Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie – Review

So instead of an enigmatic cyborg-lady that kicks ass and is looking for the meaning of life, Motoko’s just a straight-up savior-figure at this point. What Motoko thinks should be done is the right thing to do. Her concept of individualization is the ultimate ideal humanity should chase after! Or at least that’s how Arise makes it seem…

Look, for example: If your dog named “Paul” dies and you get a new dog… of course, you’d name him “Paul – The New Dog”. It makes total sense! And if that dog dies, well, I guess, you kinda realize that naming your second dog “Paul – The New Dog” was kinda stupid. But you know what would make it work? If you’d call the next dog just “Paul – The New Dog” again! And! You call the old dog… wait for it… “Paul – The Old Dog”. So, what I’m saying is: Clearly we must now go back to Mamoru Oshii’s first Ghost in the Shell movie and call it “Ghost In The Shell – The Old Movie”. And if another GitS-movie comes out in the future, we just gotta rename this movie “Ghost In The Shell – That Other Old Movie”. I mean, it’s genius to just define a movie by whether it’s new or old in the franchise. Imagine if Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit”-movies were called “The Lord Of The Rings – The New Movie” (and then just add a I, II or III to each respective movie). Such a great way to name things!

Review-Roundup: Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works 14, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid 02, Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu 02, Ghost in the Shell Arise: Alternative Architecture 01/02

If anything, this series has proven that Shirou has been the guy with a plan. So, of course, in this critical situation it should be him who should be in charge.

This time I review:

F/SN: Unlimited Blade Works 14: Shirou and Rin have some dinner and then start a little fieldtrip to find a new ally in their desperate fight. Gilgamesh crashes the party in the most cruel fashion.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid 02: The evil girl who beats up other people at night turns out to be a little girl with a little problem. The good guys try to help her. Also, Vivio is trying to be Rocky or something…

Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu 02: It’s the obvious choice for a Spring-season-series: This is the Christmas-episode! And so Nagato’s little club has a party where stuff happens. Then Nagato remembers having met a certain person named Haruhi Suzumiya and it’s a big deal because she’s uber-crazy… also she’s really important in the original series.

Ghost in the Shell Arise: Alternative Architecture 01/02: The ghostiest of ghosts deals with a very ghost-y situation where viruses do this and that to ghosts. Also, someone in the army is a corrupt piece-of-shit. And with that the fourth story-arc in the Arise-series ends in the second episode of this series.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise 04 – Ghost Stands Alone – Review

Mokoto’s work-philosophy: Doing a shitty job and not giving a shit about the consequences.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise 04 – Teamwork Is The Best Kind Of Work

I didn’t know that the series would already end with this movie. I mean, having seen the movie, I don’t feel like this series has accomplished anything of note. It isn’t a fresh take on Ghost in the Shell and it definitely didn’t measure up to the standard set by the Stand-Alone-Complex-series. The whole movie-series really is just a neat idea that would reasonably sell well due to its association with the GitS-franchise. But the series itself hasn’t offered anything that would explain why anyone in this world needed to see this.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise 03 – Ghost Tears – Review

Sure, of course, it makes Motoko a deeper character if she’s shown sulking like a little girl! Considering how mature and competent she seems in all the other Ghost in the Shell stories, it’s paramount to show her being all moe and whatnot!

Ghost in the Shell: Arise 03 – Love Hurts – Review

The Ghost in the Shell: Arise series seems like a deeply flawed project so far. There’s something fundamentally wrong with how these movies have approached its prequel-status. Instead of expanding the universe and exploring the characters of the Ghost in the Shell series, the series gets lost in its portrayal of incidents. Using the Stand Alone Complex franchise as endpoint, this series tries desperately to create explanations and background for details that smartly were left unexplained in the Stand Alone Complex series. Worse than just starting out with flawed intentions, the way this series goes about addressing these goals is just inept. What should be a series driven by its characters, is a series driven by happenstance. This has given each of the movies a very incidental feeling that would rather drown the audience in inane details than try to thematically connect these prequels with the other stories in the Ghost in the Shell series. And the third movie… well, it mostly just does the same shit the previous two movies have done.