Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 2

SingleH★ 7

First of all, just to operate with full disclosure here, I’d like to address the fact that, at this point, my brain is just complete mush. I’m at the point now where I can physically feel how much more difficult it’s become, in merely the last five or six weeks, for my fingers to functionally type out my thoughts, jumbled as they already are. I’m not even sure I’m intellectually capable of critically analyzing an anime such as this anymore. I mean—fuck me backwards—some would say I was never intellectually capable of critically analyzing anything. “Thank god you quit reviewing, your reviews were borderline headacheinducing and a blight on any anime review section. You act like this is a full time job and it's sad, go outside. It's okay you can maybe review the sky or the grass instead of anime :)” So now? All bets are fucking off. Even reading through my own past reviews is difficult, with me subtly slurring my words and tripping over my tongue. I’m literally, not-a-joke fucking dying. This isn’t even mentioning how my short term memory nowadays is completely zero. I still remember my life, and I remember who I am, and why I am who I am. I remember things and the world. But as far as events that happened recently, or what I said recently, or anything recently? That is all fucking dead, zero, nothing. Tiny little minutes will pass where, blink, I’ll just forget everything and all thoughts will have permanently evacuated my fucking skull. Randomly, in the middle of the day. Most of my reviews are drafted, written, and edited weeks—even months in advance, but I watched all twenty four episodes of SAC_2045 in the last two days and wrote this review in the exact same time frame…hopefully, at least, it isn’t as bad as I think it is. I suppose you, my sweetheart reader, will be the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner on this trail. [laughs nervously] Please just try to be lenient. I’m SO sad and lonely. Hug me, please; don’t hate me. Squeeze hard. I’m small and thin and fragile, but I promise you won’t break me. So squeeze, like you mean it. I’m ready. So…the sequel no one wanted to the series no one asked for. What an enviable position to be in? I’m speaking as if there are separate seasons of this and not just one, twenty-four episode show that Netflix cut in half and budgeted separately, but whatever. Point is, we’re back, and the curtains have closed properly. At the end of the day, I would say SAC_2045 was essentially consistent. In my review for season one, I think I remembered ending with the CG talk, but, this time, I think I’m going to start with it. Most people seem to be approaching it from the perspective of, “Oh, wtf lol. This is shit. These faggots are incompetent.” But they unfortunately aren’t. They’re some of the best in the industry. This look? This was intentional. It may not look good to you (or fucking me), but THIS is what they were aiming for. So please realize that. This wasn’t a technical failure. It was an audience failure. They didn’t fail to animate what they set out to animate; rather, they failed to look at their audience and agree on what the end goal and end product should’ve been. Berserk 2016 was a failure; Ex-Arm was a failure; Hand Shakers was a failure; all the other CG trainwrecks you’re thinking of were failures. This was not a failure; this was a miscalculation. I mean, if we’re at the point now where Scott Matthew is coming back and participating in Ghost in the Shell productions, who are we to continue crying that this project was an unnecessary bastardization of anything? This is all original creative staff, with the original cast, and everyone’s original spark. The balance is just slightly trifled with by the sometimes excessive Shinji Aramaki visual action. So, Max, you’re right. Atsuko Tanaka’s performance as the Major really was commanding enough to overcome Ilya Kuvshinov’s sex doll female character designs. It’s not that our cyberbrains are infected with the nostalgia virus. It’s that we’re simply watching a well-written, well-acted show, and no amount of “muh CG” is going to change that, especially when the CG’s shortcomings are exclusively stylistic. The visual post-processing in the second half is much more shiny and the definition on the models is much more, for lack of a better term, “bright” and defined, and the colors are infinitely superior, but the actual animation techniques and the energy which results on screen is identical to the first. Whether you like the designs they use or not, Sola Digital Arts has perfected their mocap animation style. Every step of every character looks technically flawless. The mocap approach to animation results in natural, weighty, anatomical movement, and after taking into account whatever engine they use to render the shadow placements and whatever program they use to apply so much body definition, you’re left with the perfect CG anime, assuming we’re still talking exclusively about anime that we want to “look like anime” (think GANTZ:O). Again, I don’t think I’ll ever truly welcome the change entirely, especially in the first half which wasn’t nearly as polished as the second [insert Ilya Kuvshinov’s self-insert backflipping naked up the stairs], but I suppose I’m just trying to be as objective as possible here. There’s this one retrohead who writes pretty good reviews about retrohead anime, but he tried writing one for Hathaway’s Flash, and it just came across as completely out of touch. According to MAL guidelines, you cannot comment on