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September 10, 2004

TIFF Report: Ghost in the Shell 2 (Innocence) Review

This one's going to brief out of necessity ... I 'm just way too tired to go into detail right now. Perhaps Nick or Jason will see fit to expand on this later on tomorrow ...

First viewing of the festival: the much anticipated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. I've been waiting for this for so long, anxiously snapping fansubs of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV show to tide me over until this finally released and I'm a little bit disappointed. Of the three Ghost titles I think this one is the weakest. It's not the visuals or animation work - this is one of the finest technical pieces of animation you'll ever see and is well worth a viewing on this level alone - but that Oshii seems to have lost sight of his characters in all the philosophizing. The character quirks are all but gone and there's nary an actual conversation to be found with Oshii preferring to have Batou, Togusa et al drop famous quotes at each other rather than say anything in their own voice. There are some very clever, very funny exchanges, but on the whole the dialogue feels more like you're reading an essay than it does like you're listening in on actual people having actual conversations. This is particularly sad considering how the dialogue is such a major strength in the first Ghost in the Shell film and the subsequent television show.

So, to sum up: pictures good, talking bland.

And now I sleep.

» Posted by Todd at September 10, 2004 02:15 AM

Reader Comments

i am waiting to see this subbed on dvd. its sept 17th in the usa cinemas : but cant afford the flight from the UK... so, i am enjoying the SAC series so far, and i am ordering the new special edition dvd from the usa of the original GITS movie... due in october...

» Posted by logboy at September 10, 2004 05:19 AM

see, i watch anime strictly for to see what some awesome artist form a different culture could draw, i have never watched one with good dialogue. I could not imagine watchign one for the dialogue, because when i comes down to it te voice actors they use most of the time are cheap as dirt.

now there are a couple exceptions, like monokeme and spirited away where the dialogue was decent, and the voice actors weren;t terrible, but, for the most part i find the dialogue in 99% of anime, or foreign films in general, poorly translated garbage.

that said, i can't wait to see this movie, the art looks incredible.
!

» Posted by miles at September 10, 2004 08:27 AM

I'm with Todd here - visually, this is far and away some of the best anime I've ever seen but I felt I was in a school class with the dialouge and was to be writing done each qoute that was being dropped instead of conversation for a future test. A lot of the qoutes were in context of the film but it was something akin to listening to the dawsons creek characters speak to each other (and no I'm not attributing this movie to dawsons creek - so please don't discredit anything else I say). Style over Substance in this one. And I was mighty happy with that.

» Posted by Nick at September 10, 2004 10:19 AM

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