Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

I went up to Nashville tonight and caught a showing of the latest anime, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. As the story lines in anime are not very diverse you can probably guess what the movie is about by imagining a movie with a mix sci-fi/cyberpunk/police/megacorp elements. Like many anime series and movies, most notably Lain, it provides a philosophical look at humanity by building stories and observations around humans replacing body parts with mechanical enhancements. I was not a big fan of the original and was quite surprised by the huge following it developed. While the visual look was a stunning blend of 2D/3D techniques the story was obtuse and full of the overplotting so prevalent in the genre.

I found the sequel to be the rare offspring that outshines it’s predecessor. The story is a relatively straightforward investigation of a series of violent murders by broken robots. The dialogue is full of quotes from the Bible, Milton, Confucious, Shakespeare, and other luminaries intermixed with exposition to explain what’s happening. It can be tough to keep up with because they’ll throw out some pretty complicated concepts in the quotes and race ahead. I congratulate the translators on tackling some of these concepts in a two line sentence. Also I am grateful to Go Fish (Dreamworks anime division) for having the guts to release this with subtitles instead of dubbing. I enojy the Miyazaki stuff but Disney/Miramax manages to always find an actor that makes me cringe when they dub.

Where the movie truly shines is again the visualization and the animation. The world is amazing to behold. The scene with the detectives flying into the northern region gave me goosebumps. It’s been the better part of a year since I’ve had a moment like that in a movie. I was drawn in and felt as though I was gazing at an enormous monument to human ingenuity, both in the city conceived in the movie and the computer effects. The environment, animals, buildings and vehicles were rendered with that special brand of realism that is at once compelling and believable but only in the future world depicted in the movie. I have no doubt that if I lived in that world it would look just like that. The people are mostly 2D and I still find that 2D conveys human emotion better than most 3D attempts I’ve seen.

Visuals alone don’t do it for me. What sold me on the visuals was the animation. In particular the scene where the cyborg, Bateau, is at home playing with his basset hound. It’s a remarkably tender, honest scene that could stand on it’s own as a short film. It’s the little things like the way the dog falls out of the chair when he hears Bateau, or the way Bateau keeps the dog’s ears from falling into the food bowl when he’s eating. They create a warmth and sincerity that’s typically sacrified to cute and funny in most animated features with animals. The use of the dog in the trailer and poster had me cringing going in with the expectation that I was going to be manipulated, but that was not the case at all.

I will have to see it again some time. Also it’s made me want to watch the original again, maybe I was too harsh on it. The ideas about human souls, mechanization, dolls and golems, reality vs. illusion were too much to absorb during the movie. It has some really neat ideas about hacking reality that I’d never really thought about. The way viruses could be transmitted wirelessly into people’s minds to override perception and alter their actions in the real world is something I’d never really thought about before. Overall, a very enjoyable experience. Also the story represents a maturation that I hope takes hold in the genre. It’s about time the story caught up to the visuals.