Ghost
In The Shell: 25th Anniversary Edition (1995/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: D Film: A-
The
year is 2029. Major Motoko Kusanagi is part of Section 9, a group of
highly trained cyborg military unit that hunts illegal cyborg crimes,
but in an age where hackers can hack minds, even bodies how do you
catch the criminal? Section 9 has a chance to catch the mysterious
and greatest cyber hacker of all times "The Puppet Master",
but like everything in their world, nothing is as simple or as it
appears to be. In the future, mankind is able to transfer the human
mind into cyborg bodies, but it has given rise to the question where
does human end and machine begin?
Motoko
leads a team of cyborgs to hunt down any illegal activities related
with cyborg bodies, hackers, data that threaten the common peace.
They are suddenly ordered to catch the Puppet Master, a hacker with
unknown gender, age, or nationality that has broken into every
government and database, but then they discover the Puppet Master was
a rogue government AI that now claiming it is now self aware and new
form of life form, but the government will do anything to silence it
and the secrets it knows.
Ghost
in the Shell took the world by storm, one of the first anime to
combine animation and early computer graphics with cyborg futuristic
future story. Created by Masamune Shirow, Shirow challenged the
limits of the human soul, nature and machine. That if one day man
does become a machine, where does the human ghost exist, and what if
there are other 'ghosts' that are not human and how do you tell the
difference? Ghost in the Shell challenges some of those ideas
and how important some of those questions might be.
Note
that the anniversary refers to when the original manga book was
issued, and not this animated feature, which arrived 5 years later.
The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image looks as good as it
can for a film this age with its kind of animation and early CGI
animation, while the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix is a
welcome upgrade of the original audio. There are no extras.
-
Ricky Chiang
