"Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" makes me sad in a way because I expected to like the series a lot more than I ended up doing...
I found the premise of a futuristic society in which brains are planted in artificial bodies and AIs can hardly be distinguished from humans to be extremely appealing!
Coupled with the philosophical question of what humanity actually is and where the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence blur, I thought this series HAD to be good. When I read all the good reviews, I was completely convinced and excited to watch the series.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the series makes only moderately good use of this premise. Although dystopian visions of the future are shown here, the series spends much more time showing political problems in this apparent utopia. A majority of the scenes take place in offices, and not in the futuristic city that is so interesting to me.
The political aspect makes the series extremely complicated at times and therefore often quite tiring to watch.
So this isn't an anime to put your feet up on. A lot is required of you to understand the series and its political drama. I actually always listened with concentration, but I still had to rewind scenes again unusually often because I didn't fully understand them.
Other things I didn't really like were the rather superficially written characters and the action sequences. The main characters are mostly likeable, but you don't get to see much of their lives outside of work in Section 9 - I would have liked that more.
And while there is action, it's often pretty standard and hardly exciting.
However, I found the antagonists of the two seasons and their motivations very interesting and very well implemented, although I liked the first season better in that aspect.
In the end, I had false expectations from this series and therefore could only be disappointed. If I would've a general idea of the nature of this show, before I watched it, I probably could've enjoyed it more and then also rated it better.
Coupled with the philosophical question of what humanity actually is and where the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence blur, I thought this series HAD to be good. When I read all the good reviews, I was completely convinced and excited to watch the series.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the series makes only moderately good use of this premise. Although dystopian visions of the future are shown here, the series spends much more time showing political problems in this apparent utopia. A majority of the scenes take place in offices, and not in the futuristic city that is so interesting to me.
The political aspect makes the series extremely complicated at times and therefore often quite tiring to watch.
So this isn't an anime to put your feet up on. A lot is required of you to understand the series and its political drama. I actually always listened with concentration, but I still had to rewind scenes again unusually often because I didn't fully understand them.
Other things I didn't really like were the rather superficially written characters and the action sequences. The main characters are mostly likeable, but you don't get to see much of their lives outside of work in Section 9 - I would have liked that more.
And while there is action, it's often pretty standard and hardly exciting.
However, I found the antagonists of the two seasons and their motivations very interesting and very well implemented, although I liked the first season better in that aspect.
In the end, I had false expectations from this series and therefore could only be disappointed. If I would've a general idea of the nature of this show, before I watched it, I probably could've enjoyed it more and then also rated it better.