I find any adaptation of Ghost in the Shell hard to follow

Yeah, that's true. Went a lot farther a lot faster.

For anyone still confused as to what they should watch and when, let me break it down for you.

Ghost In The Shell is broken into 3 separate but equally canon continuities. Each continuity is a retelling of the story in it's own way. Think Gundam and it's many incarnations.

1. The Manga. Created in 1991 by Shirow Masamune. This series and it's sequel manga: Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor, and Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, lay out the whole plot and setting of the whole series. It was from the manga that we got...

2. The Mamoru Oshii movies. Ghost In The Shell and Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence. These are Oshii's recreations of specific chapters of the manga. The problem with these movies is that Oshii tries to cram too much of the manga into such a limited amount of time, and he wastes part of the movie just showing off the beautiful Scenery Porn. The plot revolves around certain chapters of the manga that themselves don't even take place in a chronological order. The Puppetmaster storyline doesn't even start until late into the first manga, where-as the rogue android plot from Innocence takes place before it. It's confusing, yet beautiful.

3. Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex was Masamune and Production IG's glorious and successful attempt to turn the series into an animated series. The series has it's own plotlines that don't exist in the manga, but at the same time, the series does a good job of giving Shout Outs and recreations of scenes from the manga. Despite it's technobabble and philosophical views, the series is easier to follow since it takes place in half hour segments. It has a 2nd season called 2nd Gig and a movie after that called Solid State Society (which itself recreates large parts of the 1.5 Human Error Processor manga).

You can view any of these in any order (except for the series, which needs to be watched as I listed,) so long as you remember that none of them have any direct continuity with the other two. They're all separate tellings.

edited 16th Oct '10 11:21:45 PM by DRCEQ

@Tzetze:

I do respect your tastes and all, and I understand that Oshii's movies are excruciatingly slow in that Kubrick-esque way that not everyone likes, but I still find it hard to love you when you say such things...

Things I like: Ghost In The Shell |Serial Experiments Lain |Eden: It's an Endless World! |Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri |Aeon Natum Engel

Eheheh... well, Kubrick's a good analogy, really. Like 2001, I had already seen a more eventful, more in-depth, and less critically respected version before seeing the movie.

I mean, I'd hardly call it bad, it was just egh.

edited 17th Oct '10 2:00:48 PM by Tzetze

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

^Wait what was the more in depth version of 2001 that you saw? You mean the book?

edited 17th Oct '10 2:32:54 PM by ShadowScythe

Yes, I'm using "seen" loosely.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

Fair enough, guess I have to go read the book now. I rather despised the ending to 2001 and while I'd check out 2010 to see what it all meant, enough people have said otherwise about it.

I take it the book makes more sense?

I would say so.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

Yes, the entire series of books makes more sense than 2001, but that doesn't mean it's a bad film.

On-topic: I had more problems following either season of SAC than I did with the mangas or the movies.

edited 17th Oct '10 7:22:31 PM by Willbyr

Are we gonna get a third season considering the second season was roughly based on Human Error Processor? Pretty please please.

Also, when you guys said you find Git S hard to follow, you guys mean the plot, or the themes/general idea of the show?

I'd say all of the above with some episodes.

One nasty example in the first season of GIT:SAC was where one of the sons of Chief Aramaki's old war buddies turns out to be 'possessed' by his father's virtual ghost due to braindiving into his old memory banks too much. As a result, he tries to stage an assasination attempt on the Chinese PM's life, who happens to be visiting a controversial war memorial in Japan (apparently the dad ended up developing some prejudices against the Chinese because of the war, and that memorial was also related to the war... not very clear on that one).

Section 9 catches him just before he carries out the assasination attempt, but the Major notices that he had a bomb hidden on himself, and fails to stop him from detonating — keep in mind, both the Major and the Chinese PM were only a few feet away from the guy.

All of a sudden it flashes to a hospital, where the Major and the boy look perfectly fine; no signs of scarring or explosive trauma at all, and the Major is talking about how the father's "ghost" should fade away with time since the ghost feels that it completed it's task. Then the episode ends.

It took me several viewings to figure out what the Major meant was that she hacked the boy's mind to make him see a successful attack so as to help kill off the ghost personality.

Yeah I know it's long, needed to vent that one since there aren't many active Ghost in the Shell fan forums out there...

edited 26th Oct '10 6:52:24 AM by SgtRicko

Actually, Solid State Society is largely influenced Human-Error Processor. Neither the first or 2nd seasons take specifically from any of the mangas in particular other than recreating scenes from all over them.

Really? This was fairly obvious to me the first time I saw it.

edited 26th Oct '10 8:24:51 AM by DRCEQ

It was fairly obvious to me as well.

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