Hello all you happy people! In honour of the new Ghost In The Shell adaptation coming out tomorrow, were are going to do nothing but Ghost In The Shell content! Okay, not quite nothing but. But there will be a lot of GiTS content over the next ten weeks or so, starting with a live-blog of the first Ghost In The Shell movie.

Okay confession time: I’ve misplaced my copy of the original Ghost In The Shell movie, so I’m going to have to watch the version on Amazon Prime.

And people say physical media is better. Bah. Also I need to clean my room.

Right, I forgot this movie doesn’t actually open with The Making of A Cyborg.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first: GiTS ’95 doesn’t look anything like the original manga. Motoko is the most obvious change, but the whole movie is much more realistic than the extremely stylized manga.

So that is Richard Epcar playing Batou, but he sounds quite a bit different than the Batou we know and love from GiTS: SAC. Flatter and with less emotion.

The Major is voiced by Mimi Woods who, with all due respect, doesn’t do a very good job, especially compared to Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.

The bad guy here is so obviously American it isn’t even funny.

And thus ends one of the most famous openings in anime history.

Based on the manga by Shirow Masamune, the prototypical nerd: he draws porn and writes high-minded geeky philosophical concepts! At the same time no less.

Screenplay by Kazunori Ito

To be honest, I’m not sure making a cyborg in real life would involve such large tanks of fluid, but eh. What do I know?

Music by Kenji Kawai. The funny thing about Mr. Kawai is, despite this movie being the cyberpunk movie for most people, he doesn’t use any techno or electronic music, preferring more traditional Japanese music. Which is fine by me; I have broad, eclectic tastes in music so I’m good with whatever fits the scene.

Produced by Kodansha in association with Bandai Visual and Manga Entertainment. I only highlighted that because I’ve been saying Bandai-Namco for so long it was both shock and treat to just… see Bandai on it’s own.

Production studio is Production I.G. which is, you know, not much of a shocker. They’ve been around forever.

It is so weird, because I’m so used to the GiTS: SAC design by this point, to see a relatively realistic Motoko.

Directed by Mamoru Oshii

Also my spellchecker is racist.

Hey, it’s old Apeface! Only, Aramaki looks more like a human being in this one. After the Major, I think he’s the most heavily redesigned character in the movie?

He’s played by William Frederick Knight in both the movie and GiTS: SAC

One of the things I always liked about GiTS is how blunt about its morally shady politics are. Neither Japan, this new (presumably) South American government or (especially!) the Americans are shown in a particularly good light.

And we finally get Togusa, the third main member of Section 9. He looks mostly like Togusa from the manga and SAC, but the voice actor is different. Here it’s David Richard Thompson and he will be continuing the theme of the English dub having flat, emotionless voices.

Dear Godzilla, but I need to dust in my room. No wonder I have allergies. Wish I was a cyborg.

This scene in the manga also has Togusa bragging about his shotgun and its killing power.

…Why would anybody, never mind an illegal immigrant, be speaking English in Japan?

Never accept anything from random strangers in a bar, folks. It will cause you problems.

Finally Epcar sounds like Batou.

We finally meet Ishikawa, the fourth most prominent member of Section 9. He’s voiced by Michael Sorich in this movie who, you guessed it, sounds rather flat. The design is mostly right but as Ishikawa was always one of the least stylized members of Section 9 that’s not really saying much.

One of the few shows to get guns (mostly) right. A car door won’t stop any bullets, high velocity or no; the guy is remarkably on target for hip-firing a submachine gun but at least he has to reload; and the guns look like their mostly based on real-world ones.

But the dude has way too many mags. Bullets are heavy; mags even more so. At least when you’ve got half a dozen full magazines on you.

And here comes the fight scene that spawned The Matrix. No seriously the Wachowskis watched this fight scene and decided to make an entire movie around the concept.

Somebody could ask the same about you, Major.

Well, at least Saito gets a mention.

Aramaki always knows more about what’s going on than anybody else.

Swimming robots! Masamune goes into detail about how his cyborgs could swim because yes, he is that much of a nerd.

Yes Motoko, Batou would absolutely dive in to save you.

Yeah, Mimi just… isn’t very good at this. Motoko comes off way more robotic than she is in either the manga or SAC.

These long montage scenes aren’t good for live-blogging, I’m not going to lie.

Somebody on the production staff had a serious thing about drawing tits in the most disturbing ways possible.

I’m not sure if it’s just Amazon Prime or if the film has a sound mixing problem, but there’s a couple of times when some characters have their sound just lowered compared to the rest of the scene.

Ishikawa is, like, the only sane member of Section 9. I wouldn’t worry about it, Batou.

Infra red isn’t usually shown as actually red?

Togusa’s a bit of a cowboy.

And now we meet the Puppet Master himself. Or itself? Themself?

There are advantages to revolvers, I suppose.

Batou, given your love of old cars, you have no right to criticize Togusa about a love of old shit.

Yeah, this goofy ass micro-fiche reader thing. I’ve never understood it and looks goofy as hell.

Somebody got blown up real good.

Ah, the big tank. Should’ve brought some ‘komas, Major.

Bad guys have both armour and backup? That’s completely unfair.

I don’t think it’s out yet, Major

You’ll never look at Amazons the same way again.

The hell kind of gun is that?

These helicopters are not as cool as the jigabachi’s, they just aren’t.

Should’ve brought a rocket launcher, Batou. Or at least more rounds for your big gun

The symbolism in this movie is not always subtle.

The blunt answer is yes.

The deep philosophy in this film would be a lot better if the voice direction wasn’t so bad.

Ah, I hate streaming movies.

All right, see you folks tomorrow with the first episode of The Ghost In The Shell

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