Anime

I finished watching Banner of the Stars today. Spoilers ahead…

The last several episodes depict the Abh’s defense of the Aptic system as it is set upon by a United Mankind counter-attack. The battle itself was riveting, but I actually think the ending was a bit anti-climatic. I’m assuming that the long-term plot arcs will be expanded upon and resolved in the sequels. There were a few things I was expecting that didn’t come to pass. I would have liked to have seen some of the fabled “spectacular insanity” of the Bebaus brothers and was expecting something right up until it became clear that their fleet was no longer in any condition to contribute to the battle. Still, the concept of the Bebaus clan fascinated me, and I wanted to see more of their genius/insanity (I suppose taking a bath in the middle of a battle could be considered insane, but it winds up not mattering much either way). Instead, Admiral Bebaus seemed to proceed on a decidedly conventional course of action. Not that he commanded his fleet poorly – it was obvious that he did a good job despite being overwhelemed by a numerically superior force. I was impressed with Admiral Spoor’s quick read of the situation though, and she is another character I would like to know better. None of which is to say that the series isn’t satisfying, and indeed it’s focus on Lafiel and Jinto are what’s really important here. I have to admit that I was surprised by the fate of the Basroil, though it does make perfect sense (and again, I assume the sequels contain more on the long term story).

Admiral Spoor orders an attack

So I enjoyed the series. I have to admit that I don’t have much to add that hasn’t already been stated at great length elsewhere. Steven Den Beste’s long comments in my first post give an interesting overview of Abh culture and royalty (indeed, at this point, I think he may have written more about the series in his comments than I have in my posts!) and he’s written previously on the military aspects of the show, which are also well thought out.

As has been noted in previous posts, Banner is set in a well thought out universe. The author, Hiroyuki Morioka, has made various changes to physics, military and political systems, then systematically thought out the impact of said changes on his universe. The story of the series is interesting in itself, but the universe it’s set in is clearly much broader than what we see explicitely. In SF and Fantasy, this process is known as worldbuilding. The most obvious example of worldbuilding is J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, the setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien spent decades defining the languages, races, and mythology of Middle-Earth before he even wrote the books (and the first of those was written for his kids, not for publication). Most science fiction contains some form of world building; it’s one of the distinctive features of SF. Ultimately, though, the point of worldbuilding is to tell a human story. Sure, there are differences between our world and that of the story, but the point is to see how humans react to those changes. The balance between these two components can be tricky. A lot of SF tends to neglect worldbuilding in favor of their human story (two examples discussed on this blog recently are The Man Who Fell To Earth and Solaris). At the other extreme, there are some stories that focus almost entirely on the technology of their universe and practically ignore their characters (I get the impression that a lot of Mecha series in Anime are like this). These stories will always have their fans, but in my opinion, the best SF contains both an intriguing and internally consistent setting and interesting characters that will allow the audience to relate to the differences between reality and the constructed universe of the story.

In Banner there are several interesting extrapolations (many of which have already been covered in comments, etc…). One is the existence of the Abh themselves. They aren’t exactly aliens (they’re genetically engineered humans), but the small changes to their physiology seem to have brought about significant differences in culture. This is to be expected, since they were engineered for life in space, but the author of this series has done a good job extrapolating how these differences impact other aspects of life, while maintaining a familiarity with humanity (this is important because the story is told entirely from the Abh’s perspective, so the audience still needs to be able to relate to the Abh). For instance, there is a distinction between a member of the Abh empire and a member of the Abh race. Jinto is of the human race, but he legally became a member of the Abh empire… he doesn’t share the genetic differences of the Abh. The Abh have been engineered with an extra sensory organ which allows them to jack into their ships so that they can instinctually sense what’s happening in and around the ship without having to use their other senses. This distinction between genetic and legal Abh comes into play in many areas; for example: crew composition. On the Basroil, genetic Abh hold positions related to navigation and weaponry (their extra sensory organ gives them an advantage over human members of the crew, and presumably their human enemies as well), while the humans (Samson and Jinto) handle engineering, logistics, and some other duties. I imagine other ships in the Abh fleet have similar makeups (though I didn’t get a good feel for how many legally Abh humans are present in the empire). A lot of the Abh culture and societal structure seems to be driven by their differences with humanity. A race which is born in the stars and doesn’t spend much time on planets is bound to develop a different type of society. The Abh’s political structure is an interesting mixture of royalty and the military, and there appears to be a significant merchant fleet in addition to their navy. I was initially a little skeptical of the military component of their political system, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. They’re a race that primarily space vessels and so it makes a lot of sense that their ruling class would be the people in control of the ships. Again, this is a very detailed universe, and I’m really only scratching the surface here.

