The Ghost in the Shell anime has reached the end of it's run.
10/10.
To be quite frank, I'm at a loss for words. It was beautiful. The ending of it all, it somehow made the ending of the first Oshii film look bad.
Because both are based on the Manga, they're spiritually the same. The only difference is in the direction. I think that only adds to the beauty. It's a story so powerful that almost 30 years on, doesn't need any changes made.
I have enjoyed being able to come home to a GitS Tuesday for 9 weeks now. And it's sad to see it end.
Also, it's incredibly frustrating to see it end, because they end it on a question. You're not supposed to do that, you're meant to end with a question being answered. Argh.
I'm not that upset. But like I really want to know what they get up to after the show.
Luckily I do know what happens, because I have the Manga. As you might already know however, the Manga is black and white, and it doesn't have an incredible soundtrack, or voice acting, or supreme animation quality.
I have my doubts that 1.5 will get animated though. It would be really nice, but 1.5 and 2.0 don't hold any space in the public consciousness, so they might as well not exist as far as the people in charge are concerned.
Science Saru is such a good animation studio. I've really enjoyed Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and DanDaDan, and now The Ghost in the Shell.
I've actually seen both DanDaDan and The Ghost in the Shell in my local cinema for the specials they had out. Good times.
I think I'm going to get GitS on Blu-ray now. I'll put it right next to my Edgerunners collectors edition.
I still don't actually have a Blu-ray player, but I might buy one tbh and then raid some local charity shops and HMV.
Is it possible to get a 2-in-1 Blu-ray and CD player? I don't actually know, and I don't want to look it up because then this part of the blog wouldn't need to be here, and I like it where it is.
I don't see why it wouldn't be possible, Blu-rays do have sound and video, not just video, right?
Whatever the case, I'll find out sooner or later when I do decide to find out.
According to the website, the Blu-ray is actually going to be releasing with the bonus footage I saw in the cinema, which would be nice to see again. My heart screamed when they were talking about how they made the soundtrack, as it's a mix of human performers, and synthetic instruments. A perfect fusion for this story, where humanity and cybernetics and AI come together.
I've witnessed the art on the CD/Vinyl cover. Holy shit I need that.
I just have to have it. The CD case is actually super-sized to be the same as the Vinyl, so the art can be truly appreciated.
There are so many songs on this soundtrack, that it spans across 4 sides of Vinyl. It's 2 discs, each with an A and B side.
While I'm listening to the soundtrack, I'll finally build my own digital picture frame. I've said it before I think. Certainly in my cyberpunk yapping recently.
This is my excuse for putting it off for the time being. It'll take ages to get my hands on it I think, because I've only been able to find Japanese websites selling it.
What's going on the picture frame? Screenshots from the anime of course!
You know those TVs that every school has in the reception area for some reason? Yeah, I want to make one of those out of my shitty old chromebook I had back in the day.
The official GitS website actually has some watermarked screenshots up on it already. These are pretty good. I'll probably go through and grab a bunch without watermarks and scenes they don't have up, but I feel like I should recommend this because I like it.
If I were a super-wizard class Hacker like Major, I could probably hack a way into downloading all the images that I want with a simple script. I'm going to make that a short-term goal of mine. When Edgerunners 2 was announced, they put a bunch of stuff up on their website as well, but when I tried to download them all I managed to take all the images included in the footer of each page and also a billion different resolutions of favicons.
While I'm there I'm going to be stealing a lot of their source code. Their website is so clean and fun to use. You don't really see that too often. I've spied a lot of features I could make use for myself.
During my time surfing through the site, I noticed that in the News section, they have information about a new project.
It turns out that the creator of the Ghost in the Shell is writing a new series, set in the universe of GitS and during the events of the Manga as well. It's called Glitch Witch, and it's out every Wednesday I think. I'm not sure, because I can't read Japanese. I haven't yet followed along with a Manga as it gets uploaded, so I don't know how soon I can expect and official translation, or where I can go to find unofficial translations.
Hopefully the FBI don't end up being the good guys in this story. I always hate to see things get twisted that way. As someone not from the US, I don't know all the intricacies and differences between the FBI and the CIA, but the CIA are *always* evil, and have the most fucked up history I couldn't even imagine. Look up the Church hearings if you don't know. Anyway I don't know the difference really, but they're probably also pretty bad if they're run by the same government.
The name Glitch Witch I would've used myself for one of my WIPs if I had known the name was free. With a name like that you kind of just have to assume that it's already been taken. Buy hey, at least it was taken by a legend who knows just how to make brilliant works of art.
Well I think that's all I have to say for now.
When I get my hands on the Blu-ray and the CD, I'll let you know - and probably post about it under Cool Things. My pictures section of the site is looking pretty abysmal at the moment though so I might try and get a pretty picture of the album art.
And when I have a working picture frame showing screenshots of the anime I think I'll show that off too.
Also, I'll upload the code for the script / scraper / whatever when I get it working so you can use it on whatever websites you're interested in!
More blogs coming soon! Probably CyberpunkTCG decks :3