Anime

[Michael Kerpan]

I generally love Science Saru's work -- but sometimes their projects just don't work for me -- like Devilman Crybaby a while back and last season's Sanda. In both cases I suspect it is because the underlying source material just was not my sort of thing....

[colinr0380]

This is bizarre: Studio Khara did an "Evangelion 30+ Anniversary" short film focused on two Asukas from different versions of Evangelion teaming up to try and find a better ending for her character out of the various series, films and rebuild films, and only intended it to be shown in a limited theatrical showing. However people inevitably filmed the screening and began putting the footage up online, which led the studio to try and suppress it from the internet by issuing takedown strikes on channels. But to prove that they owned the short film Studio Khara sent a link containing the HD quality full short out, which immediately spread the footage even wider, and in better quality!

So they have given up on trying to suppress the short and have just put it up in full on their official channel.

[cantinflas]

Ghost in the Shell is about to get a new TV series produced by Science Saru (Maasaki Yuasa's production company) which looks from the brief glimpse of the animation style that this may be going back to the original Masamune Shirow manga style. The other big difference is that this is going to be the first piece of Ghost In The Shell media that doesn't have Major Motoko Kusanagi voiced by Atsuko Tanaka, as Tanaka passed away in 2024. So this might necessarily be quite a break with everything that has come before.

Here's the second teaser trailer

[jazzo]

Sorry if this has been reported already, but I completely missed that the anime version of Naoki Urasawa’s incredible manga, Monster, is finally getting a North American Blu-ray release from Discotek this August.

This is "Collection 1", episodes 1-37, so expect one more of these sometime in the next year to finish it off.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Monster- ... ay/394274/

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

GKIDS 4k home video release of Angel's Egg in September and available for exclusive pre-order now.

[pizza time!]

Thanks for the heads up... Looks sick



https://store.gkids.com/collections/gki ... rs-edition

[feihong]

Ghost in the Shell is about to get a new TV series produced by Science Saru (Maasaki Yuasa's production company) which looks from the brief glimpse of the animation style that this may be going back to the original Masamune Shirow manga style. The other big difference is that this is going to be the first piece of Ghost In The Shell media that doesn't have Major Motoko Kusanagi voiced by Atsuko Tanaka, as Tanaka passed away in 2024. So this might necessarily be quite a break with everything that has come before.

Here's the second teaser trailer

I got to see the first couple of episodes at Anime Expo. I think you could say that both previous series and movies use the Mamoru Oshii film as a creative jumping-off point, but the new series jettisons all of that in favor of a nearly panel-by-panel, line-by-line adaptation of the original manga. Personal mileage will probably vary here quite a bit. I've lived with this comic for about 35 years now, collecting every marginally-improved version, reading it and fussing over it, so not a single shot or line of these two episodes surprised me. There were a few little changes –– in the pre-Section 9 mission, Super Spartan, Motoko for some reason doesn't disconnect the squad's android assistant when she gets hacked by the military cyborgs, letting her just overload and get her brain fried. There are a few of these little details changed. That said, the art is incredibly appealing, and the direction, layouts, editing...everything like that is noticeably good. There was a panel discussion with all the main creative personnel on the project––the goal of everyone there is to slavishly recreate the experience of reading Shirow's manga––which explains the convulsive pacing, the raucous score (way more influenced by the music from Saturday Night Live's studio band than I would have expected), and the deliberately jarring comedy, violence, and attitude in what we're seeing.

Thematically, there's not much to talk about. Shirow's original lets the reader scan in the images for signs of what the comic is about––characters in the background with malfunctioning, dilapidated cybernetic parts past their ability to maintain or replace. The line in the Oshii movie about the Section 9 agents not wanting to quit because it means giving up the full-coverage maintenance on their cybernetic parts is, if I recall right, an explanatory addition to something readers would have to put together over contiguous chapters of atmosphere and situations. I think it remains to be seen if this show, which is very focused on attitude and action so far, has time for much of this background material.

Episode one covers the intro hit from the prologue and the fight at the Sacred Citizens' Relief Center in Super Spartan, matching closely with the manga chapters. Episode two, which focuses on the first official mission of the Section 9 team, Junk Jungle, follows the garbage collectors inadvertently hacking the security conference. This is a fraught chapter from the original manga––which has been censored fully in past English versions, sometimes on purpose and sometimes just by accident. Kodansha's latest version of the book keeps the entire lesbian sex scene intact, but as far as the filmmakers are concerned, they don't feel they can go as hard as Shirow does on the page.