Another important change is the way the series depicts space travel and combat. Interstellar travel is an intractable problem in reality, so most SF universes come up with workarounds like Hyperspace or other FTL travel. In Banner, they use something called “Plane Space.” You can only enter into plane space via a gate, and unlike most other SF, plane space is actually only two-dimensional. Ships travelling through plane space must generate “space-time bubbles” which surround the ship and allow it to continue existing in its native three dimensions. There are several important implications here. Strategic battles that happen in plane space are only happening in two dimensions (tactically, battles occur within space-time bubbles, which technically contain three dimensions). This was something that initially bothered me about the series. Because I didn’t understand the concept of a 2D plane space, I was a little confused as to why all the strategic readouts in the series were strictly 2D (well, actually, a lot of SF movies/series don’t take advantage of the 3D nature of space – the only example I can think of off the top of my head is the battle with Khan in Star Trek II).

The Bebaus brothers view a strategic display

Another 2D Strategic Readout

This seemed odd to me when I considered how carefully constructed the rest of the universe was, so it wasn’t surprising when I learned about the true nature of plane space. As a consequence, the space battles in the series actually end up feeling more like a traditional naval engagement than space combat (hence the use of familiar tactics like pincer movements, etc…) Again, there are lots of implications involved with plane space. The speed of space-time bubbles is directly related to the amount of mass contained within a bubble. This becomes important because when you engage an enemy in a space-time bubble, you’re effectively increasing the amount of mass in the bubble. Even if you win, the debris from the other ship is still being carried along with you and will slow you down (there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to get rid of the debris). This has other implications regarding ship design and fleet composition (smaller ships are faster and more maneuverable, but obviously not as powerful, while larger ships are much more powerful, but are sluggish and handle poorly). The notion that plane space can only be entered through gates also plays an important role – gates obviously become strategically valuable in times of war. Banner essentially follows the defense of the Aptic gate, which is strategically important in multiple ways (it’s a system with a gate, it seems to be centrally located, and it’s apparently got a lot of supplies).

The great thing about the worldbuilding here is that everything seems to happen because of the constructed reality. The author didn’t come up with a story and then build his universe around that (you could call that a form of retconning). He came up with the universe, and the story just flowed a natural result. In Banner of the Stars, the story is the direct result of the things that make its universe different than ours. And despite all the detail, there is plenty of room for the characters. I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the nuances of this universe. For instance, I didn’t understand much of the military strategy until after the series (when I found out that plane space was two dimensional).

At this point, I’m convinced that I really do need to go back and watch Crest of the Stars and I’d like to check out Banner of the Stars II as well. I hadn’t realized how much of a serial the story really was (apparently the author has plans for more books as well). I’m not sure where this will fit in with the rest of my Anime schedule, but I might just have to make room for it now while it’s fresh in my mind.

In watching Banner of the Stars, it became immediately apparent that there was a lot of backstory. Indeed, after reading Steven Den Beste’s comments on my post, it has become even more apparent that Banner is set in a detailed and well thought-out universe. As such, I’m probably going to go back and watch Crest of the Stars (which tells the story of how Jinto and Lafiel met). Apparently, I’m not the only one who has run into this. Author has been reading about Crest and is questioning his decision to bypass Crest and go directly to Banner.

Author also shares an interesting anecdote sent by TheBigN:

I speak from limited experience, but at Cornell as a freshman, our college anime club showed both Banner series (one per semester). […] When there was a survey about the audience’s experiences with the clubs schedule, responses were divided with people who didn’t watch Crest before the Banner series tending to pan the series, while people who watched Crest before Banner tended to praise it. And it’s understandable, since Crest introduces you to the universe of the Abh and co, and as Banner of the Stars is just a continuation from there, people who watch Banner first tend to get dropped into the story without any information on how the world works.

