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Directed by: Mamoru Oshii Starring: Akio Ôtsuka, Atsuko Tanaka The story picks up a while after the first one left off. The Major is still dead/missing and Batou is trying to solve some brutal murders. He picks up a partner and they try and figure out why some "gynoids" or robots created for sexual pleasure are turning against their owners. It is kind of hard to explain in detail because the plot gets really odd towards the end. The animation is incredible. The CGI looks fantastic and the characters drawn into the CGI backgrounds looks really cool. The one major downside to this movie is that it was subtitled. Normally I love a movie to hold true to it's original form, but this was an animated movie. The lips didn't match the dialogue anyway, so, given the right voice actors this could have been better. The reason the subtitles detracted from the movie was that there was a ton of dialogue. Having to read all of the dialogue made me miss out on some incredible artwork because I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the story. I give it a 4 because the artwork was amazing, the story was odd but interesting, but I missed too much of the scenery trying to read what the hell was going on. Also, take into consideration that I am not the world's largest anime fan, so I probably scored it lower than someone who is really into it. RATING: 4 PROS: Amazing animation, interesting mix of CGI and regular animation. Odd but interesting storyline. CONS: subtitled. See review for why this is a con. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347246/
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Sep 20, 2004 15:56
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:56 |
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I'm going to cut and paste from another forum what I wrote. Just saw it. Truly fanstastic how amazing they can make movies look nowadays. But a) you need to be a speed reader to follow the story b) if you're a speed reader it still won't make much sense c) there's more existential philosophizing than if you took 10 FRENCH(!) goths and fed them LSD and sat in a room with them for eight hours. I'm not a huge anime/manga/whatever the gently caress you call it fan. But I enjoyed the first movie more. This one had better graphics, but it was also pretty pretentious. The obscure literature quotes were enough to make a middle school english teacher blush. The only reason it gets a 3 is because of the graphics. But I was a bit annoyed that they had all these fantastic CGI graphics but they still want the characters to look manga. It creates some pretty jarring juxtopositions with these 5 line faces surrounded by trillion polygon backgrounds.
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Sep 20, 2004 22:18
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I thought this movie, although beatiful, was terribly boring. Three of the five people I saw this with were asleep at some point in the movie. The animation was very very good though.
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Sep 21, 2004 01:16
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Copy & Paste from ADTRW, with expanded thoughts: Absolutely loving gorgeous visuals and music. The plot/dialouge... it never seemed all that pretentious to me, mostly due to Togusa/Batou interjecting every now and then to "cut out the philosophical bullshit". The hacker scene in the middle just seemed to ramble on for a bit too long, and I didn't see much of a point in it, even after what was going on was explained. Still, I reccomend it. If for nothing else, it's one of the most beautiful films you'll ever see, anime or otherwise. PROS: A joy to watch and listen to, with gorgeous CGI sequences, incredily fluid animation, and great, epic music. CONS: Between the two major action sequences in the film (Batou shooting up the Yakuza hideout and the boat assault at the end), you'll more than likely find yourself checking your watch and/or wishing they would knock off all this philosophy 'question the nature of man' poo poo. RATING: 4.5/5
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Sep 21, 2004 04:15
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This is by far my favorite anime. Its absolutely beautiful, the cgi and animation was so crisp and realistic that i totally forgot that some of these scenes werent real, it was completely mind blowing. The story is centered around batou and an investigation of a murderous robot which leads to a murder and kidnapping and in turns leads to something much bigger. What set this film apart from being just another mundane pretty anime was its philosophical dialog and ponderings, theres alot of really well thought out dialog between the characters. This is the closest an anime has come to an intelligent art film. Im fairly certain this will put off the anime fanboys which seems like a good thing really. 5/5
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Sep 21, 2004 19:25
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I was expecting a nice balance of action and thought-provoking dialogue, instead it's a rambling philosopical diatribe on the nature of living machines. I nearly fell asleep halfway through. All the story did was give them something to follow while they wax on about trying to have a soul in a technological world. All in all, quite a disappointment. Steamboy was a much more compelling film. 3/5
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Sep 22, 2004 01:08
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I really enjoyed it, except I had some fucker behind me who sounded like he ran a marathon, breath through-out the entire movie. Other than that, the battleship barage was loving sweet!
