Subject: REVIEW: GHOST IN THE SHELL (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Dean Gold)
Date: 6 May 1996 15:06:54 GMT

GHOST IN THE SHELL
                       A film review by Dan Gold
                        Copyright 1996 Dan Gold

** 1/2 out of ****

     GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) is a manga based movie of a futuristic
worldin which the electronic net and cities are as one and
cybernetically enhanced people are the norm.  The story revolves around
Major Motoko Kusanagi, a woman cyborg agent of the Internal Bureau
whose mission is to track down the mysterious hacker known as "The
Puppet Master."  She and her colleagues learn that the Puppet Master is
in fact a creation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Furthermore,
the MFA's Project 2501 (aka The Puppet Master) claims to be self aware
and its objective becomes to find a host body in order to have physical
existence.  The Internal Bureu agents question their own existence and
Motoko is forced to decide between forfilling her mission or aiding
Project 2501 in accomplishing its own goal.

     More important to an anime feature than its story is its
animation.  The innovative use of computer rendered graphics is
integrated well into the hand-drawn animated action of the story.
Blending traditional anime style people in an environment (that
sometimes resembles photorealism) as vast as the world it portrays.
Thus, the animation of GHOST IN THE SHELL serves the purpose in
immersing the audience into a completely different environment.  The
one aspect in which the animation fell short was the coloring; the
shades of GHOST IN THE SHELL are just too gloomy.  This does not serve
to enhance the story or the setting.  Some more brightness would have
made this feature a more pleasant experience.

     The wonderful exaggerated dramatization of portions of the action
(such as the opening in which we see the formation of our heroine's
artificial body) serve as the most delightful scenes.  Since animation
of GHOST IN THE SHELL is of very high caliber, the rating would have
been higher had it not taken its plot so seriously.  The fact is that
nothing is new about the technological, socialogical, or philosophical
ideas that GHOST IN THE SHELL calls upon to give itself drama.  The
feature manages to use them without making them appear as tired as they
might be in other science fiction stories, but it does not give the
profound impact it would pretend to deserve.

     Like a lot of anime, the story is grand in scope and so it is
written in a manner that gives it false complexity.  What results is
often nonsensical.  The problem is perhaps worsened in the English
version by some translation problems.  This disregard for conventional
methods of storytelling is nothing new to anime, but in GHOST IN THE
SHELL.  There are unnecessary scenes making the feature drag at times
and overall the feature is too long.  The ending of GHOST IN THE SHELL
is pretty silly.

     In conclusion, GHOST IN THE SHELL has plenty of ups and downs to
it.  Overall GHOST is an enjoyable experience and for anime fans, it is
a must see.

Additional Information
http://www.polygram.com/manga/ghost/ghost.html
http://www.msstate.edu/M/title-exact?+=Ghost+in+the+shell

This review and many more on Sci-Fi films and the
WWW Science Fiction Film Page
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~ataraxus/sfmenu.html