This movie is going to take a few viewings to soak it in entirely. On the first couple of passes, you are still amazed by the visuals and trying to keep up with the subtitles. The combo of 3D and 3D is so appealing here. I've seen it elsewhere, but what they've done here is different. In a way, what Titan AE was trying to do (blending the hand drawn character with 3D environments) is actually achieved in GITS 2.

Batou is king badass of the anime world for me. He's condemned to living out his lifespan with only his dog as his most trusted friend. He's humorless, private and a killer, but if I were picking a dodgeball team out of all of the anime characters I've seen, I'd pick him first. The scene with the Yakuza borders on funny, if it weren't the piles of dead and dying all around. That scene sealed his coolness though.

If you can deal with subtitles, then pick up this movie. It's got the same sort of plot as the first one (which means a couple viewings and maybe a real anime freak needing to fill in the holes), so be prepared. However, you won't be disappointed with the visuals. If you saw GITS 1 soon after it came out and thought, 'Hey that's neat. I didn't know they could do that,' then you will DEFINITELY want to see this.

i actually saw this puppy in the theatre last year, and have already started wearing out my dvd.

if you can't deal with subtitles, just turn em off and watch it anyway!

i know some folks have a problem with all of the psycho-philoso-babble in innocence, but how can anyone not love the visuals?

-jon

ps: there's always the series: stand alone complex. it's less pretty, but more accessible.

Completely agree, the blend of "realistically-lit" 3D backgrounds and 2d work is done very well and looks incredible. Starting to see it more and more in new anime. (Gantz comes to mind)

The appleseed movie also uses realistic lighting with toon-shaded characters, it's mind-blowingly awesome.

I want a tachikoma!

I heard a rumor that they recently translated GITS 2. I prefer watching most anime in Japanese because the dubbing (at least in the case of tv shows) is usually not done very well (a few exceptions are shows like Cowboy Bebop and FLCL) and censorship is always annoying. I don't know if anyone is still thinking of this topic but I thought I'd just throw it out there.

I'm constantly thinking of this topic, heh. What they've done to One Piece.. one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) animes of all time is a crime.

They took an anime which was geared towards teenagers and adults and cut it down to appeal to kids?! And that rap-song opening .. ugh.

Cartoon Network screwed Naruto pretty bad (not anywhere near as bad as One Piece). How on Earth can they leave in sexy jutsu but take out the blood from characters' noses?
Dragonball Z had the right idea, release two version, one for tv and an uncut version available on the DVDs. (Except, come to think of it they did change the names of some characters in the English version)
Probably the worst thing about dubbing is that characters are often given "cartoony" voices and it ruins the whole mood. Osaka's voice in Azumanga Daioh for example was very different.
In my opinion the best voice match in dubbing was that of Chii in Chobits. I swear after like the fourth episode I was convinced that the voice actress for the Japanese version was bilingual and also did the english version.
I do have to note however that the english version of Cowboy Bebop is by far superior to its Japanese counterpart. A perfect example is the character of Ed. If you watch, in english, the scene of the movie where Ed says "Ed found it!" (It's like the first scene Ed appears in) and then watch it in Japanese you'll understand. According to the set of english subtitles that are a direct translation of the original Japanese script, Ed doesn't speak in the third person and she doesn't do that strange hyperactive giggle either.
I was watching the first episode of FLCL in english on my computer (MPEG format) the other day and then watched the high quality AVI version I have of the Japanese one and I noticed (and this is based off a fansub) that the subtitles matched up with the english version almost perfectly.
Being a movie, Ghost in the Shell escaped most of the dubbing problems. (Anime movies always get more attention to preserving the mood than shows, likely because the budget is bigger and they don't usually need to censor them) The character voices were really well done and since the show (Stand Alone Complex) came out after the movie it wasn't affected too badly either. I love Batou's Japanese voice for GITS 2, and if it was translated I hope they got his voice right.

Dreamworks distributed GITS2: Innocence in the US with no dubbing, because they wanted to treat it like any other foreign-language arthouse movie. However, it's been reported that the British release of GITS2 will have a dub track using the same cast as GITS:SAC.

Awesome!
If it's British does that mean the DVD will have a region code?

For some unknown reason, I was thinking this was going to be about GITS:SAC Season 2. Probably, I just found out we had Vol. 1 of season 2 in at work on the same day I started reading this thread. :shrug:

I'd expect it'll be Region 2, PAL format.

Region 2? Bummer...

What's Region 2???

region two is europe and japan (mostly)

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the media corporations wanted to control the distribution of their product, so they created the region system, where movies released in one zone could not be sold/used in another.

-jon

I thought that's what you guys were talking about. It's always good for Californians, cause we can always just drive south of the boarder to get region 4 products.