Author thinks that Banner did an exemplary job setting up the backstory. Personally, I don’t think I’d go so far as Author, but I did find that the series did a good job establishing the backstory. However, I do want to go back and watch Crest. In recent years, I’ve become more of a completist in that I don’t generally want to jump into the middle of a series. I’d rather wait for the whole thing to be available and watch it all at once (hence my TV on DVD addiction). I probably should have taken a closer look at the original recommendations because Crest was mentioned, but my request at the time was for a more action oriented series (and Banner seems to be the better “action” series). It’s been over a year since that post, so some of the arbitrary restrictions I placed on series should probably be lifted. Some of the good Anime mentioned in that post that was ruled out for one reason or another is probably fair game now (for example, Noir seems like an interesting series, even if it is somewhat grueling). I should put together a future series type page. I’ll get right on that (in typical Kaedrin fashion, it should appear sometime next year and then promptly fall into disrepair as I neglect to update it).

Still working though the original set of Anime recommendations, next up is Banner of the Stars. Netflix didn’t have it in stock, so I had to delay a bit, but I found a cheapo thinpack and bought it. I’m about halfway through the series. Assorted thoughts, comments, questions, and screenshots below.

• The series follows a war between The United Mankind and the Abh Empire. The story is told through the eyes of Abriel Lafiel and Lin Jinto. Lafiel is a princess of the Abh Empire and the captain of a small attack ship, the Basroil. Jinto is her supply officer and secretary. He’s also royalty, though he’s the last surviving member of his family, and his membership in the Abh Empire seems to be more of a legal formality than a race thing (this is one of the interesting things about the universe this story is set in – more later in this post). This is a war story, but so far the emphasis seems to be on Lafiel and Jinto. There’s some romantic tension there, and I can see the beginnings of a love triangle. Again, I’m 6 episodes into the series. So far, so good, though I’m getting the feeling that I probably should have watched Crest of the Stars first (I assume most of the backstory between Lafiel and Jinto is covered in that series).

  
  Jinto & Abriel

• So far, the story is told entirely from the perspective of the Abh. From what I can understand, the Abh are a race of humans who have been genetically engineered for life in space. For instance, they seem to have developed a new sensory organ that helps with space navigation (they use headpieces to interface with it, which is why it looks like all the characters are wearing a tiara). As previously mentioned, Jinto is technically Abh, but he’s also a “grounder” (i.e. someone who was born and grew up on a planet) and I think his status as a member of the Abh is more legal than genetic (though I guess if your race is defined by genetic modification, a human could change to that race pretty easily). Interestingly, Jinto is referred to as a “Count” which I believe outranks “Princess” in terms of nobility, yet Princess Abriel is Jinto’s military superior. We don’t actually see much of the United Mankind empire, but one interesting thing about them is that they don’t seem to be demonized. They’re not the Nazis of the Banner universe, they’re just enemies. Also, there don’t seem to be any secret weapons or invincible ships on their side (something I saw in Vandread and Martian Successor Nadesico). Though neither side knows of the other side’s true fleet strength, the focus seems to be more on tactics and strategy than simple brute force or secret weapons. This tends to make for a more believable and interesting universe…
• So far, I’ve only seen one major battle in the series. I admit that some of the strategy and tactics went a bit over my head, but I like how this series is progressing. Other space opera series (like, for instance, Vandread) seem to have a battle every episode, which can get a bit tiresome. Banner is taking its time, arranging various elements and strategies before jumping into battle. It looks like the series is building towards a big climatic battle during the last 4 episodes, which I’m told is fantastic.
• The music in the series bears a strong resemblance to the music in the Galactic Civiliazations II video game. Since this series was produced several years before Galciv II, I’m guessing that the composer for Galciv II was familiar with this soundtrack… In any case, I do like the music, and it seems to fit well with the space opera theme.
• The animation quality doesn’t seem all that spectacular, but it’s serviceable. There seems to be an abundance of closeups (where the only thing moving is the character’s mouth) and a lot of reused background stuff. This is all rather common though, and didn’t really distract me much. Character design is a little interesting. I don’t know why, but the eyes in this series seem larger than normal (or maybe it’s the proportions of the various pieces of the eye that are catching my attention). Anime is infamous for having larger eyes than normal, but this series seems even more excessive than usual. Perhaps I’m just becoming more and more obvservant of eyes in Anime (in other news, closed eye syndrome continues unabated). Also, perhaps because the eyes are larger than normal, some characters have eyes with pupils (Lafiel and Jinto have pupils, see screenshots), and others seem to be entirely iris (Ekuryua, the person on the right in the below screenshot, doesn’t seem to have a pupil). In animation, you can sometimes get away without drawing a pupil if the eyes are small enough, but since some of the eyes are still huge, it can be a little strange… The other interesting thing about the character designs is that some characters have long, pointy ears, while others have more normal human ears. The people that have the long pointy ears seem to be nobility (for instance, there are two people from the Abriel family in the series and they both have pointy ears, see the screenshots of Lafiel and Admiral Abriel (his screenshot is further down)), but then, some nobles don’t have them either (Jinto doesn’t and neither do the Biboth brothers). The noses also seem pointier. Not sure if there’s any significance to any of this (perhaps these are indications of various genetic enhancements the Abh have implemented), or if I’m just being overly picky.

