Back in 1995 at the tender age of 15 I was just getting into
animé, having initially discovered The Guyver and then gorging myself on titles
from my local VHS rental store, I also was reading a monthly magazine by the
name of Manga Mania which was shouting about a new film from the creator of
Appleseed and Dominion Tank Police titled “Ghost in the Shell”. A trailer appeared at the beginning of latest edition of The
Guyver and inside the case was a postcard to order a copy along with a t-shirt,
so I hurriedly sent it away with a postal order to secure myself a copy as soon
as it was released.
The film blew my mind, the stunning combination of
traditional animation with computer graphics to bring to life this world of
augmented humans and amazing technology, centring on an elite spec-ops team known
as “Section 9” lead by cybernetic-human female Major Kusanagi who find
themselves caught up in a hunt for an elusive brain-hacker causing them to
question not only themselves but the world around them. Since then the series has spawned 4 more films with an
upcoming live action version starring Scarlett Johansson coming in 2017, 4
video games and 3 tv series, the latter of which “Arise” is a re-imagining of
the original, focusing on a younger Kusanagi before the formation of Section 9
and this is where Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie comes in.
When a hostage rescue situation goes awry and the Japanese
Prime Minister is assassinated, Kusanagi and her team are tasked by his son to
investigate the murder, soon finding themselves uncovering deep corruption
within the government and hot on the trail of a shadowy broker that bears an
all-too-familiar face. Firstly I must admit despite my love for the first two
films, I was never a fan of the Stand-Alone Complex series that followed nor
the films that spawned from that, mainly because I felt the talking Tachikoma
spider-robots were ridiculous and made the series seem childish, and honestly I
have only seen the first episode of the reimagined series that this film is
based on but that didn’t stop me getting into it.
If you’ve seen anything of Ghost in the Shell before then
you’ll recognise a lot of the main characters especially if you’ve watched any
of Arise, though in my personal opinion even without prior knowledge of the
series the film remains accessible enough to still be enjoyable even if some of
the tech that Motoko and her crew use might not make any sense without a touch
of explanation. The 100 minute runtime flows at a really nice pace with
equal amounts exposition and action, highlights being during the action
sequences when we see the team all showing their individual skills that make
them the well-oiled machine(s) that they are, albeit working together against a
well-armed commando unit or assaulting an enemy stronghold. I did initially find myself comparing this movie to the 1995
original and even though there are a couple of call-backs to it, The New Movie still
has plenty of originality in itself and features some great concepts.
Visually the film looks great but not ground-breaking like
the original, everything is very smoothly animated, all looking very crisp and
clear, but this is to be expected from animation powerhouse Production I.G,
fight sequences move quickly but never do you lose track of who or where people
are, except perhaps when the squad find themselves facing off against a huge
camouflaged battle-walker but then again they can’t see it properly either. Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie is a great addition to the
franchise and from what I hear it ties up a lot of loose ends from the most
recent series, I now in turn want to go back and watch all of Arise in order to
be able to appreciate it that little bit more. As with the original 1995 feature which only
helped fuel my spiral down the anime rabbit hole, anything that will inspire
you to want to watch more, either through the characters or the world they
inhabit, the genre itself or the stories that are told, this film manages to do
the same and that is the sign of a genuinely good animé in my book.
Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie is out now on DVD & Blu-ray