\'Even if you hated the Matrix and just enjoy good anime or films it\'s worth watching.\'
I don\'t see how. If this film is the predecessor to the Matrix, (which it is,) then by all accounts, if you hated the Matrix, then you\'re probably going to hate Ghost in the Shell, maybe even more so. And I can certainly say that it was the case for me. :P
Hardly. The dialog's so riddled with purple prose that it often comes across as the writer trying too hard to sound deep and philosophical. It literally put me to sleep.
Contrast that with the dialog in either of the Patlabor films, or the series in general, and you'll notice a huge difference. There, the characters sound believable, 'cuz the dialog focused on the day-to-day concerns (at that time) of modern Japan. It was actually hard for me to believe they were both directed by Oshii.
For as much as people praise Ghost in the Shell, I've always felt that Patlabor was the better film and series.
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A landmark film that does for anime what The Matrix does for films.
Ghost In The Shell is the 1995 film adaptation of the manga written by Shirow Masamune, revolving around Motoko Kusanagi, a member of the computer crimes unit Section 9. Kusanagi was turned into a cyborg, her human ghost inhabiting this cyborg shell, and she is assigned to track down a hacker known as the Puppet Master while she begins to question her own humanity.
Most people would be familiar with anime when this film was released. They might remember Astro Boy or Robotech that had a lot of Japan's signature philosophy and style. This film however is one of the first undiluted looks at anime and it works really well. It hits just the right darkness and depth without it going over the top or becoming too depressing and confusing.
The art style paints Tokyo as a gritty, washed out urban landscape that realistically captures the tone of the setting and the film as a whole. The character designs help sell this, with realistic humans and cyborgs rather than something cheesy or exaggerated. And the portrayal of a strong female protagonist is refreshing, there are a few eye candy shots but particularly when Batou looks away from her stripping it serves to further emphasize the psycho monosyllabic human cyborg dynamic rather than potential rape victim.
The music is edgy, subtle and perfectly sets the mood of each scene. Music is actually rather minimalistic, and to Mamoru Oshii's credit he saw no need to add in hard western rock like other anime of the time did. For the most part the voice acting is good, decent, and thankfully lacking in Narm. The characters sound believable and are not hackneyed like earlier anime.
There are two downsides to the film however, minor ones. The first is the film can get a little too clever at times. Like the first Metal Gear Solid it steps just to the point of showing off, though not to the point where it will turn off viewers. That leads into the second fault: this is a complex film. If you picked this up after watching, say, the Street Fighter anime then it will take several rewatches to fully understand it.
The Wachowskis cite this as an influence and it shows. If you enjoyed The Matrix check it out. Even if you hated the Matrix and just enjoy good anime or films it's worth watching. And on a final note, do you think Kusanagi and Rei Ayanami know each other?