Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Features two of the most gripping and imaginative story arcs (Laughing Man, Individual Eleven), within one the most lavish worlds ever. GITS's universe feels like our tomorrow, and our today. There is a lot of rote anime nonsense and filler however, but you can find some heart and playfulness in there too. Great.

It's sleek. It's cool. It's potentially better than the film. The story lines are tight and adult oriented, as in they treat you like you have a working brain and don't need to dumb things down for you. And the soundtrack is fantastic. I listen to it all the time. Second season, not as good, but you don't even have to watch it. Literally in the name: Stand Alone.

S1: 7/10, S2: 7/10

Nice philosophical sci-fi but so very dull. 90% People chatting. They talk for the first half for exposition - once the story is set up, there's a brief amount of action - and then we're into the debriefing where they chat about what we all learned today. I remember hearing the makers of Dangermouse laughing about how he would always end up in the arctic or down a dark hole so they wouldn't have to do so much animation. Hmmm.

s1 83, s2 84

S1 84.5, S2 85.5

The Laughing Man arc of season 1 is the best the GitS franchise has ever been. It has plenty of profound ideas, well executed political intrigue, and fun twists. One of the best animes ever made.

It's like they sat around and came up with the best ideas for a cyberpunk series they could, and then did there best to ruin each of those ideas with a terribly-made show. The mere fact that Major walks around in a swimsuit all the time prevents this show from ever being taken seriously. Then the rest of each episode is spent just sitting down talking. With animation you could make literally anything happen and they spend the whole show just sitting in cars or offices talking to each other.

Imagine this being the first anime series you watch and then expecting anything else to be good

As a fan of cyberpunk and future tech, there's a lot here that appealed to me. It's definitely full of interesting ideas and concepts for the genre. But I've never been a huge fan of anime and the contrivances of the format ruin my enjoyment somewhat, especially when the main ideas presented in each episode usually boil down to long expositionary speeches by characters. But for anyone who is a fan of both cyberpunk and anime, this is probably the best thing ever.