you like sports anime
really you should hurry and watch slam dunk

as for ANN reviews
I really have never liked their reviews ,I find all of them to be bad
specially after the hilarious HxH 1st DVD reveiew

I will give him that HxH really starts slowly ,but he made a compared HxH as a whole to naruto after watching only 15 episodes ,I call that unprofessional

as much as I like naruto,the difference in quality is as day and night
imo HxH quality>berserk

and I just cant wait for the reviewer to watch the rest of HxH to laugh at himself

I guess you’re seeing Kusanagi’s end as more of a resignation than an escape? I suppose I don’t think (or don’t want to think) she’s given up on life, she just wants to feel something that proves she is alive, which is kind of where I’m drawing allusions to Oshii himself, who, I think, was using her as a means of understanding his own spiritual unease.

@Martin: Yeah, it was Ghost in the Shell 2.0, but to be honest, the new style didn’t convince me. In some sections, they’ve gone the full CG route with the Major, and she looks fairly unnatural/Appleseed-esque, which is at odds with the rest of the more ‘flat’ animation. It doesn’t look right at all; it’s a bit like George Lucas going back and adding new footage to Star Wars– looks alright at the time, but a few years later, the CG will have dated. The original film has a perfect aesthetic anyway.

@Ivy: Good luck! Ghost in the Shell is possibly the perfect marriage of Oshii’s introspective style and pure exciting entertainment, the film is so tight and well crafted, it just effortlessly passes from scene to scene. No time wasting, just a long natural progression from A to B. That said, I basically know this movie inside-out by now, so I might be a bit biased!

@ghostlightning/Anyone: I’ve always wondered, how does the GITS manga compares to the movie? I’ve often considered the film more of Oshii’s work than Masamune Shirow’s. I get that the general themes are probably the same, but I wonder if, for example, the diving scene is in the manga too?

@okiru14: Thanks, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my thoughts on the film (and nice to hear from you again, too). I guess I found this to be a fairly difficult/complex thing to write about, and I was anxious to see whether I was going in the right direction or not.

@ETERNAL: Thanks also. I think a big part of understanding the film is understanding Mamoru Oshii. I wish more information about anime directors (and creators in general) was more readily available. Guys like Oshii and Hosada (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) have some fantastic back-stories to their careers in anime.

I should qualify, I did got something like it from the film. After all, the Major’s final transformation drove everything home quite strongly. But the rich concept and even more solid grounding in the setting I recommend the manga. I’ve been told that Stand Alone Complex blends both superlatively, but I had not been able to stay interested in the TV anime.

I guess these issues have been covered a lot in science fiction since the first GitS movie came out but I remember being enthralled by the the Major’s inner doubts and so on from the first time I watched it, and still find it fascinating. Innocence didn’t strike such a good balance between the action and philosophy, but this one still gets the right mixture of head-scratching and butt-kicking.

Angel’s Egg is…interesting. I think I still have a fansub of it on a CD-R somewhere but beyond it looking gorgeous I didn’t get much out of it from a thematic or storyline point of view. Maybe I ought to give it a second look after sampling more of Oshii’s style of direction since then. After I’ve seen the Sky Crawlers too, perhaps.