My other big project for August was doing a marathon of all the
Ghost in the Shell films, as I hadn't watched any since the original in '95. In the timeline of that universe, the last ones are the
Stand Alone Complex series (which incidentally don't stand alone well at all).
GitS: SAC - The Laughing Man (2005)
Following in the long tradition of editing a TV season into a theatrical film,
TLM seems to imagine the ending of the original
GitS film never happened. It focuses more on the Public Security (supercops) team around the famous heroine, Motoko Kusanagi. It's got a TV budget for animation, she's supersexualized like most TV anime, and the "film" is pretty poorly balanced with long exposition and anime-nerd comedy.
Didn't live up to its reputation.
GitS: SAC 2nd Gig - Individual Eleven (2006)
This second season has higher quality animation, better, redesigned characters (Motoko doesn't have to wear a swimsuit constantly), and seems directed with a film compilation in mind. It
cuts together into a much more focused story, though still with the series trademark wild philosophizing and still with the goofy tachikoma robots.
GitS: SAC - Solid State Society (2006)
A theatrical film sequel to the series, you'd think this would be much more coherent since they don't need to cut out subplots, but writer/director Kenji Kamiyama just jams in more to make the plot feel
as needlessly elaborate as any other GitS story. The animation is much higher-budget, but uses a lot of CG instead of more of Production IG's best-in-the-business hand drawn art. Once the plot finally plays out, the story seems kind of ridiculous in terms of developing the characters across the series.
Each of these works better out of context, and yet each would be incomprehensible without following the series at least a bit. Overall,
SAC is a pass for me. I much prefer the
ARISE prequel series of short films.