A Shirow Marathon
Jan. 8th, 2006 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThis weekend, the kids were mostly interested in doing their own things. I tried a few times to get them involved in a game of Uno or something, but nah, they just wanted to play by themselves, so I subjected myself to a Masamune Shirow marathon: I watched the entire second season of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex and Appleseed 2004. And I just gotta say: wow. Amazing wow.
GitS:SAC2 was a visual feast and, for transhumanists, intellectual dessert. The deliberate emergence of AIs, the transpositions of bioroid for android, the unification of ideas and memories and the questions about whether or not memories and reactions are enough to engender substrate indepedence, plus really good animation and excellent action sequences. Absolutely worth the eight-plus hours I put into watching.
And then there was Appleseed. I didn't like the animation quite so much; it was done completely in computer graphics, although the artists avoided the problems that plagued Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within by making the characters more manga-esque. The CG effects, though, provided for some eye-popping combat sequences that make the Matrix movies look like child's play. The fight scene where Duenan takes on two urban-terrain cybertanks with eight-barreled cannons is just astounding. The end battle, which in the original featured our heroes against a single megastructure cybertank, is much, much bigger and noiser this time.
And although the movie centered around macguffins similar to its predecessor (Appleseed, 1996), they could be forgiven in the context of the film and weren't badly handled. Duenan's relationship with Briearios is much messier than it was in the original, too, which makes it feel more honest. The animation's problem came during the dialogue; the mouths just don't move right and Hitomi's facial expression never changed. At least she's not a whiny drunk in this version.
All in all, given that I haven't watched more than an hour or two of TV in the past two months, I don't think this was too much of an overdose. And it was all good.
I will also mention that somewhere in there I watched the first half-hour of Revenge of the Sith and had a bad reaction to it. I really don't care what happens to Skywalker.
GitS:SAC2 was a visual feast and, for transhumanists, intellectual dessert. The deliberate emergence of AIs, the transpositions of bioroid for android, the unification of ideas and memories and the questions about whether or not memories and reactions are enough to engender substrate indepedence, plus really good animation and excellent action sequences. Absolutely worth the eight-plus hours I put into watching.
And then there was Appleseed. I didn't like the animation quite so much; it was done completely in computer graphics, although the artists avoided the problems that plagued Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within by making the characters more manga-esque. The CG effects, though, provided for some eye-popping combat sequences that make the Matrix movies look like child's play. The fight scene where Duenan takes on two urban-terrain cybertanks with eight-barreled cannons is just astounding. The end battle, which in the original featured our heroes against a single megastructure cybertank, is much, much bigger and noiser this time.
And although the movie centered around macguffins similar to its predecessor (Appleseed, 1996), they could be forgiven in the context of the film and weren't badly handled. Duenan's relationship with Briearios is much messier than it was in the original, too, which makes it feel more honest. The animation's problem came during the dialogue; the mouths just don't move right and Hitomi's facial expression never changed. At least she's not a whiny drunk in this version.
All in all, given that I haven't watched more than an hour or two of TV in the past two months, I don't think this was too much of an overdose. And it was all good.
I will also mention that somewhere in there I watched the first half-hour of Revenge of the Sith and had a bad reaction to it. I really don't care what happens to Skywalker.
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Appleseed
Date: 2006-01-09 05:13 pm (UTC)That was one of the first anime I was ever exposed to. I forgot it for many years -- remembering only the gigantic solar-collector faces of Tartarus and Daedalus -- until one day I happened upon the trailer for the remake.
I then spent almost two years looking for a copy of the original on DVD. (Yes, I did find it.)
Sometime after acquiring my copy of the original, I found a fansub of Appleseed 2004. It came subtitled in a rather roundabout fashion... it was apparently translated from Japanese to Chinese and then to English. And there was the 'Johnny Dangerously (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087507/) Tank'.
Well, perhaps it wasn't ever a school... but it certainly chewed through that building without any trouble. The gun looks like a GAU-8 mounted on a Striker body. (I wonder if it's given the Army any ideas?)
I have since bought both the standard version of the 2004 remake and one of the two-disc 'special editions'. I actually liked the translation the (I assume they were Chinese) fans did better compared to the official release -- some of the dialogue they put in Deunan's mouth is downright painful. I mean, "...gravity control through high-frequency oscillation"? That's just... ouch.
I like to lend the 2004 version out with enthusiastic comments about the tank battle in the beginning with no mention of the mobile gun platforms at the end. Invariably I have received the movie back with comments something like "Why didn't you tell me about the giant crab gun-things?!?"
Well, it just wouldn't be right if I spoiled the ending, would it?
Bryan.
Re: Appleseed
Date: 2006-01-09 09:17 pm (UTC)And the supertanks: I liked the wheels. They were gimbled and spherical, giving the tanks a turn radius no bigger than its own diagonal, and fast. Very Shirow, that.
Re: Appleseed
Date: 2006-01-10 01:42 am (UTC)Perhaps it's a commentary on precisely how bad the world has become, and how much one has to cast off their humanity to survive there. Not to say this has any bearing whatsoever on it, but the remake was made in a world where extraordinary terrorist attacks are a very recent memory.
It looks very much like the same kind of strength displayed by Major Kusanagi at the end of the original Ghost in the Shell movie where she goes up against that tank... and starts tearing it apart (bare handed!) to her own detriment.
But this is all just me speculating. I really have no idea. But I sure love those strong -- yet tortured and angsty! -- female lead characters.
...
Now, about that tank... It's quick, agile, highly situationally aware and possessing of enormous firepower. Just like Deunan Knute. But it's made of metal and flesh always wins... with some help from above, of course.
I so wanted to model that thing for use in Unreal Tournament 2004, but I simply haven't had the time.
Bryan.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 08:03 pm (UTC)(giggle) At first I misread as 'desert', and I thought, "Huh? That's *harsh*!"