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Sep 22, 2004 02:30
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Very disappointed with this film, i'm a fan of the first Ghost in the Shell, so naturally I was really looking forward to this sequal. The mix of animation and CGI animation in Ghost in the Shell 2 was beautiful, easily the best looking anime movie ever. But the story line, characters, acting, everything else falls flat on its face. The story makes absolutely no sense, and it is just a bunch of cool looking locations that don't tie into anything. It is like the producers decided to focus all of their time and energy on the animation rather than the story. The little bit of story that you will understand is horribly unoriginal. This whole human/robots thing is so old and over used in Japanese Anime. Anime really needs something fresh. Ghost in the Shell is a classic and set the standard for Anime. Ghost in the Shell 2 was so bad that it has lowered the standard. This movie reminds me how much of a fresh restart anime needs. It badly needs something original. I was really hoping Ghost in the Shell 2 would change that and it didn't. I give it a 2/5 PROS: The best Japanese Animation ever, the mix of CGI and anime is beautiful, and the world is amazing looking and creative. CONS: Everything else about this movie is your typical crapfest of "LETS MAKE NO SENSE AND BE ALL DEEP AND HAVE LOTS OF PHILOPSHY!" anime. Only problem is that this movie isn't deep.
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Sep 22, 2004 04:49
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I loved the movie. I actually liked how slow it was, and the little details in the animation like lifting the dog's ears out of the food bowl. And all the quotes in the dialog actually worked for me, considering that they had an explanation for how these people were able to recall them at will. I think The Matrix really desensitized people to this kind of questioning the nature of one's identity, but to me at least it seems this movie approached it in a more intelligent way than The Matrix did.
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Sep 22, 2004 07:48
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This is a fantastic movie. It was a little slower paced than the first one, but I was into it the entire time. I liked the characters a lot (mostly due to the development in the first movie and the TV series) and it goes without saying that this movie is absolutely beautiful. The lack of action was a bit of a let down, but I was so involved with the plot it didn't bother me that much at all. Ghost in the Shell does an excellent job with the whole "cyborgs living among humans" plot, and in my opnion has been one of the most believable of the genre. This will definately be a movie that I watch multiplae times, just to catch some of the smaller plot details I missed during previous viewings. 4.5/5
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Sep 22, 2004 11:37
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I downloaded it and watched it, up til the hacker scene was over. then i turned it off. The movie was horrendously boring, in the beginning it was fine, up til the shootout at the yakuza scene i thought it was pretty spectacular, but after that they just started inserting minutes of random filler footage. The CGI was beautiful and all, but i dont need 8 minutes of city viewpoints and birds flying, also the random festival scene didnt seem to fit, though it was quite pretty. As stated by most everyone else, beautiful movie, the best CGI film ever done, but as far as story, it's absolute poo. 2/5.
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Sep 22, 2004 18:14
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I really loved the first movie and the series, though I've never read the manga. This movie brought to mind Wonderful Days, that Korean movie that came out some time back. It's gorgeous eyecandy with wonderful visuals and artwork. However, it's the plot that suffers. Unlike the first movie, where the philosophy and the plot of the movie engaged each other, revolved around each other, and support the movie as a whole, Innocence fails to do that. The plot and the philosophy fight each other for airtime so when one is on the bench, the other is standing up and going heavy. There's a lot of quotations in the movie from various philosophers. This detracts from the movie as it gives the viewer a sense that dialogue is neither original nor natural. Point to me a police agency who spend working hours quoting Confucious. The plot doesn't move well either. Batou and Togusa move from their home city to the northern frontier to continue their investigation, meet characters whose origins and purpose have no explanation, take the viewer through a long repeating sequence*, assault a floating fortress with no discernible objectives, and the plot of the movie is revealed at the very end with a fifteen to twenty minute dialogue by a single individual. If anyone ever played the Metal Gear Solid 2, the appearance of Batou's "guardian angel" is akin to Solid Snake appearing within Arsenal Gear. You pray that this beloved character can save the whole movie, but in the end, they just save the only scenes they are in. I'll continue to watch Stand Alone Complex for my fill of Public Security, Section 9. 2/5 *It's not that I hated this sequence, but it left me asking myself, what was the point?
