My Jaw Has Dropped

At the urging of some friends, I went (with great trepidition) to the store to purchase some...anime.

O.K., O.K., so I've had RoboTech for years. I own Planetes. But the first was something that hooked me years ago, when it was shown locally (WPIX, Channel 11, out of New York), one episode a day, five days a week. I worked a few miles away from our then apartment and was able to get home and watch it while cooking supper. Along with Star Blazers, they were a lot of fun, but...

Primitive. Limited animation, limited story, limited characters.

A friend recommended Planetes, and I picked it up as I was interested in the subject matter: near-future space exploitation (not exploration, actually using space). Characters had pasts, "issues', were gritty, smoked cigarettes, drank and got drunk, bitched and moaned, fell in and out of love, died...Interesting stuff.

Beyond that, it was a confusing morass. What anime was good? What was bad? Which version to buy (each seems to exist in multiple "complete", "remastered", "expanded", "super deluxe", etc.)? How to proceed?

Man, there are so many titles. And if you look at online reviews, proceed with caution. As a "noob", most of the "fanboi" will treat you as pond scum when you inquire.

O.K., back to the jaw dropping. One title that was recommended was Ghost in the Shell. However...confusion abounds, as there is a movie, a sequel, a third movie which is not related to the two movies, but is a sequel to the two seasons of the television show which takes up some of the elements of the manga, expands upon some, parallels others, and...

You see what I mean? Oh, my, aching, head. Several versions of the movie on DVD. Sequels that do and don't relate. Releases of the television series in boxed sets, non-boxed sets, with extras, without extras...

Somebody needs to write a comprehensive guide for noobs.

I went to the store and picked up a two-disc version of Ghost in the Shell as well as a boxed set of the television series (first season). Last night, after a multi-hour Odyssey of the Mind meeting (don't ask, long story), I put the first disc of the movie into the computer and...

The jaw dropped.

I only watched about 15 or so minutes, but what a 15 minutes. Remember that story that William Gibson relates about how he was working on Neuromancer, went to see Bladerunner and staggered out of the movie theatre, realizing that he was seeing echoes of his creation on the screen...Ever hear about how the folks behind Matrix (great first movie, should have stopped there!) pitched their product and one of the pitch items was a showing of Ghost in the Shell (GITS, from now on)? Maybe they should have just skipped making those other two Matrix flicks and done what the folks at Pixar did with movies like Spirited Away (helped to distribute it to a wider audience).

This is a cyberpunk movie, a heck of a lot closer than anything else I've seen for the genre. Obviously inspired by Bladerunner, it does what Bladerunner set out to do several levels better. It is cyberpunk on the screen, a lot "rawer" and closer to the source than anything out of Hollywood.

So I go back to the store today and look for similar stuff. Still a morass of titles and versions, not any clearer where to go next. But I did pick up a novel of the movie and a CD of music (the music is pretty dang astounding on its own).

My jaw has dropped.