|
FEATURED FILM
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone
Complex, Vol. 1
Manga Entertainment, 2004
The
original Ghost in the Shell film is frequently touted
as a landmark for the success of anime in the United States
-- when it came out on video it reached the top spot on the
Billboard sales charts. Not only was the film a commercial
success, but it became one of the most oft-analyzed anime films
in US academia (a trend to which I must admit contributing).
Now
we have the first volume of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand
Alone Complex television series out on Region 1 DVD. In
many ways the TV series strikes a balance between director Mamoru
Oshii’s film version and artist Masamune Shirow’s
original manga version. The series still follows the exploits
of the special operatives of Section 9 and features Major Motoko
Kusanagi as a powerful cyborg, but it is much more immediately
approachable than the film or the manga. Oshii’s Section
9 characters were rather prone to philosophizing while Shirow
seemed to harbor an obsession with the technical intricacies
of his own creations. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
director and chief writer Kenji Kamiyama does not seem to have
any grand artistic goals other than providing a good-looking
and entertaining television series.
Kamiyama’s
approach to the series can be seen through the influences he
cites. In an interview included on this first disc, he says
the films that he watches are usually big Hollywood productions
that he calls “the simple stuff.” In a comment that
seems odd considering his associations with Oshii, Kamiyama
says “I’m not really the type who likes challenging
movies.” (Of course, Kamiyama’s has worked on some
of Oshii’s “less challenging” projects like
MiniPato, Blood the Last Vampire, and Jin-Roh.)
Kamiyama calls the TV series a “parallel world”
to that of Oshii’s film, and it is a world that is closer
to Shirow’s manga. This can be seen in the CG opening
credits in a scene that features a fight between robot tanks
in a Shinto shrine. Although the Ghost in the Shell
film took place in a city that was modeled after Hong Kong (as
does Oshii’s sequel to the film that is forthcoming in
the US), the TV series is unmistakably situated in Japan. Also
present in the series are Section 9’s robot tanks that
had been featured in the manga but that Oshii had excised from
the film. Many of these changes could be due to Shirow’s
involvement in the series. Although Shirow’s only credit
is that he wrote the manga on which the series is based, Kamiyama
says the show’s staff had received “proto-synopses”
of storylines from him and used those as a starting point for
the structure of Ghost in the Shell: SAC.
The
story takes place in the year 2030 and it is up to the members
of Section 9 to deal with the crimes enabled by advances in
technology. The first three episodes on this disc are individual
stories that set the stage for what is to come and begin to
sketch out the characters in Section 9 while the last episode
introduces a larger story arc and an antagonist called the Laughing
Man. In the first two episodes (“Section 9” and
“Testation”) the breadth of Section 9’s duties
are displayed as they are called on to do some high-tech sleuthing
to solve the mystery of why a government official had been taken
hostage and then to use their superior firepower to stop a runaway
tank that was being controlled by the brain of its dead creator.
In spite of the differing approaches, the structure of the first
two episodes is very similar, and Kamiyama admits as much.
I found the third episode on the disc (“Android and I”)
to be the most interesting of the four on the disc because its
film and media smarts. The story of this episode concerns an
obsolete series of female robots called Jeris that have been
committing suicide. Major Kusanagi discovers that the suicides
have been caused by a virus that was looks like it was written
by a Jeri owner. They manage to track the virus to Marshall
McLachlan, the son of the Canadian ambassador (an obvious allusion
to Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan). McLachlan tries
to run away with his own Jeri (which he has protected from the
virus), but in the end Section 9 tracks him down and is able
to apprehend him. What is intriguing about the episode, though,
are the allusions to the films of Jean-Luc Godard. When Batou
and Togusa, two members of Section 9, investigate McLachlan’s
apartment, they find a screening room filled with film, many
of which are by Godard. McLachlan has 35mm film canisters labeled
Alphaville and A Bout De Souffle (a film better
known in the US as Breathless), both of which are films
by Godard. (The Alphaville canister even has the number
2501 on it, which was the code number of the Puppet Master in
Oshii’s film version of Ghost in the Shell.)
Also on the bookcase are books/tapes/files (it is unclear what
they are supposed to be) labeled Pierrot le Fou, Vivre
sa Vie, and Une Femme Mariee, which are again
all Godard films. Throughout the episode, McLachlan exchanges
dialogue from Breathless with his Jeri (who, not coincidentally
looks a lot like actress Jean Seberg’s character from
the film).
However,
one frustrating thing about this episode is the English dubbing.
In a move similar to Manga Entertainment’s dubbing of
the Ghost in the Shell film, in which lines that were
biblical quotations in the Japanese-language version came out
sounding very odd, the writers of the dub script didn’t
seem to realize that many of the lines were quotes from Breathless.
While the dub script captures the meaning of the original words,
the viewer would not recognize the dialogue as quotations. One
early example of this is the quote “Between grief and
nothing I will take grief.” This quote was originally
taken from William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms
and is quoted by the Jean Seberg’s character in Breathless,
to which the main male character replies “Between grief
and nothing I will take nothing.” However, in the English
dub “nothing” becomes “emptiness,” changing
the meaning of his statement and losing something of the original
Faulkner quote. (Then again, perhaps some leniency should be
given. I mean, we’re talking about the English dubbing
of a Japanese television series that refers to a French film
that incorporates a quote from American literature.) Other quotes
are mangled even more unrecognizably, but luckily they are preserved
in the English subtitles. (This again justifies my preference
of subtitles to dubs.)
The
fourth and last episode on the disc presents a mystery when
Yamaguchi, one of Togusa’s colleagues from the regular
police force, believes he has information regarding corruption
in the police department but is killed on his way to speak with
Togusa. Following some clues left behind by Yamaguchi (and using
an imaging computer that alludes to the one Deckard uses in
Blade Runner) Togusa discovers that the police have place photograph-taking
Interceptors into the eyes of all the police detectives without
their consent. At the press conference to announce the scandal,
however, the hacker calling himself the Laughing Man (and whose
logo sports a quote from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher
in the Rye) hacks both the cyberbrain one of the police
officials and the television broadcast to announce that because
of their incompetence he has returned to challenge them again.
This sets the stage for Section 9’s confrontations with
the Laughing Man in future episodes.
In
spite of my minor griping about the English dub translation
above, I highly recommend this disc – it’s not very
often that a science fiction show of this caliber comes along.
The animation is beautifully smooth and Yoko Kanno’s music
(especially the opening theme) adds to the mood. I'm not a big
fan of the graphic design on the disc packaging (the logo is
much uglier than the one used on the Japanese release), but
I'm more than willing to overlook the disc's exterior aesthetic
flaws in favor of the contant inside. Although it’s not
as serious or as complex as Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell
films, the television series looks like it’s going to
be a smartly entertaining ride.
|
