 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | MANGA ENTERTAINMENT | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH AND JAPANESE DD 5.1 / 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 660 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | 13 UP | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 10/14/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 10/13/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | HOLLY ELLINGWOOD |
SYNOPSIS:
The year is 2030 and six years have passed since a criminal known only as “The Laughing Man” swept through top of cyber-terrorism, kidnapping, extortion, and corporate espionage leaving no known suspects. New information is revealed to Japan’s top homeland security force, drawing Major Kusanagi and Section 9 into the hunt for a suspect capable of hacking the eyes of every operative, obscuring all details of his appearance and leaving behind a trail of copycats and hacked cyborg citizens. Who is The Laughing Man? What are his motives? And how do you catch a criminal that you cannot see? Join the beautiful cyborg Motoko Kusanagi in a world of high technology and deadly conspiracies as she searches for the answers to these questions more! Contains the complete first season, all 26 episodes on 7 DVDs.
REVIEW:
The entire season of the Laughing Man and Kusanagi on the case in the dare I say affordable and space saving Anime Legends box set is suh-weet! This is one of my all time favorite anime. I’m sure it is for many. And if you didn’t get a chance to pick it up when it first came out then here is the perfect opportunity. Anime Legends collections are legendary for both economical pricing and being in those mercifully compact cases that hold all the discs. But on to the anime itself…! Ghost in the Shell is synonymous with mesmeric action, provocative politics, and awe inspiring animation. The show starts off with the return of an assassin thought dead. Now the entire crew of Section 9 is trying to fathom the unfathomable Laughing Man. No one knows who the criminal is or even what. Man or machine? And what is his agenda? It threatens the highest echelons of power. And when the Section 9 gang gets too close, the government strikes back! The team is forced to go underground. The closer they get to the truth, the closer they get to getting their ticket punched! And no one is hotter on the heels of the Man than Major Kusanagi. It’s a truth buried under years of lies, backroom bargains and betrayals. And Kusanagi is about to find herself in the middle of it! It’s action and intrigue by the ton! And the layers! The writing is jaw dropping and you can watch this anime again and again and discover something new in the story. There’s stuff about Kusanagi’s background, there’s some stuff on Batou, there’s a series of physical maladies that seem a lot like a cybernetic version of Alzheimer that’s tied into all of this, and of course there are those irresistible Tachikomas. There are two awesome and completely stand out scenes in the anime that took my breath away. The first is when Kusanagi is getting herself pounded by an officer in an armored suit and fights back and then some. The other has to do with those loveable A.I. tanks. The Tachikomas have a lot to do with the season and the question of what does it mean to have a soul and what is sentience? When they come to Batou’s rescue, I think the show offers an answer in a big time emotional scene that could even bring a tear to the eye of a tank. The end of the show when it happens will leave you pondering for weeks. You’ll have group sessions with your other pals trying to unravel it all. That’s a testament to the incredible writing of the show. It is seriously deep and will make you think. The animation is done by the same production house (Production I.G.) that did the movie. And that’s exactly how the anime plays out – like one can’t-tear-myself-away movie. Except that it’s broken up into 26 eps. The quality of the animation…priceless! It is some of the best eye-popping, jaw dropping animation you’ll ever see, theatrical or otherwise. The fact that it’s theatrical quality in one full TV series is an anime lover’s thrill. It’s flat out awesome. The music is by the legendary Yoko Kanno who also scored iconic anime like Macross Plus and Escaflowne. There is no better composer than her. The music is incredible. The songs are sung in Russian and you’ll be out looking for the soundtrack as soon as you’re able to put down the anime!
EXTRAS:
Check this: the set comes with all the same extras as the original single disc release! They didn’t stint one little bit! There are trailers, Tachikomatic Days, and tons of video interviews with the multiple talented Japanese voice actors and staff which include voice actors Koichi Yamadera (Togusa) and Akiko Tamagawa (Tachikoma), director Kenji Kamiyama, Atsuko Tanaka (Motoko Kusanagi), Osamu Saka (Aramaki), Akio Otsuka (Batou) and sound director Kazuhiro Wakabayashi, Kenzi Teraoka and Shinobu Tsuneki (Mechanical Designer), Koji Tanaka (Director of Photography) and Makoto Endo (3D Director), Junichi Fujisaki, Yoshiki Sakurai, and Nobuyasu Terato (Screenplay), and Dai Sato with Shotaro Suga (Screenplay) and the immensely talented composer Yoko Kanno.
IN SUMMARY:
It is the epitome of animation coolness! And now you can get the full throttle season 1 of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex in the shockingly affordable Anime Legends collection! |
