GHOST IN THE SHELL
A film review by Dan Gold
Copyright 1996 Dan Gold
** 1/2 out of ****
GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) is a manga based movie of a futuristic worldin which the electronic net and cities are as one and cybernetically enhanced people are the norm. The story revolves around Major Motoko Kusanagi, a woman cyborg agent of the Internal Bureau whose mission is to track down the mysterious hacker known as "The Puppet Master." She and her colleagues learn that the Puppet Master is in fact a creation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Furthermore, the MFA's Project 2501 (aka The Puppet Master) claims to be self aware and its objective becomes to find a host body in order to have physical existence. The Internal Bureu agents question their own existence and Motoko is forced to decide between forfilling her mission or aiding Project 2501 in accomplishing its own goal.
More important to an anime feature than its story is its animation. The innovative use of computer rendered graphics is integrated well into the hand-drawn animated action of the story. Blending traditional anime style people in an environment (that sometimes resembles photorealism) as vast as the world it portrays. Thus, the animation of GHOST IN THE SHELL serves the purpose in immersing the audience into a completely different environment. The one aspect in which the animation fell short was the coloring; the shades of GHOST IN THE SHELL are just too gloomy. This does not serve to enhance the story or the setting. Some more brightness would have made this feature a more pleasant experience.
The wonderful exaggerated dramatization of portions of the action (such as the opening in which we see the formation of our heroine's artificial body) serve as the most delightful scenes. Since animation of GHOST IN THE SHELL is of very high caliber, the rating would have been higher had it not taken its plot so seriously. The fact is that nothing is new about the technological, socialogical, or philosophical ideas that GHOST IN THE SHELL calls upon to give itself drama. The feature manages to use them without making them appear as tired as they might be in other science fiction stories, but it does not give the profound impact it would pretend to deserve.
Like a lot of anime, the story is grand in scope and so it is written in a manner that gives it false complexity. What results is often nonsensical. The problem is perhaps worsened in the English version by some translation problems. This disregard for conventional methods of storytelling is nothing new to anime, but in GHOST IN THE SHELL. There are unnecessary scenes making the feature drag at times and overall the feature is too long. The ending of GHOST IN THE SHELL is pretty silly.
In conclusion, GHOST IN THE SHELL has plenty of ups and downs to it. Overall GHOST is an enjoyable experience and for anime fans, it is a must see.
Additional Information http://www.polygram.com/manga/ghost/ghost.html http://www.msstate.edu/M/title-exact?+=Ghost+in+the+shell
This review and many more on Sci-Fi films and the WWW Science Fiction Film Page http://weber.u.washington.edu/~ataraxus/sfmenu.html
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