other people’s reviews, so I can’t tell you the user’s name or link the review itself without putting this review in jeopardy, but his argument was essentially, “As we all know, old thing good, new thing bad. And this new thing doesn’t resemble old thing enough, so it’s bad.” The only tangible complaint in the whole review was the movie looked too modern, as if that wasn’t only a bad thing according to his personal opinion. I think I’m just scared of coming across like that, especially when it was far from SAC_2045’s CG which turned me off to its visual presentation. I mean, “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” doesn’t exactly jump to mind when I see a wacky waifu with pink hair exclaiming, “EEEEEHHHHHHHH?!!?!?!” However, speaking of the nostalgia virus and what I personally see as being tonally appropriate to include within a season of Stand Alone Complex, I must say that when I see a Tachikoma laying in pieces on the ground, expressing its excitement to finally see Togusa again, with Sakiko Tamagawa’s ever-adorable voice, and I feel something, is that all nostalgia, or is it that these are still engaging and endearing characters? Does it matter? I, personally, am increasingly doubtful it does, because these twenty four episodes—comparisons to anything aside for a moment—are really fucking well written. When I’m watching an episode about Japanese pensioners robbing a bank, because they don’t understand anything about how the financial system has evolved and how it’s not terribly possible to really even quote-unquote “rob” a so-called “bank” anymore, and they’re doing so because 1) two of them had their retirement funds lost to a global banking default that they don’t understand 2) because one of them was an employee at said bank who was trying to get revenge against his much younger manager, who manipulated him into putting up his pension as seed money for crypto investments, only for it to all be lost to the markets, and 3) because one of them came to the bank to withdraw all her savings, fly to a country like Switzerland where euthanasia is legal, and literally pay to die, only to learn that all her savings were in an outdated currency which, when converted to current yen-dollar bills, wasn’t enough to enact her plans, I don’t sit back and think, “This episode is nothing but an imitation of my precious Koukaku Kidoutai! Look at that CG! Fucking GAY LMAO!” I think, “Wow, Kenji Kamiyama has done it again.” His ability to get so technical yet keep it so grounded is astonishing. That, combined with Shotaro Suga’s character writing and Masayuki Yoshihara’s visual direction, is what made Stand Alone Complex the masterpiece it was. However, as I described at great length in my review for part one, SAC_2045 is sorely missing two of those three factors. Half the episodes in each season of Stand Alone Complex were “complex,” which is to say, they were connected to the main overarching narrative, and the rest were “standalone,” yet at no point was the series repetitive or dry of ideas. It was always fresh, innovative, and thought-provoking. It was also never dry of imagination or emotion. It was always surprising, dazzling, and emotive. This entire twenty-four episode series, however, has I think two truly stand alone episodes to flesh-out the updated world, and, while those two were admittedly fantastic, the fact remains that much of the runtime is devoted to action scenes and prolonging physical conflicts without actually using any of this time to deepen the ideas, merely to have fun realizing the visual action potential they’ve made for themselves. This is fine, I suppose. I mean, it isn’t like it’s plagued with particularly poor execution, especially throughout the second half, but this was never the original appeal of Stand Alone Complex. Stand Alone Complex had action, and those action set pieces remain fucking brilliantly stunning to this day, but there were never long stretches of episodes which were JUST action scenes. SAC_2045, on the other hand, can sometimes be JUST an action scene, followed by someone explaining something with enigmatic technobabble, then another cliffhanger action scene leading into the following episode, which then begins with the previous cliffhanger and subsequent continuation of the very same action scene you just saw. I hate contributing to the “muh Netflix” shit-flinging which we love so much around here, but I must also admit that the Netflix model really didn’t help out here, because Netflix autoskipping the ED and not giving you that breathing room between episode breaks really highlighted how the series was just going from meaningless cliffhanger to meaningless cliffhanger when it was focusing more on action, less on…well, what all this was actually supposed to be about. Luckily these fucking roaches didn’t autoskip the OP, or I’d be pissed. Wait…hold on. That was supposed to be the positive paragraph. How’d I fuck that up so much? Okay, so I was talking about how this show feels like OG SAC in how smartly written it is, and then I got sidetracked with bitching about how the emotional genius of Shotaro Suga and the directorial genius of Masayuki Yoshihara on the original “Kamiyama Team” was replaced by Shinji Arakami’s CG action overload, and how that ultimately ruined SAC_2045…which it did. Wait…okay, I guess we’re not going to have a positive paragraph then, because yes. That’s the problem. Kamiyama’s ideas are never constrained or balanced by his old coworkers who kept his genius creativity in check, and this is made worse by Aramaki exacerbating his love for