  
  Abriel & Ekuryua have big eyes

• The first scene in the series is quite confusing – it doesn’t seem to have been translated into english (on either the dub or the subtitle). For a while, I thought I had messed something up with the setup of the subtitles and audio. In any case, after that first scene, everything seems to be fine. Not sure what the deal is there. The only other annoyance is that sometimes the subtitles are rendered right on top of what appear to be Japanese subtitles, making them hard to read (this is particularly annoying during the OP when you hear a voice describe events leading up to the current war). A bit strange, but after I got used to it, it’s fine.

I should be able to finish the series this week, and I’m told that I’m going to want to watch the last 4 episodes all at once. Hopefully, I’ll have my final review done next week.

A few more screenshots and comments below the fold…

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Banner of the Stars: Initial ThoughtsRead More »

These are very old, but new to me and I’m travelling this weekend, so time is short. So over at Everything2, someone put together a list of Anime Laws of Physics. Some of my favorites:

#4 – Law of Constant Thrust, First Law of Anime Motion

In space, constant thrust equals constant velocity.

#11 – Law of Inherent Combustibility

Everything explodes. Everything.

#12 – Law of Phlogistatic Emission

Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.

#31 – Law of Follicular Chromatic Variability

Any color in the visible spectrum is considered a natural hair color. This color can change without warning or explanation.

Good stuff, and funny even if you don’t watch anime.

Apologies for the lateness of this post. I was travelling this weekend, so I wrote it on Friday (inasmuch as it required “writing”) with the understanding that I would be able to use my phone to publish it yesterday. Anyway, I lost my phone, hence no entry yesterday. Sorry…

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is an anime series that is based on the same Manga that inspired two films (both reviewed on Kaedrin previously). For the most part, it deals with similar subjects and themes, though it does so in a less somber and more prosaic manner, sometimes even finding room for humor and the occasional smile. Despite some flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed the series and if you enjoyed the movies, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy the series.

The series is comprised of a mixture stand alone and continuity (or as they call it, “complex”) episodes. There is a good balance between the two types of episodes, though I do think that some of the stand alone episodes felt a little rushed and could have benefited from having more time to flesh out the stories (whether that be longer episodes or splitting the story up into two episodes). That said, the stand alone episodes are still entertaining and often contribute towards the larger series (i.e. they’re not completely stand alone). The continuity episodes tell the story of The Laughing Man, a masterful hacker and terrorist who has been blackmailing major corporations for six years.

Thematically, this series touches on many of the same issues as the films, but in a less direct fashion. The movies could be mind-numbingly dense at times, often directly confronting the philosophical implications of the technology in their universe (a subject I find interesting and discussed in my reviews of those movies). There are occasional info-dumps or philosophical discussions in the series, but nothing on par with the films. However, many of these technological issues come to light as a part of the plot, which tends to move forward as a result of action rather than conversations. This works well after having seen the two movies, though I’m not sure how well it would work if you haven’t seen either of them. If I had to guess, I’d say this series still raises all the fascinating questions the films does, just in a less direct fashion. What makes me what I am? Am I really who I think I am? If I could copy my brain into a computer network, would that still be me? If I could swap “shells” (bodies) or project my “ghost” (i.e. soul) into another shell, is that me? Again, the series doesn’t confront these issues directly, but it does use such technology in service of the story, which begs the questions. What would the subjective experience of transferring your consciousness from one body to another be like? Can a machine develop or have a ghost? What’s the difference between an artificial body (like the Major has) and an avatar (like the Major uses in episode 9)? And so on.

