Shelf Life

I Am Number Six

Don't get me wrong, I love The Ghost in the Shell TV series, both seasons. This is the first time I've had the pleasure of reviewing any GitS title anywhere (other reviewers always steal it first) so I wanted desperately for this to be Shelf Worthy. If it held up, I was hoping I could loan out Individual Eleven to friends who stopped after the Laughing Man arc to get them back into the show. But now I'm not confident anyone who watched this would want to go back and enthusiastically watch the TV show.

I like the Laughing Man arc better than the Individual Eleven arc for a couple of reasons; first, as I remember it, the Laughing Man story is slightly simpler. In Individual Eleven, the characters casually throw around relatively complicated political theory jargon in the dialog. So much so that I prefer to watch GitS (especially 2nd Gig) dubbed with subs on so I can hope to process all of the information. I do want my entertainment to be smarter than I am, but when actually presented with such a title, I can have a hard time processing it.

Here is the plot, in a nutshell: Ever since the end of World War IV, Asian refugees have been living on Dejima, a Japanese island. They have become a permanent underclass, making a marginal living as manual laborers without hope of ever receiving proper citizenship. Consequently, political unrest is the norm in Dejima, but recently someone behind the scenes is trying to incite the refugees to war by manipulating them with terrorists incidents. The Major and Section Nine are on the case, and their investigation eventually leads them to pursue a cultish charismatic "hero" named Kuze.

Charismatic figures, terrorism, political unrest, and refugees are all immediately relevant to the current state of the world, maybe even more so now than when the show was written. In some ways it seems like a creepy prediction of things to come. Unfortunately, this OAV, cut from a 26 episode series, only has time for big reveals. The important, character building moments are left on the cutting room floor. In particular, episode eleven is incredibly significant to the original series, and it's only alluded to in a brief flash here. (Episode eleven – which contains backstory integral to the entire Ghost in the Shell franchise – is my favorite 2nd Gig episode, so this was a major let down.)

The Tachikomas also fall to the wayside in this OAV. Throughout the TV series they were built up as (individual) characters towards a grand finale, but here only the finale remains. The ending is still touching, but probably only if you've seen all of the TV series beforehand. Only two Tachikoma shorts are included on this disc.

For a TV series that's five years old, the video quality has held up incredibly well on Blu-ray. The CG looks so sparkly and new it could've come out last week. There are only a few character moments that I felt suffered from being seen in HD (and they were all talky political scenes).

The picture was great, but I was frustrated by the dub, which isn't the same cast as the Cartoon Network version. Batou, the Major, and even the Tachikomas have been replaced by audio doppelgangers. The cast changes are probably less distracting if you've never seen GitS, or only watched it subbed. (Look, I'm basically in love with Richard Epcar as Batou and hearing this dub felt like cheating on him.)

Although there is almost no romance in GitS, I'm always cheering on Batou and his unrequited love for the Major (indeed, at times he literally carries a cross for her). There are hints in the GitS manga that that Kusanagi prefers ladies, but since she is a brain that can be transferred between bodies, I think of her has post-gender. [TOP]