Ghost In The Shell (1995) ****

I don't claim to have any great knowledge of anime. I saw a handful of them in my early teens—titles like Vampire Hunter D (1985) (review), Fist Of The North Star (1986) (review), Wicked City (1987), Robot Carnival (1987) and, of course, the most famous one (and my personal favorite)—Akira (1988) (review). Since its release I’ve been aware of Ghost In the Shell (1995) by name and that, along with Akira, it was considered one of the more introspective and impressive anime titles, but I had never seen it. Well I finally remedied that glaring omission in my film viewing.

While a lot of anime tends to be sensationalistic, overly preoccupied with gory violence, and a bit pervy/male gazey—GITS, while it certainly appears to have traces of the latter on the surface, raises a lot of interesting questions about what it means to be both a human and a "being". The film is widely known for being hugely influential to the Wachowskis when they made The Matrix (1999) and it shows. GITS successfully pulls together cyberpunk and tech-noir elements from films such as Blade Runner (1982) (review), RoboCop (1987) (review) and La Femme Nikita (1990), and even seems to predate Westworld (2016–current) in some of the imagery and themes presented.

I found GITS to be a beautiful blend of what many of us look for in a film, animated or not—gorgeous cinematic shots, philosophical thought, exciting action, and affecting music and sound design. I haven't seen the 2017 live-action adaptation (I've heard more negative than positive things but I am still curious), but it's interesting how stories of this nature generally work better in animated form for me. Somehow the combination of big concepts with minimal backstory, as in GITS, tend to feel pretentious when human beings act them out, and yet the same story told with colors and lines on paper keeps me more engaged. It's especially curious given the particular film in discussion and the implications that holds.