Another interesting thing about the series is external memory, or memories that are not stored in your brain (but on some other media, like a hard drive). These devices are referenced much more frequently in this series than in the movies, and I found it interesting because that is the direction we’re heading. The internet has created this phenomenon wherby you think you know something, but you really don’t… you just know where to look up the information on the internet. Obviously, this isn’t new (or unique to the internet), but it is accelerating. It reminded me of Charles Stross’ book Accelerando, a book I didn’t particularly love and never actually finished, but which had some interesting technological musings. At one point in the book, a character who stayed in constant communication with the net via a pair of glasses has them stolen. Without the glasses (i.e. without access to his external memory), he feels profoundly lost and unable to cope with reality. Obviously, we haven’t reached that point yet, but GitS:SAC shows several examples of this sort of thing.

There are some new themes as well, namely the titular Stand Alone Complex, which refers to a phenomenon where you see emergent copycat behavior without an original. For example, let’s say that someone dies in suspicous circumstances. The death could very well be attributed to natural causes, but some people might be tempted to call it a murder or conspiracy, and even others might take the opportunity to commit a copycat murder. The situation could escalate into a series of murders, all by different copycat killers. This is a stand alone complex, and it’s distinct from normal copycat behavior in that the original death was not actually a murder. As Chief Aramaki notes, they’re “Nothing but copies without an original.” It’s something of an odd concept, and it’s a little difficult to understand during the series, but it does touch on many concepts I find fascinating, such as emergent, self-organizing behavior. It also appears in several forms throughout the series, with direct references, but also in more subtle ways. For example, the Laughing Man’s logo is basically a second-order simulacra, which is a symbol without a referant. The symbol contains a quote from Catcher in the Rye and the name Laughing Man is a reference to another Salinger story, but the symbol doesn’t really represent either, nor does it actually represent what became known as “The Laughing Man.”

Public Security Section 9

The main characters of the series are the members of a special operations task-force called Public Security Section 9. This is a small team of around 8 well trained and competent members whose main charter is to perform search and rescue operations, but this ends up leading to counter-terrorism and more general anti-crime tasks. You get a much better idea of what this organization is during the series, and you also get to know its members a little better (though perhaps not as much as I liked, more on this later). Many of the members who only have fleeting appearances in the movies take on a more solid role in the series. The team seems to be highly autonomous and independent, picking and choosing their targets carefully, but often without interference from the rest of the government. This is probably due to the political leader of the group, Chief Aramaki. Members of the team also share this autonomous and independent attitude and are often trusted to carry out tasks without any intrusion from others. Aside from the Chief and Major Kusanagi (who seems to have emerged as the team’s combat leader), there don’t appear to be any ranks or jobs, though it’s obvious that some members of the team have certain specialties (for instance Ishikawa is almost always at a computer terminal, crunching numbers or tracking down the “ditigal paper trail” of whoever Section 9 is hunting, and he almost never enters battle. On the other hand, Batou is clearly a brute force combat specialist who almost never messes around with information warfare.)

Batou

Again, the movies tend to be more philosophically inclined than the series, which seems content to let the philosophical implications of their universe simmer beneath the surface of a straightforward police procedural (albeit one that is spiced up with hackers, an addition that actuall works well). There are occasions when the philosophy comes to the foreground though, such as episodes 12 and 15, both of which deal with Section 9’s AI-equipped mini-tanks, the Tachikomas. In a previous post on Gits:SAC, Author wondered if I was liking the Tachikomas, which gave me the impression that they’re dislikd in the Anime world (not sure about that though). To be sure, the Tachikomas do seem to have a child-like demeanor (they’re voiced in high pitched, young sounding female voices, for instance) and often make naive statements. These “cute” characteristics are odd when considering that they are combat vehicles. Conceptually, however, they do provide fodder for one of the interesting themes of the GitS universe, namely the question of whether or not a machine can acquire a ghost (aka a soul). In the series, Tachikomas have artificial intelligence… however, they are synchronized every night so they have identical memories. This leads to some confusion later on, as memories experienced by a specific Tachikoma become shared amongst all the other Tachikomas… which begs the question of which one of them actually experienced the event (they can’t figure it out). It is interesting that despite the synchronization process, the Tachikomas somehow manage to develop individual and distinct personalities. So even though they “wake up” every morning with the same memories, they still exhibit differing personalities and opinions (for example, one of the Tachikomas spends all its time reading paper books… every night, the memory of reading these books is synchronized with the other Tachikomas, but this one Tachikoma is the only one that continues to read).

