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Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

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Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#171

Post by mmaniac »

hdt91 wrote: post #70

I'm seeing quite a few recommendations for good shows in the comments, under an article about GITS and Mamoru Oshii, but surprisingly no one has brought up the two other fairly well-known (?) works: Angel's Egg and Urusei Yatsura 2. The first one just got the news about a 4k upgrade next year and first time Western release, while the other has few reasons to be a stand-alone movie of the same manga besides the main c…

I'm a fan of most of Oshii's work, and Angel's Egg is a particular favourite, but it's not hard to see why it's rarely recommended. The film has very little narrative and it leans heavily on visual symbolism.

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#172

Post by downrightmike »

bellboy_tech wrote: post #69

GITS is amazing as a design universe. The more you dig into the manga or movies (even the SACs) the deeper you get sucked in to what could be. From the vision of mind interfaces to the dream of mind across the net. It was WAY ahead of it's time and still stands up today. Every crevasse of the original Manga contains deep thought out design on what digital life could become. What constructs we become once we crossed t…

If you want a deeper look into the worlds of Anime at the time, I recommend: Anime Architecture : Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities, Hardcover https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/anime-architecture-...

Its a really cool book

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#173

Post by thfuran »

jajko wrote: post #122
maxglute wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>director reached for something deep, couldn't get ahold of it Translation/writing/dub wasn't very strong at the time, I can see how ppl feel now (and felt at the time) the headiness/philosophizng was filler for robot tanks and augment porn, but it was all there in the source manga by Shirow. IMO reaching for something deep about is what the series is all about, just explored more competently in shows like SAC where…

To watch some classic in anything but original language is proper insult to the source and always subpar experience. Would you watch say Bicycle thieves with some yeager-speak variant too? I know 0 japanese but never ever watched any of their produce in anything but japanese with eng subs. Even though EN is not my primary language but one I grok easily without subs needed. Sure, people are lazy and have tons of excus…

But the English subs are the translation. You're going to need to learn Japanese to experience it in the original language.

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#174

Post by runamuck »

duggan wrote: post #13
djaouen wrote: post #5

Ahh, anime's heyday. I remember borrowing Samurai Champloo on VHS from my friend around that time when I was in high school... good times!

Champloo came out in 2004, wasn’t VHS a distant memory by then, or was I just “living in the future”? :) Sure you’re not thinking of Cowboy Bebop?

Disney released "Cars" on VHS in 2006. (The last big studio VHS release)

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#176

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

nicolas_t wrote: post #155
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hadn't seen Now and Then, Here and There, or Twelve Kingdoms, or read Red River, then maybe it'd seem fresh and interesting, but I dropped Re:Zero pretty early. Good genre fiction still has something to say about the real world, and Re:Zero felt like it was trying so hard to subvert genre expectations set by other fiction that it forgot that.

Ok, as someone who both loved Now and Then, Here and There and Twelve Kingdoms, I want some recommendations from you :) Those two series were really great. But I do agree with you, they were great because they actually had something to say about the real world.

There's not a lot else like them in anime, so none of the shows I'm about to list are good for the same reasons that those two were good.

Shinsekai Yori was great, and a rare case of high-effort worldbuilding that actually delivers on its premise. Highly spoilable.

If Akiba Maid Sensou is not my anime-of-the-decade for this decade, I will be very surprised, but it assumes you understand both yakuza culture and maid cafe culture and I'm not sure what someone who doesn't would get out of it.

Hana to Alice, Satsujin Jiken might not even be anime, since it relies extremely heavily on 1:1 rotoscoping, but it is short and doesn't really look like anything else.

Gankutsuou also gets a ton of points for being visually distinctive, and (at least at the time of release, maybe that's not true anymore) being the most faithful adaptation of Dumas' original to video despite casting a blue-skinned space vampire as the Count.

Princess Tutu is a fantastic use of popular ballet as a framing device that was doing the whole 'meta-narrative' thing long before it was cool.

Mononoke (not the Ghibli film Mononoke-hime) is a good-looking take on the classic supernatural detective genre.

Id:Invaded is also a supernatural detective story, which manages to be entertainingly audacious without ever really feeling like it was just going for cheap shock value.

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#177

Post by duggan »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #138
duggan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Champloo came out in 2004, wasn’t VHS a distant memory by then, or was I just “living in the future”? :) Sure you’re not thinking of Cowboy Bebop?

[not the OP] I find it quite amusing what many people (including myself sometimes) have a pretty blurry memory about when we moved from VHS. But I think it mostly contributes on what for some people VHS were a dominant media for quite a while, because they didn't had the means to see the digital media. It's easier to understand what the first [commercially] successful DVD player was PlayStation 2, which became availa…

This is fascinating, and yeah, since I was a teenager around then, VHS probably just became ancient history as soon as I could play DVDs.

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#178

Post by lowbloodsugar »

kagakuninja wrote: post #55
rekabis wrote: post #35

The author fails in their understanding of Animé’s history in North America. While certain series such as The White Lion, Astroboy, Space Battleship Yamato (marketed over here as Starblazors) and Captain Harlock did see airtime first, it was Robotech - the Harmony Gold Frankenstein of three completely unrelated Animé series - that kicked off the process in 1984. It was Robotech that threw rocket fuel onto the burning…

As a member of the underground anime scene, starting in the late 70s, I have a different perspective. Harmony Gold did nothing to actually promote anime, beyond hyping their own products. Robotech was the English translated anime that happened to be on air in the US when the necessary conditions for the anime explosion were in place. Those conditions were: Affordable VCRs (in the 70s, they cost as much as a small car…

What they did with “Battle of the Planets” o_0

Re: Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

#180

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

nanna wrote: post #4

I feel like I haven't seen an anime in years that's been in the same league as Akira or the great Miyazakis (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Totoro). Yes i'd be brutal and include Miyazakis following works in that list, from Howls Moving Castle to The Boy and the Heron. Ive seen lots of incredible animation, sure, but nothing like the cinematic depth. What am I missing? What should an old fart who's becoming convin…

I strongly recommend Wolf Children. It's on par with Miyazaki's best. A really moving and heartwarming film.

On the flipside of the spectrum, Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World are excellent but tragic WW2 films told from the Japanese civilian perspective. Grave of the Fireflies in particular is a difficult watch, but worth seeing once.

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