Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Directed by Mamoru Oshii, Ghos in the Shell is an anime movie based on a manga of the same title. I went to see it last night at a midnight screening in Duke's at Komedia theatre. I have watched the anime series a few times, but had never seen this classic movie before. It could e considered a cult film with a large following, so I was super excited to finally watch it. 

Okay, this movie is legit crazy. I couldn't get a grip on the plot at all; it moved at such a fast pace. The individual character storylines and interactions are very complex, and I felt more confused than understanding. I suspect it might take another viewing to get my head around it. The visuals are absolutely stunning none the less, and when it first was released it received fantastically positive reviews for its integration of cel-animation and CG animation. The story is about a futuristic world, so the subjects are mainly robots, machines and cyborgs. The setting is based on Hong Kong, with its cacophony of sounds, packed streets and immense buildings. It also represents the relationship between old and new. Like the story, the visuals on screen are chaotic, overwhelming and confusing. 

Ghost in the Shell used a novel process called "digitally generated animation" (DGA), which is a combination of cel animation, computer graphics (CG), and audio that is entered as digital data. In 1995, DGA was thought to be the future of animation, which mixed traditional animation with the emerging use of computer graphics, including digital cel work with visual displays. Editing was performed on an AVID system of Avid Technology, which was chosen because it was more versatile and less limiting than other methods and worked with the different types of media in a single environment. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_(film))

The action is realistic, apparently attributed to the art director sending the animators to carefully study movement and even went as far as giving them firearms training so that they could best recreate the action believably

The opening sequence is stunning, and the music and sounds effects are used to amazing effect. The opening credits of the film were produced by the CG director, Seichi Tanaka. Tanaka converted code in a computer language displayed in romanized Japanese letters to numbers before inserting them into the computer to generate the credits. The origin of this code is the names of the film's staff as written in a computer language. I can see how the Wachowski siblings were influenced by this to create some of the iconic imagery of the Matrix.