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What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
OK, this isn't strictly anime, but my friends and I watched the live-action "Ghost in the Shell" movie with Scarlett Johanson the other night. We've been doing a GitS marathon, so it made sense to watch it.
Didn't have the highest of hopes, but it was OK. I think it did an alright job of pulling in parts and memorable moments from SAC and the original movies to make a new storyline. Which was an Arise-style origin-of-the-Major storyline.
That said, I think the portrayal of the Major wasn't the best and was a noticeable deficiency. Not because ScarJo is a bad actor or anything. I think they just made the Major here too...flat and stunted. Like she has no personality, barely any emotions.
The Major may be serious in the anime, but she has personality and emotions. She can joke around with her team, she can be sarcastic, she can be very angry (she's sometimes referred to as the "gorilla lady"), she cares deeply for the rest of Section 9 and shows it. She has compassion, but also a strong sense of justice. She may be 100% cyborg, but she's 100% human.
None of that came through in the live action movie. Which is a shame, since that's such a huge philosophical point of GitS. Retaining humanity while giving up the physical parts of humanity, sometimes even completely. That's essentially what a "Ghost" is: the human soul or mind.
Visually, the movie was cool. Very Cyberpunk 2077. I also made the connection that GitS is cyberpunk. I don't know why I never really realized that.
Idk, I give it a 6/10. I think we'll watch SAC_2045 next, which should complete the whole GitS universe for us.
I appreciate the broader view on it, all I remember is the outrage (justified imo) when she was announced.
Maybe this finally tips me over the edge to watch the original anime? I have seen some gifs and heard some very good things about it but haven't pulled the trigger yet