Tachikomas

In Isaac Asimov’s robot novels, one of the main characters, a humanoid robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, mentions that while he cannot experience emotions, his positronic circuitry seems to run more smoothly when he’s around Elijah Baily (his human parter). When thinking about the potential paradoxes created by the synchronization process, I thought of Olivaw. The engineer in me also thought of tolerances and chaos theory, meaning that even though each Tachikoma has it’s memories and consciousness synchronized every night, minor defects in the manufacturing process (which are within tolerance) could account for differences in personality (inasmuch as a machine can have a personality). Batou seems to have the most affection for the Tachikomas, and has indeed picked one particular Tachikoma as his own (and he pampers it with natural oil instead of the synthetic oil used for the others – this leads to interesting consequences later on in the series). Ultimately, the Tachikomas are a relatively small part of the series, but I think they are an important part of the series, and I guess given the above, I did really like their storyline and would welcome more.

Despite the lighter tone of the show, it does still tackle mature themes and the setting is somewhat “grim and gritty” (like the movies) and so I can see why someone like Steven Den Beste wouldn’t be that interested in the series (though I think he would find the existential questions interesting, I can see how he wouldn’t love the universe that brings them up). I have less of a read on what Author likes, though I gather he didn’t care much for this series. However, I do think that Fledge would enjoy the show, if only he could get Netflix Watch Instantly running…

One of the big complaints of the series is that the animation is poor, and that is indeed true. This is a huge step down from the two films. The conceptual design is actually quite good, and there are some striking compositions throughout the series, but the biggest issues are that the backgrounds are less textured and the movements are less fluid. There is also an inconsistency in the way certain characters are drawn that gets annoying (see below the fold for an egregious example). The screenshots I’m posting actually look decent, but again, it’s the movement of the characters that is really lacking. I’m hoping that the 2nd Gig series will be an improvement (I’m pretty sure it’s not), but in any case, though the animation was inferior, it also didn’t distract me too much from the story or themes (which I consider more important, and they are indeed very well done).

The music of the series is different than the films, but holds it’s own. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as the music is mostly done by Yoko Kanno (the composer behind Cowboy Bebop’s awesome music). Though perhaps not as distinctive as her work on Cowboy Bebop, Kanno’s music is quite good and better than most anime series I’ve seen. Also on the sound front, I’ll note that the dubbing for this series is much, much better than it is for the first movie (I don’t think there is a dub for the second movie). I was using Netflix’s online-streaming service, so I didn’t have the choice to watch a sub, so I can’t comment on that (or on any differences in translation), but again, the dubbing is pretty well done here.

So I really enjoyed the series and have added Gits:SAC 2nd Gig to my queue. It’s got its flaws, but its positives outweight the negatives handily.

More comments and screenshots below the fold…

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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone ComplexRead More »

After several episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, I have a few other quick thoughts:

• In my last post, I whined about how the plot of the GitS being too obtuse. However, after watching several episodes, I think my fears were unwarranted. There is still a tendency for the plot to occassion a quick info-dump which can sometimes be overwhelming, but for the most part, each episode is relatively easy to understand. The potential exceptions are the “laughing man” episodes, but I’m guessing they’re a bit confusing because the story is still in progress and so there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
• Also in my last post, I noted that the series seems to have a lighter tone than the films, and I think that’s definitely true. For instance, Major Kusanagi is definitely displaying more of a light-hearted attitude than she does in the movies, where she has a much more earnest style. She even smiles a lot. She’s still a badass though, and a very likeable character. The one thing that bothers me is her uniform, which seems to consist of a one-piece bathing suit, thigh-high stockings, and a jacket.

  
  All female cops wear this stuff, right?