physical, technical concepts expanding outward into these super-cyber-techno-whatever action spectacles. The old Stand Alone Complex always had, one might say, a point. It was always grounded within the boundaries of the technology, without ever diving into anything like spirituality. The Oshii films did, but that’s because their overall message and themes were profound enough to warrant such moments, and their particular directorial atmosphere was so compelling and different than the technical and “simply realistic” presentation of Stand Alone Complex. In SAC_2045 (and fucking Ubukata’s Arise series, now that I think about it), the technology is no longer the limit. Indeed, someone much funnier than I may refer to it as the “limit break.” I’m just bitching about the ending everyone’s already bitched about at this point, so, before this gets away from me, let me assure you, all SAC_2045 really has to dissuade heavy praise is CG, excessive action, and an ending that made episodes one through twenty-two feel like The Matrix (1999), episode twenty-three feel like The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and episode twenty-four feel like The Matrix Revolutions (2003). The rest is a technically and narratively ambitious comeback by the original creator himself, who made I think the best thing he still could’ve. The metaphors simply got out of hand. References are one thing, but when I’m at the point where the show I’m watching is so obsessed with codifying all its concepts so strictly in line with George Orwell’s 1984 that I have to pause the episode, stand up, walk into the other room, get 1984 off the shelf, and start flipping through it again, then I think the writer has bitten off a little more than they could chew. In Innocence, for example, characters practically spoke to each other in quotes. Batou has two conversations, one with Togusa and one with Chief Aramaki, where literally the entire back and forth is conducted via quotes. But these quotes were not simply references to larger works which the film required you to intimately comprehend. Rather, they were quotes that were themselves self-contained parables, or allegories, or whatever. They could say it, and you, a thinking adult, could say, “Okay, well, the source escapes me on that one, but I still get the point he made, because I’m literate and can understand words.” I wrote MULTIPLE papers on Orwell’s work in college, and I’ve read 1984 specifically at least five times, yet even I have to sit here and think, “Wait…how is the Miniluv (Ministry of Love) giving you the Room 101 (phycological torture chamber for political dissidents) going to further your goals, when you yourselves use the Thinkpol (Thought Police) to enact justice already and start Sustainable Wars? Sustainable Wars are just societies where the ruling class has allowed for inequality to grow to the point of social collapse, so they can profit off the ensuing riots and violence fueled by weapons they manufacture. Is this sort of chaos not the exact opposite of the regimented Stalinist nightmare depicted in 1984? Is this partisan split within society not the exact thing Big Brother and the Thought Police would want to suppress? Where radicals run around with AK-47s, screaming about who’s N and N-Po, and railing against the one percent???” We’re so many allegories deep by the end of the series, I honestly forgot the original point being made, if there ever was one. At some point during the first few episodes of the show, we get this exchange between Chief Aramaki and this American official who he knows to try and use her as a connection to get some leverage on the mission Section 9 had gotten itself wrapped up in, and at the end of the exchange she looks at him longingly and says, “I envy this woman you need so badly.” I was just like, “I’m sorry, WHAT?! Who was that?! What’s their history together?!??! Give me that sweet, juicy gossip!!!” But, looking back, that’s how Stand Alone Complex always was. Stand Alone Complex, Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, Eden of the East, etc. They featured humans, more than they did characters. SAC_2045 proceeded after that exchange to shower me with blissful character moments and dialogues which perfectly recaptured the chemistry of Section 9 as it always had been. Meanwhile, all these plot-relevant ideas for the main narrative build and hint in the background, and as the characters became interested and invested, so did you, because that’s what good stories do to you, and this continued until the final few episodes revealed them all to have been one giant nothing burger that was a complete waste of the minds and technical talent which brought it to screen. It’s not that it’s bad or particularly nonsensical. It’s just unsatisfying and, emotionally, predictable. Max, I see what you mean when you call it a “character assassination,” but the final episode’s script was so fucking bewildering that I can't really examine Motoko's decisions as if I was actually watching the well-established character, "Motoko Kusanagi." It’s not that she’s okay with the entire world living in a simulation, because they aren’t. When you typed, “Doublethink, N, and Shimamura’s grand plan are utterly lost on me. (On second thought, they're all just synonymous with each other, aren't they?)” I just giggled, said, “yes, they are,” and swiftly continued reading. There was no pot of gold you failed to appreciate at the end of this rainbow. It was just, “Oh, ghost hack. That didn’t really happen. Understandable, have a great day.” Thank you for reading.

