We all live lives with some degree of contrast, of jarring juxtaposition between the music we like now (say, Kylie Minogue) and what we liked yesterday (Megadeth), between the self we present at work (suit, tie) and at home (pajamas), between the décor in our front room (Ikea modern) and in our kitchen (Hello, Kitty!), etc. If you think about it, all the strange bits and pieces of our lives and how they, on some level, really don’t go together, you might wonder, as did the Talking Heads, “How did I get here?”
Watching Ghost in the Shell: Innocence for the first time was just this sort of jarring juxtaposition, on more than one level. First, on a purely visual level, the sometimes hyper-realistic backgrounds did not sync up with the more “normally” animated characters. I realize that for some people this is not a “problem,” and that many anime out currently also have backgrounds and characters that look like they come
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from two different worlds; I won’t say anything further about this other than that it annoys me, takes me out of the film, and starts me thinking about technical animation issues and not the plot.
The plot was, unfortunately, also jarring when backed by the CG imagery of the film—in this case, because the backgrounds and cinematography were so breathtaking, and Oshii’s use of the camera and direction so
incredible, that the complicated and highly talky storyline became difficult to follow (especially when you add watching it with subtitles—too many visual elements competing for the eye, I think). Other than the action at the end of the film, which is less exposition-filled and thus easier to follow, I felt I was being drowned in a visual masterpiece, with the shouts of the plot coming from above as a tiny, echoing voice
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swallowed up by the depths.
So I watched Innocence a second time—and, somehow, it all came together into a stunning whole. Now that I’d succumbed to the spell of the imagery once, I could put it just far enough out of my mind to follow the complexities of the plot, as Batou faces life without Major Kusanagi by his side, trying to solve a murder case involving mass-produced “dolls,” supposedly
non-alive female—what? robots?—sent out to work at the pleasure of whoever buys them. As in the first Ghost in the Shell film, there is a lot of philosophy in this one, from questions about the nature of the soul to the bending of reality upon itself, played to great effect as the film nears its end.
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If you have the patience for it—and you should, you really should—this is a brilliant film all around, a fitting successor to the original, and in many ways much better than Shirow’s ManMachine Interface (and, although each is a sequel to GitS, neither has anything to do with the other). You may have to watch it twice, but it’s time well-spent.
And, afterward, maybe the dichotomies of our lives will make a bit more sense, too.
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