Masamune Shirow is the reason why I came to manga.
A while ago now, a friend lend me the 2nd volume of Appleseed. That was the start of my love for Shirow's work that grew into my love of manga in general that grew into my love for anime.
When Ghost In The Shell was first released in France, in the brand new prepublication magazine Manga Player, it was a huge shock for me. I had been through 3 Appleseed volumes, Black Magic (Shirow's first work), so I was kind of used to his world: cyborgs, robots, guns, girls & obscure underlying politics. Or I thought I was.
With that first issue, you were sent without warning into a world where global network are a reality, were people have cyberbrains that can communicate with each others without wires, where the boundaries of the brains are more or less virtual as you can hack into someone and take control of him.
All that on top of the "usual" Shirow stuff ie intricate political background, convoluted plot and his trade mark strong characters & hugely dynamic drawing.
The kind of stuff that leaves you KO and have you read it again straightaway to actually understand what it's about.
Because bear in mind that this was 1st released in the early 90s, when internet was only a scientific network. The guy had already seen the future.
To say that there is a "before" and "after" Ghost In The Shell. The "you've read it here first" kind. The kind that makes you feel enlightened. By the time you reach the end of the Puppet Master story arc, suddently all SciFi becomes toned down, strangely simplistic...
Moving into the mid 90s, Mamoru Oshii adapted this manga into a film, which would lead to world fame. Being an adaptation, the movie was kept closer to Oshii's themes and was featuring a significantly different Major Kusanagi, tortured by her condition of cyborg and questionning what makes someone human.
Don't get me wrong: the movie is excellent, but was to me a significant departure of the original manga that I loved.
So I was therefore very happy when I finally got round to discover the 1st season of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (GITS SAC), because that adaptation to a TV format kept very close to the manga, keeping the original characters and the aspect a bit more chicks with guns. You get fast paced actions, ground breaking cyber punk and on top of that the political side that actually makes most of the episodes being sorted in the background. You get fights, explosions, but the real solution is soften reached throught negociations or manipulations, because in a world of information, data is the key.
So this "1st gig" was an unbelievable success, keeping the original spirit of the manga, porting almost directly some of its side stories in its "Stand Alone" episodes, but also creating a brand new & excellent story line, with the Laughing Man case ("Complex" episodes). That with a technical level almost flawless through the course of the 26 episodes. Incredible animation, amazingly integrated CGIs, Yoko Kanno doing the soundtrack...
And that's not even mentionning the incredible boldness of the script episodes, tackling varied themes, and that don't hesitate to dwell on the Tachikoma's metaphysical reflexions or spend an entire episode based on a chatroom conversation (certainly in an attempt to reproduce the Shirow's famous footnotes)... Memorable moments are plenty here. Suspence & emotions are not left out either as our heroes come close to their demise and some sacrifices are made, showing you that humanity has a lot to learn from machines...
It even made me read JD Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye! (very good book BTW)
How do you follow up on that? Easy. By doing better.
The writing team this time called back Oshii for the starting point of the series. And created again a strong story that also resonnates to today's problems, as it has to do with immigrants & refugees and at first terrorists bombings...
As with 1st Gig, you'll have to be wide awake to fully understand the story which involves lots of twists & turns.
At some point you have 4 different groups that all seem to have different objectives. But who's really calling the shots?
It's often the case with anime, but I can't get tired of it: it's so nice to watch something that doesn't assume that you're some sort of retard... The counter part is that you have to pay close attention or you might miss a thing.
I thought that plot wise, the series was a lot tighter than 1st Gig.
In the first season you could feel that the authors felt a bit of the weight of the original material and had Stand Alone episodes often drawing story lines directly from the manga. Which isn't bad in any mean though.
But here, although you have some referencing to events in the manga, pretty much every episode is a least loosely connected to the main plot.
For an avid reader like myself, it feels fresher.
It also adds some background to the different characters that might have felt left out in the 1st season.
Everything adds up to a wonderful crescendo to the season finale with a rare intensity and that masterfully manages to tie everything back together!
Because here I am, at the end, and this end sends me right back at the beginning...
The beginning of the manga! Drawing directly from the presets of that first issue, a bit like a Star Wars Episode 3, the last moments of the series finally set those 2 seasons as a prequel to the events I read all those years ago. And manage to even give background and raise questions about it...
This could have been called "Ghost In The Shell Begins".
The loop is looped.
And I am having goose bumps again...
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