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Alright, so this will be the first review of the planned reviews that I'm considering doing. There will be times when you disagree with my review, but due to the fact that this is merely my opinion on the anime, you'll have to deal with it ^.^
Of all the things in Ghost in the Shell that I've noticed, the primary thing that draws you in is the quality of the sound. In the opening sequence of Stand Alone Complex, the first season of the televised series, the song, "Inner Universe" by Yoko Kanno, already gives a sense of being in a whole new world, even without a scene of the show being played. The biggest complaint among anime viewers from America is how bad voice over is; many "elitist" fans actually look down upon others for watching anime in the dubbed version, rather than in subtitles, because it's not "natural" and "does not sound right". But this is not the case with the dubbed version of Ghost in the Shell. The casting was excellent, making even the most picky of anime fans forget that the voices are not the natural ones. In an effort to see what the voices really sounded like, I switched over to the Japanese dub, and realized that it sounded strange to me, because the English voices were the ones that I associated with the characters as their "natural" voice.
The director of the show, Kenji Kamiyama, manages to create a realistic world, using only a brief moment where he explains the time in which everything occurs. Everything else is explained and uncovered by Section 9, the secret public security force within the government. Even though they do sometimes have a monologue which is, in reality, an explanation disguised as one character telling another something, it does its job effectively, not taking away from the overall feel from the show. There is a large amount of realism in the show, with believable technology explained by some level of logic, which further takes the viewer into its world. There are no magical powers, no spells, no inexplicable abilities; everything is logical, based on technology with a touch of biological sciences. Because of this added realism, with the twist of it being set in the near future, the fact that the story is really basic in all respects is overlooked. What Ghost in the Shell does is take the usual police television series, and throw it further into the future. The conspiracies, politics, and everything else have merely been updated with cyborgs and robots, and yet, because of the way it’s told, this is all forgivable. The characters are all very deep, from the troubles of Togusa and his real body trying to keep up with the others, to the Major, a team leader who had lost everything of her past, even her true body. Along the way, they begin to come to terms with their inner conflicts, developing new mindsets, making them seem even more realistic, as they actually develop as time goes on. Overall, this is an excellent series, though there are many parts of the story that are not very unique. The only thing I’ve seen as “new” in the development of the story is how the first series ended, explaining why it is called “Stand Alone Complex”. It is, though, for the older audiences, not so much because of violence, but because the story would easily go right over younger generations’ heads.
* * * * * - 5/5
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