Solid State Society begins two years after the end of Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig. The Major has left Section 9, Togusa has moved up to take her leadership position, and Batou seems grumpy and bored.
I know where he’s coming from.
The first half hour or so of this film is, to be perfectly blunt and honest, ho-hum. The animation is generally average, the story doesn’t seem to be moving with much pace, and there’s a lot of “borrowing” from the first film going on. When I say borrowing, I don’t mean there are a few similarities; I mean direct borrowing, as in the main villain is the “Puppeteer,” who hacks into people’s cyberbrains and makes them do things (in the first GitS film the main antagonist was the
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Puppetmaster, who hacks into people’s cyberbrains and, well, you know). Kusanagi jumps from a building and goes invisible, in much the same way she does at the beginning of the first film; etc. It’s a very conscious choice on the part of the makers of the film, and while it could be seen as connecting the two GitS universes (SAC and Oshii’s film take place in two different storylines) or as homage, it also compares SSS a bit unfavorably with the original.
However, about the time Batou gets interested in things again, the story picks up (everything’s about Batou in this review . . . you’d think he was my favorite character or something :) ). There is an absolutely wonderful scene of Batou and Aramaki having a private conversation in the chief’s car, and
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the dialogue for this scene and the layout/setup are superb. And from this point and for much of the rest of the film, things are better and interesting and . . . well, it’s like this:
--Batou finds the Major and they have a well-choreographed fight with a tank, and a very interesting conversation about what’s going on. Excellent character development, this, and you get a great sense of the interplay between the two. The dialogue is excellent, the action well-conceived.
--We discover there is a giant government-run old people’s home, where the rather poor (monetarily and otherwise) senior citizens are permanently connected to the Net. We are lead to this building by a plot developed at
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the beginning about orphaned children—it seems the old people inexplicably are the parents of these children, and when Togusa goes to investigate, bad things happen. There is a great noirish sense behind these scenes, the kind of thing that makes you look forward to the rest of the film. What’s going on? Who are these old people living in this dark atmosphere? What do they have to do with the Puppeteer? Did they create it? Are they part of it? Are they just innocents made to look like the bad guys?
--Bad things continue to happen to Togusa, and his family are drawn into it when the Puppeteer decides Togusa has interfered enough and should lose his daughter—by his own actions, as the Puppeteer takes over his body. This scene is done very well, too,
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leading me further from sleepiness and towards real involvement, actual full-on interest, when . . . when . . .
Well, you know what’s coming, don’t you?
We’re right back to a giant homage to the Oshii film, and the plot swerves away from noirish originality and into a long action-fight scene (not conceived nearly as well as the scene mentioned earlier), at the end of which, well, I don't want to give everything away, but it continues to be a lot like the first film. It’s not exactly alike—her reasons for being here are different, the identity of the Puppeteer is different—but it's similar enough to leave you wondering why things couldn't be just a bit more original.
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Despite all this, I’d still recommend seeing SSS, mostly for the really good Batou bits and for the genuinely good bits in the middle. I only wish they’d not gone for so many similarities to the Oshii film and made something more their own, and more consistent all the way through. It reminds me of Stand Alone Complex in general—some really good bits, some not so good. But where you kind of expect a 26-episode TV series to have its ups and downs, a single film needs more concentrated goodness to really succeed. The good news is that all this leaves the distinct possibility that there will be more in the SAC series, either as a 3rd Gig or another film. We'll keep you posted!
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