I got to watch Ghost in the Shell:Innocence last night and thought of writing a simple review on it.
First off the movie is in Japanses with english subtitles, which is a good thing IMO.
I will review this film based on different categories.
Animation: The animation is without question the best I have seen in an anime. They have blended 2D animation with 3D CG quite well. There are scenes that are amazing in detail, such as a scene in which Bateau and Togusa are in a city looking for an individual to interrogate and during this scene there is a parade in which large figures like dolls are shown. This particular scene is vibrant with colors and detail as the figures in the parade dance and march, while the background observers cheer.
There is also another scene at the beginning when Bateau is going after a "killer doll" hiding in an alley. The use of 3D to show him walking through the alleyway is quite nice. With all this innovation at times I felt that it was less of a movie and more of an art exhibit, which made it a little bit less compelling than it should have been.
Plot: The plot of the movie is simple. There are robots who have killed their owners, mostly people of high ranking and basically it is up to the 2 detectives at section 9 to get to the bottom of this. The problem here however is that the film does not take its course and keep it as simple as it should be. There are many scenes which left me confused, and there were many scenes that draw out and IMO did not add to the story. One particular annoyance was the scenes with Bateau's basset hound. It seemed like that the dog was the major character of the story since it had the most screen time. From what I understand the director has the same type of dog and wanted to give his dog "screen time", but doing so did not help the story at all. In fact it became an annoyance, after the nth time of seeing that mutt I wanted to find a basset hound and stomp it to death, yeah that's how annoying it became. There was also alot of metaphors and proverbs used throughout the movie, in fact too much! They quoted everything from confucious to making references of the Bible. Enough!!
Last thing regarding the story is that they did not develop on one aspect of it, I cannot say more because it will be spoiler but their is an unexpected cameo and that part is not fleshed like it should be.
All in all the plot was not nearly as good as I expected.
Sound/Music: The sound is quite good specially the BGM during intense scenes. The music used in the original GITS movie is also rehashed here, and works quite well specially during the parade scene.
There is also the song "follow me" by Kimiko Itoh a Japanese female Jazz singer, which I am now a fan of.
Action: The action scenes although few are quite grand. We have a showdown with the Yakuza as well as Bateau taking on scores of killer dolls. Not too extreme, however there is a decapitation scene, that's as hardcore as it gets.
Subtitles: The subs were quite good. I had left my glasses and was worried that I may not be able to read them but they were big enough for even a blind person like myself to be able to read them. There are some scenes in which the subs come and go quite fast, so you have to be a quick reader.
Conclusion: The movie delivered in terms of visual but missed in terms of story (maybe I need to rewatch it). If you are a GITS fan do check it out, if you are a fan of great visuals definitely check out! If you don't like stories that tend to have little direction then you may want to wait on it.
