I mentioned Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 in my last post. I just finished watching the first season, so I thought I’d write a little blog post about it.
It’s an enjoyable enough series, but it definitely has a lot of flaws. The animation is pretty bad CG work, so it looks more like a video game than a real anime show. The script seems pretty clunky at times too. I’m not sure if that’s bad writing, or bad translation, or some combination. The original (English language) voice cast from SAC is back for this, so that’s the one saving grace. They did a good job on the original SAC series, and they do well here too, though sometimes they don’t have much to work with. The story is all over the place, but there are some interesting ideas in it. It’s definitely more ambitious than it needs to be. (I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.) There’s a tie-in with Orwell’s 1984 that comes up at one point, though we don’t really see that play out.
The season ends on a cliffhanger. I’m pretty sure that a second season is in the works, and I’ll be interested to see where they go with this. I kind of hope they wrap things up in season 2, though. I don’t really want to see more of this CG version of the GITS story.
It occurs to me that I’ve been watching/reading GITS stuff for quite a while now. I mentioned the second season of SAC back in 2008, and the Arise series in 2017. I’m not sure when I first saw the first movie, or read any of the comics. I wasn’t keeping track of things back then, the way I do now.
Anyway, I have a lot more anime to watch. I guess that’s a recurring theme on this blog. I’m a little interested in Demon Slayer right now, since the new movie has gotten a lot of good press and was wildly popular when it came out in Japan last year. It’s not really a standalone movie, though, so I guess I’d need to watch the TV series first (which is streaming on Netflix right now). The NY Times has an article explaining all this. I probably shouldn’t jump into another new show like this right now though. I have way too much TV to watch. (And books to read, and comics to read, and so on. Which is another recurring theme on this blog…)