Some1Else_★ 1

In my initial review of the first twelve episodes of this season, I lamented over how so many franchises were being brought back tailored for new audiences that completely miss the point of the original show. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever see a legacy franchise successfully resurrected with the way entertainment is being handled lately. But then Top Gun: Maverick came out. So, it is possible. With the right writing. Any idea can work with good writing, really. But the people who did this show? I wouldn't trust them to do a nursery rhyme. As before, I will limit myself to five points. Spoilersahead. Use what worked before. That’s fine. But don’t depend on it. The first season dealt with someone who took a book too seriously. The second season dealt with a dude who attempted to get his hands on a nuclear weapon to get his point across. Let’s use them again! The new idea is post-humans, which had the potential to be interesting on its own, but they just go ahead and do what the Laughing Man and Kuze did because nobody will notice. Leaning too heavily on what worked before is a subtle way of your plot not being strong enough to stand on its own. It had previously been my understanding that the members of Section 9 were the best of the best, mainly by their own merit. And then Batou admits to an AI helping all of them aim. Great. This is as bad as the Major downloading how to box. Our heroine and her heroes are not the best of the best. They have the right bodies to handle enhancements that make them superhuman. Saito’s augmentation makes sense. He had to have his eye ruined before he was able to use his little gizmo. A sacrifice was necessary. That’s compelling and adds to his character. Well, now we can all be Saito! And we don’t have to have the Major poke our eye out! Just so long as we have the right prosthetic body. Why should I care about characters whose talents are not unique? I guess all one must do to be special here is download a Wikipedia article and find an AI to fill in the blanks. How does one get to be a member of Section 9? I mean, they let Purin in. It can’t be that hard to join them. Accepting the finality of death demonstrates a mature perspective of life. Of all characters, I would have been willing to bet the Major would understand this. But she is not interested in the ethical implications of her decision, despite how philosophical she can otherwise be. They needed Purin’s brain. Because nobody else in Section 9 is talented enough to hack the Pentagon. Uh-huh. Here’s a thought. Did the writers really have to kill Purin in the first place? Evidently, because they wanted to use this trope, and they made the Major look like an absolute idiot while doing so. Having said that, it will come as no shock that I found the ending to be on par with how Neon Genesis Evangelion concluded. Rebuild included. Everyone’s consciousness is in “heaven” because the world is in the throes of nuclear war. The Major is given the chance to pull the plug, but relents. Yet she can’t live in a fantasy world, so she decides to retreat into the net. To essentially live in a fantasy world. Yet it is not all negative. As before, I applaud the dub. Everybody did fantastic. I got mad respect for Cherami Leigh's portrayal of Purin. This is one of the few shows I prefer to watch in English, but the dub was not ready at the time this first came out due to the pandemic. I wasn't enthused enough to watch the first twelve episodes a second time despite how much I like the English voice cast for this show, so I missed Leigh's performance. Until this season. As much as I do not like Mary Sue---oh, excuse me. Purin! As much as I do not like Purin, Leigh made her tolerable. Where do they go from here? It would take a miracle to come back from this. Oh, wait! A Rebuild. That’s right, it would take a Rebuild to come back from this. Maybe when they get to 2045 a second time around 2055, they’ll get it right. But I doubt it.