audience through passage after passage of gorgeous animation. Where this is truest is in the film's fight scenes. Action sequences are pretty inconsequential and often involve unimportant characters but they are so damn fun to watch. They're also great examples of how great 'animation' can simply just be great directing and choreography. Fights are really well framed, the camera cuts keep you perfectly orientated and the actual combat itself is equal parts beautiful, brutal and believable. I'd call this great action directing but would struggle to give more than a 7 for 'storytelling' overall because, again, there isn't much of a story. But just coupling that great staging and great articulation with the film's fantastic traditional animation and there's no wondering why GitS became the anime classic that it is.
Has to be said that shortcuts were taken when it came to animating dialogue. You get a lot of the still-body-moving-jaw approach to speech, instead of full on Milt Kahl style character acting. It's disappointing but definitely forgivable when every other detail is so good, like the machinery and guns, which were all hand-drawn (or at least kept the hand-drawn look). The art itself underpins all of this. Very few examples of off-the-shelf symbols for facial features - most of them are unique and suit the faces of the characters they're on. Although characters are a definite weak point of the film.
So the main character is female, which is pretty cool, I guess. But there are literally zero other female characters. That's just poor. To add to that, the characters are all quite boring, single-dimensional cliches. There would honestly be nothing good to say about them if they weren't so bloody cool. There's definitely next to no character development as well. Character design is meh. Just a last point on women in this film (no need for a Bechdel test), there was far too much time spent with unnecessary shots of naked breasts on screen. Kusanagi even leads into so many motions with her chest just to make the 'fan service' as unmissable as possible. I'd even say it's done to such an extent it geneuinely detracts from the viewing experience.
Overall, the film is cool as hell and most viewers would enjoy it just for that. Again, the plot is pretty weak (and a bit confusing even) but you get enough of everything else for that not to matter. It's an absolute disgrace that they remade this film in live action because that essentially takes away everything that's good about it.