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Sep 22, 2004 21:46
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"ONE CAN PUT A FERRARI BODYKIT ON A PONTIAC FIERO, BUT THE BEAUTIFUL EXTERIOR BELIES A SHITTASTIC INTERIOR" (me) I spent half this movie with my eyes wide open in awe, and the other fully asleep (probably snoring). I wasn’t going in looking for KAWAII girls, explosions, and fanservice, but I was left with a masturbational barrage of quotations that have little to do with the current story, they are just shared between the characters in lieu of meaningful dialogue. It's not that it's "artsy", it's that the dynamics of the movie suck. The majority of the movie is silent, the characters chewing the (gorgeous) scenery and doing nothing much of interest. While I enjoyed the movie, its beauty was hollow and unsatisfying. If I wanted thought-provoking and introspective anime with no "action", I'd watch Grave of the Fireflies. This felt like an intellectual cocktease. It's not that I'm looking for Rambo or anything resembling an action flick here, I just felt that the dynamics left something to be desired. I expect certain movies to have something greater happen, and the scale that was promised in the movie itself was not delivered. The ending fizzled out and didn't match up to the buildup from the rest of the movie. I’m in no way criticizing the animation, just the writing/structure of the flick. Even with the subtitles, the plot of the movie was the equivalent of "yes we are just 'ghosts' in 'shells', ain't it crazy?" Sure, there's a lot of exposition, but it didn’t inspire any greater emotion, or understanding my fellow man. To end on a high note, the CGI made my seven bucks worthwhile. I can't think of the last film I've seen of such visual beauty. 2/5
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Sep 23, 2004 20:49
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Loved it. Even the philosophical/cyberpunk themes. Only two major complaints. 1. Quite difficult to follow. As mentioned, although I normally like subbing it seems like it detracted a bit here since reading the subs would lead to me missing some visuals, or vice versa, and often the dialogue was fairly complicated making it tought to keep up. 2. The ending was a bit of a disappointment. It seemed to me that it wound up being just another case solved. In comparison to the original Ghost in the Shell, it seemed a lot less important or meaningful. The main character essentially ascends into cyberspace in the first movie, but now the new main character simply solves some criminal case. I left feeling it should have been more dramatic. 4.5/5.5
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Sep 25, 2004 02:17
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Beautiful movie; the opening sequence was awesome, and you can tell right off the bat, an amazing amount of detail went into every frame. The story continues following an investigation, and the audience is really drawn into the absolute total meaning of the entire story. Now to appeal to the widest range of viewers you don’t want to get TOO philosophical with the meaning of human spirit, since this tends to alienate a lot of people who either don’t give a poo poo, or just want to see an awesome anime. I did appreciate all of the story line though. The music was very good, it had a mystical feel to it, along with a touch of small detail in sounds through out the film. The ending wasn’t much of an ending to the characters, but more of a close on a chapter. It would definitely be gently caress’n awesome to see another continuation of these films. Rating: 5/5
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Sep 25, 2004 04:22
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This movie is a lot more similar to the Patlabor movies then it is to the first Ghost in the Shell movie. Oshii's influences in this seem to be most people's complaints (misplaced, over the top philosophizing, and lengthy montages / scenary scans), which just felt awkward at points (The scene before they go into the hacker house, where Batou looks up to the sky and spouts a few lines). The good points have been expounded upon pretty well in the other reviews, so in closing I'll just say that this is a very solid, gorgeous movie, that most anime fans will enjoy. 4/5.
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Sep 29, 2004 19:34
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When I heard there was a sequel to the first Ghost in the Shell, I thought, where does this guy get the cojones? To try and make a sequel from an exemplar piece of anime? What kind of moron would do that if they were half as smart as the movies made him out to be? The answer: make another exemplar. I found this perfect in every way -- smart plot which comes together in the end wonderfully, wonderful artwork, wonderful production, great sense of pace. Just excellent. And the best part, for us academic philosophy of technology snobs, is that they have a character named Haraway -- an obvious reference to cyborg-theory creator Donna Haraway. Who, incidentally, has been lately writing on dogs -- dogs are man's link back to nature, away from the overly technological, they stand in stark contrast to the cyborgs, the man-machine mix; ideas which are clearly referenced in the film! Really, what other films make reference to intellectual works like that -- much less anime? That's pretty awesome. If you thought the dolls were creepy and interesting, check out the work of Hans Belmer, which was clearly the inspiration for them. Belmer's dolls represented both his deep erotic feelings as well as the disconnectedness and dehumanization he felt while working under the early years of the Hitler regime. It works perfectly for this film as well. 5/5 I hate to be snooty (or do I?), but for all of the griping about the plot in here, I think that most of you guys just didn't get it (though in my opinion it wasn't that hard to get). If you watched the movie and thought, "what is all this philosophical mumbo jumbo?" or "what's going on?" or "gosh they sure have a lot of 'filler' sequences with no meaning!" then you probably should watch it again, maybe you'll understand more the second time. I didn't see anything that was totally extraneous or confusing by the end of it, it was actually a pretty coherent plot for anime in my opinion. The odds are it is a problem with you and not the film if you were left clueless, I'm sorry to have to say, because it's not a very pleasant assessment. i_am_the_hydra fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Oct 4, 2004 |
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Oct 3, 2004 04:59
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I found it to be the most stunning anime I have ever seen visually. However the plot fell flat on its face. Going into this I excpected, and looked forward to a very heady piece of anime that was going to make me think, and as usual, ponder the nature of the human mind. However the writers I think tried to make the plot so incoherent and so heady that it just seemed like a mishmash of profound statements, rather than one coherent message. Plus it was a little bit boring, but the Battou tearing up the yakuza hideout, and the naked robot battle at the end were neat. 3.5/5
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Oct 10, 2004 19:56
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