
An exploratory statistical analysis of Akira and Ghost in the Shell - nibnalin
https://nibnalin.me/dust-nib/shadows-of-stained-glass.html
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podge
Interesting! Particularly the discovery of the sparing use of green in Akira.
I haven't seen either of those films in quite a few years and it really
brought back to me how staggeringly beautiful they are.

When I was in Sydney in 2018 I was fortunate enough to stumble upon the 'Anime
Architecture' exhibition[1] at the Japan Foundation, which included various
pencil drawings and hand-drawn cells from Ghost in the Shell. It's a traveling
exhibition so if it ends up near you and you're a Ghost in the Shell fan I
highly recommend checking it out.

[1] [https://anime-architecture.org](https://anime-architecture.org)

~~~
novok
Other than ghibli films, what other anime films look as good or iconic as
those two.

~~~
fnord123
Red Line -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiFjyqRfkpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiFjyqRfkpo)

Ninja Scroll -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXJI339uQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXJI339uQs)

~~~
saiya-jin
well then Sword of the Stranger (Stranger: Mukô hadan) must have a honorary
mention too for those kickass main characters

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haddr
Somehow reminds me of the "Typeset in the future" serie of movie analyses from
the perspective of typography used.

Highly enjoyable (if you like typography and sci-fi movies):
[https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/](https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/)

~~~
ericol
Last year somebody posted this [1] right here in HN. Speaking about being mind
blown.

[1] [https://fontsinuse.com/uses/28760/neon-genesis-
evangelion](https://fontsinuse.com/uses/28760/neon-genesis-evangelion)

~~~
jacobush
502 Bad Gateway? :-)

~~~
ericol
Oh. I picked it up from the chat with a friend where I knew it was.

That's so sad, it was a really incredible good article.

Fortunately, it's available in Google's cache [1] (And I just made a backup
with SingleFile because of the 502)

[1]
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYjiVt...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYjiVtFump0J:https://fontsinuse.com/uses/28760/neon-
genesis-evangelion+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ar)

~~~
riquito
The original image is still available

[https://www.evangelion.co.jp/neon_genesis.html](https://www.evangelion.co.jp/neon_genesis.html)

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metroholografix
GITS is an immensely deep philosophical tour de force, an emergent masterpiece
of synthesis.

I enjoyed the analysis even though it feels incomplete without examination of
the ambient music (you could write a thesis just on that alone).

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agent008t
Why is Akira considered good? I watched it as an adult a few years ago and did
not get the appeal. The story made little sense and appeared to have little,
if any, depth. I wasn't really taken by the atmosphere or the 'feel' of it
either. The graphics looked dated and not very inspiring.

Is it one of those movies that is noteworthy because it was the first to try
certain things? Because it was very impressive for its time? Because people
associate a sense of nostalgia with it? I would hardly recommend it today to
someone looking for a good movie to watch. Some of my most favourite movies
are old and some are anime, and I am a big fan of cyberpunk, so I don't think
it's because of my aversion to the genre.

~~~
crocal
It’s hard to overestimate the gigantic /smack in the face/ that Akira was when
it came out on screen. Much of us had only seen Disneyish / childish stuff so
far, and even adult-themed animation was cartoonish in nature. And here walks
in the room bikers hitting themselves in the face with steel bars, incredibly
detailed sets, flawless animation (Akira was 24 fps on one), exotic graphism
and insane music. I skipped class once in my life. It was to take the train
and go to the big city to see Akira.

~~~
flobosg
This. In my country of origin it was shown at prime time in the mid-nineties,
and even then it was kind of controversial. I was a kid and didn't understand
much, but I still remember the experience of watching it. Akira was definitely
a watershed moment in anime.

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gwern
Note to author: you have many "its" typos in the visualization captions &
elsewhere. It would be good to have an abstract in the paper.

I am also a little puzzled by the GitS section: the Akira section makes a
point about green=good that seems correct and I'd never realized before, but
the GitS section does not actually seem to draw that much on the color
analysis? There's just the one point about shifting into action. Is that
really all that can be said about the colors for GitS?

~~~
nibnalin
Hey Gwern! Thank you for your note. You're right about the "its", I think a
lot of them happened because quotation marks in my Latex setup need to be
dealt with individually. I'll make a pass and fix those soon.

I suppose you are also right about the GitS section. The main useful
observations I made there were the abundance of skin tone and the gothic look
of the museum towards the end, but those are not as significant as the green
in Akira. I'd love to hear your (and anyone else's) thoughts on the colors in
GitS.

( Also, on a separate note, thank you for all your advice related to ML things
in the TPU Discord over the past couple days :) )

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LargoLasskhyfv
...In my essay, I want to explore the “shadows” of these stained glass windows
(i.e. films) to understand the patterns exhibited by the church (i.e the art
of filmmaking).

You can't do that! Church is holy! No x-raying of wonders allowed! That would
show the extent of the cargo-cult :)

Anyways, I liked it, though it felt somehow incomplete?

What do you make of [1] [https://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-
orange-h...](https://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-
hollywood-please-stop.html) in this context?

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ImaCake
This is enjoyable reading. It is always interesting to see different ways of
visualising things to extract new meaning from them. The dominant colour
graphs remind me of kymographs from single molecule biophysics which track the
movement of proteins while they carry out some biologically important process.

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seism
Wonderful exploration of film data. It would be great to learn from the same
process applied to film material in the public domain. Extra brownie points
for using "Python, Julia & R" in the same dataviz.

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michaelt
_> In any other anime film, we might be quick to dismiss these suggestive,
voyeuristic shots as "fan service", but Ghost in the Shell uses these to
express something deeper. When bodies are purposeless shells, what does it
even mean to sexualise them?_

While I agree the nudity in GITS isn't gratuitously sexual, I was quite
surprised when I learned what a large portion of Shirow's oeuvre is erotic art
books.

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gfaure
Interesting colour analysis that would be great to see applied to other
movies. Minor note -- "Batuo" in the context of GitS is surely "Batou"?

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rawoke083600
Man this is so well done !! Congrats :) I love the barcode-method ! It's like
a "dimensional-reduction-technique" but visual.

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jdkee
While I disagree with several of the author's conclusions, this is a novel
technique of data visualization.

~~~
taneq
I haven't seen chord diagrams used like this before but back in the early
2000s I worked in a shared office with a guy doing movie colour analysis using
barcodes, so that at least has been around for a while.

