I still find it amazing how in 2002 — long before Facebook or YouTube existed — they got so much right about the emergent properties of social media (the Stand Alone Complex piece). It’s a brilliant metaphor that just so happened to predate it’s subject by a decade.
The anime has some problems; namely pacing and the density of narrative. There are two episodes dedicated exclusively to exposition with no action, and they can be really hard to follow due to the mediocre translation. But if you can see past the very real flaws, there is a gem of a story about the nature of what it means to be human in a connected society.
>The anime has some problems; namely pacing and the density of narrative.
I wouldn't call those problems, in that those are the hallmarks of the entire Ghost in the Shell franchise: relatively slow pacing, extreme density of information/concepts, and lots of exposition. If you're getting into a GitS work either you accept those and enjoy it or you don't and have a bad time. It's like saying Naruto has too much fighting.
Otherwise, I completely agree about Stand Alone Complex, and to me Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG was even better. It's astonishingly prescient, it seemed to absolutely nail how the 2016 election would go down to having a Steve Bannon figure who uses manipulates the media and intelligence information to achieve his goals.
The pacing issues IMO are more how the story moves along at a glacial pace, then 75% through infodumps on you and expects you to follow along through a half dozen futurist topics mashed together at the end. The exposition episodes would be fine if they were better translated.
I still think the show is worth watching despite those issues. It's easily my favorite anime series (also agree that 2nd Gig is the better half of the show; they're only separated because of how anime was funded in blocks of 26 episodes in the early 2000s).
I had trouble getting into the series and was wondering if it was just me, but this makes me want to go back and try Stand Alone Complex again. I really did enjoy the movie. It had really good world building.
Yeah, the world building is awesome. It's really the reason to stick with the show through its rough spots.
The show is divided into 2 types of episodes; about half are one-shot episodes that are only loosely referenced by the main story arc (but they usually explore an interesting theme). If you watch the episodes in the order they were released it can be hard to follow the overall plot.
(In my understanding, this is related to the name: the one-shot episodes are "stand alone", and the main story arc ones are "complex". Of course, the name has other meanings as well, more directly relevant to the story and explained in the article, but I always found it neat.)
I recommend watching the original Japanese dubbed version with English subtitles. At that time translation was rough in most anime but this has since then improved.
(For German readers I recommend the German sub, the used the same people who dubbed the Stargate series which did a really good job in both cases.)
Unless SAC is one of those incredibly rare pieces of Japanese animation where the voices were recorded prior to the animation being completed, the Japanese voiced version is just as much a dub as the English version.
The voices may not have been recorded, but the script is almost certainly better in Japanese. The English dub is a static script, but the fan-created subtitles are usually a much better translation than the official ones from that era.
It is a tough series to get into, and I won't apologize for a lot of it's pacing issues. All incarnations of Ghost In The Shell have prioritized communicating ideas about future society, which often comes at the cost of narrative cohesion. Stand Alone Complex and the Manga are, I think, the best entries in the franchise, but even those subject the audience to big exposition dumps.
But for my money, I think GitS has been one of the most prescient pieces of futurology. It's depiction of the impact of omnipresent telecommunications and technology on society is eerie.
FWIW there's a Stand Alone Complex movie, which is basically just the central plot of the series, with the side-stories edited out. I love the side-stories, but the movie is definitely easier to watch :)
SAC, particularly the Laughing Man arc, was very prescient. Especially when it came to light that certain pharma companies were intentionally increasing pharmaceutical prices.
The anime has some problems; namely pacing and the density of narrative. There are two episodes dedicated exclusively to exposition with no action, and they can be really hard to follow due to the mediocre translation. But if you can see past the very real flaws, there is a gem of a story about the nature of what it means to be human in a connected society.