  There was some low level nudity in the movies, but there was at least a partial explanation for that (she was wearing one of those invisibility suits). I know there’s a time-honored tradition of something called fan service in anime, and if this qualifies, then it’s actually pretty tame when compared to series that are actually fan service vehicles, but still. Every time I see the major wearing that outfit, my immersion (or “transport”, if you prefer) in the story momentarily snaps, and I have to wonder why this woman is wearing what amounts to lingerie while conducting her police work. It’s not like we ever see Batou walking around in a speedo, vest, and combat boots. Of course, this is a total nitpick and when she gets sent into a battle situation, she wears more reasonable attire, so it’s not a complete disconnect.

  

• The movies tend to be more philosophically inclined than the series, which seems content to let the philosophical implications of their universe simmer beneath the surface of a straightforward police procedural. This is probably why the plot of the series is a little easier to follow than the films, and it actually works pretty well because it’s not like any other police procedural on TV. Such shows are a dime a dozen. I could probably turn on my TV and have my choice between 3 different episodes of Law & Order right now. But GitS:SAC is a police procedural that focuses on hacking, and it’s surprisingly effective at taking the usually dull or fake-sounding hacking tropes and turning them into something more compelling to watch. I think a large part of this is that it’s not just computer hacking here, but rather “ghost hacking” (i.e. hacking people’s brains). Ghost hacking is inherently disturbing, and so these stories carry more weight than, say, a typical episode of 24 (which has such laughable techno-babble as to be actually entertaining, but that’s a different story). Anyway, I think this style suits the series well, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the episodes.

That’s all for now. More as the series progresses.

I’ve started watching this series, and after the first episode, several things occur to me.

• The first episode recalls the films in a few ways. Obviously, it’s not exactly the same, but for example, both the first film and the first episod of SAC start with Major Kusanagi jumping off a skyscraper roof to attack criminals. Another similarity is Geisha robots attacking their clients (shades of GitS2: Innocence, though that movie came out after this series). Obviously this is taking place in the same universe, so you’d expect such similarities, but I do hope that the series isn’t just rehashing the same ideas over and over again. Indeed, there are some differences. For example, there seems to be an element of lighthearted humor here that isn’t really present in the movies (at one point in the first episode, Batou turns his head, smiles, and says “I think he broke” in a sorta goofy way. Also, the Major seems to be a little… less intense… than she is in the movies.) In any case, one episode is not enough to make a real comparison, and maybe they were just trying to get people into the series by referencing conventions from the rest of the GitS universe.

  

• I’m watching this on Netflix’s online service, so I don’t have a choice but to watch the dubbed version of the series. However, the dubbing at least seems better than the first film (the second film inexplicably does not have dubbing). Then again, the first film had some of the most atrocious voice acting I’ve ever heard (though perhaps some of that is due to the writing/translation), so perhaps that’s not saying much.
• The animation is notably inferior than the two feature films. The first film used a more traditional animation technique, while the second film used an interesting blend between traditional and computer generated 3D imagery. The series also uses CG, but it’s much less textured or detailed and the movements are a little less fluid. I’m guessing this had something to do with budgetary or time constraints (producing 26 half hour episodes must be more resource intensive to produce than a 2 hour movie). However, while the animation did seem odd initially, I’ll probably get used to it. It’s not that bad, and it’s not like I frown at live action movies with poor special effects or video games that don’t have eye-popping graphics. The important thing to me is the story and the ideas.
• Speaking of which, another thing that’s becoming apparent about the entire GitS series is that they either have intentionally obtuse plots, or something is getting lost in translation (or both). The ideas underlying the series are definitely very interesting (and I believe that’s what I responded to in the first two films) and can be challenging. This first episode seems more plot-centric than the films (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but I definitely think there’s still something that’s lost in translation here, and perhaps not just when it comes to language (though that’s probably a big part of it). It might be cultural (or political) references I’m not getting either. The first episode of SAC is not as difficult as the first film. I got the basic idea of the plot, but I got a little tripped up by all the detailed references to military or governmental organizations. In any case, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that both movies are a little difficult to understand (though the first is worse in this respect than the second) and so is this first episode.

More thoughts as I progress through the series… again, I’ve only watched a single episode, so it’s probably not fair to make some of the statements above until I’ve seen more of the series.