I don't think the filmmakers understand this oft-excised scene the way I see it. Motoko is on vacation, brain-diving with two other women to a boat out in an ocean, where they have a three-way. Motoko is seen diving through the sky to the boat in the beginning of the scene, her blonde friend is topping the red-headed friend, and Motoko joins in, her hair changing color for some reason to become blond. Batou has barged into this feed to tell Motoko that her leave is cancelled, but he watches what's going on for a minute and has a very conflicted reaction, torn between performative bouts of "girls kissing is hot" and vehement "my stomach hurts" cases of the not-gays. What happens in the comic is that Motoko gets rough, starting to rip the redhead's cyborg body apart. Then Batou's presence is felt in the feed, and Motoko aborts the simulation, embarrassed at what Batou has seen, sheepish at having to abandon her virtual lovers.

One thing the filmmakers do that is weird, is that they make Motoko the bottom in this scene, and the redhead does something to Kusanagi with a special glove. This version of the redhead character design, with the glove on, looks suspiciously like an android Motoko takes control of in the dastardly sequel manga, Man-Machine Interface, but I don't know why they'd be making that association. Then the scene is framed and recorded in a way that makes it clear what everyone's doing while at the same time cleverly cropping out the naughty bits. Honestly, it reminded me a little of all the awkward ways this book has been censored over the years, nothing about this framing and blocking seemed smooth––who cares though, I guess. Shut up, pervert me. But I think making Motoko the bottom here subtly misses the point. There are little hints throughout the manga chapters that Motoko is growing frustrated at the limits of her own body. The comic (which I suppose I'm spoiling, but damn, son, the thing's been around for 40 years, it's like spoiling Citizen Kane at this point) is building up to Motoko's consciousness slipping into the web at the end, transcending her body, ah the net is vast and so on, and so as we see Motoko's lovemaking as increasingly violent and out-of-control (later on Motoko loses a boyfriend in part, it's implied, because he's intimidated by her), we're getting probably the biggest, clearest hint of what Motoko's journey in the story will really be about––it's why cutting this scene always meant ruining the story setup that was happening. But if she's on the receiving end of the sex session, that searching frustration is much harder to suss out. The english dub, which we saw, makes no attempt to indicate frustration in Motoko's moaning voice, playing it like a straightforward, wholly exploitative sex scene. And nothing in the scene direction picks this moment out as a key bit that tells us something about Motoko, besides that she "plays for both teams," or whatever. So even though I was happily surprised to see that they kept this scene in (cutting it also disrupts the flow of event in the scene in question, so that censored comic book versions always seemed very jarring), it's interpretation left, I thought, everything to be desired. Now it really seems just like a detour for the perverts out there.

The other thing is that the second episodes, unlike the first, ends midway through Junk Jungle. It ends when the trash-truck-driver finds the dealer and tries to warn him, and then the dealer whips out a little gun whose discharge knocks over the garbage truck and takes out Kusanagi's and Togusa's vehicle. One presumes episode three starts with the chase through the market which follows in the manga chapter––no reason to believe otherwise. I suppose if they're going at this pace, they might get two seasons out of the first Ghost in the Shell manga.

Personally, I wish this reverent adaptation had been done to Appleseed, a Shirow creation of equal ambition and magnitude, but one that has been only very poorly-served in its few previous adaptations. Probably the best adaptation was a 3-minute live-action promotional video shot, for some reason, by Studio Gainax, which had none of the story content, or the kinds of visuals of the manga, but which at least created a good look for Deunan and Briareos, and in some small way, if you looked very closely, possibly suggested something of the ambition of the original manga––something the adaptations have never succeeded in doing. Everything other adaptation has been dire. But in general, I'm not overly-enthusiastic about this new trend for 1-to-1 adaptations of manga source material. I've loved reading Dead Dead Demons' Dededededestruction and Witch Hat Atelier, and their adaptations looked like exciting, incredibly beautiful animes. But I've been unable to get through more than an episode of either show; I know the stories so well––tbe manga in both cases had such a huge impact on me––and I remember too my reading experience, in vivid detail. And with that context, my god, do these direct adaptations seem to move far more slowly than the stories as I imagine them in my head, from my own reading. Ghost in the Shell's adaptation is better than that, in the sense that it moves in a way which feels like you are reading Shirow's jangly, off-kilter, super-fast pacing. But the other shows following this trend are so earnest and plodding, you feel like they are taking the material so seriously, and really, it just sucks the fun and character out of the proceedings. Ghost in the Shell is a little different in that respect, but it still suffers from this new adaptation sickness, because it seems so focused on every moment that occurs in the comic, rather than focusing, like Mamoru Oshii had previously, on what the story was really about. That said, it is eminently more watchable than the other shows of this ilk which are on right now.