film    print    sound    leisure    forum
company line »

shopping guide »

contact us »

get reviewed »

get published »

expand yourself »


find it »

Teleport City search allows you to search our entire site as well as our favorite sites about cult films, obscure music, literature, and swank living.



Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Ghost in the Shell II/Patlabor III

Ghost in the Shell: Innocence -- 2004, Japan. Starring Akio Otsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Koichi Yamadera, Tamio Oki, Yutaka Nakano, Naoto Takenaka. Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Written by Masamune Shirow, Mamoru Oshii. Purchase from Amazon.com

Patlabor: WXIII -- 2002, Japan. Starring Katsuhiko Watabiki, Hiroaki Hirata, Atsuko Tanaka, Ryunosuke Obayashi, Mina Tominaga, Toshio Furukawa. Directed by Takuji Endo, Fumihiko Takayama. Written by Tori Miki. Purchase from Amazon.com


Sorry if this review is a little dense on technical info, as opposed to being dense int he way my reviews usually are.

There isn't a lot of anime reviewed at Teleport City, and I'm not entirely certain why. The dearth of anime reviews is certainly not an accurate reflection of my viewing habits. I'm not hardcore student of the game, but it's not as if there's never been an anime title flitting across my television screen. I guess I just always figured that so many more knowledgeable people were already writing about the stuff that there was no real point to adding my voice to the chorus. There was, for the most part, very little of significance I would have to add to the discourse.

But then, it's rare that I have anything significant to add to any sort of discourse, and since I tend to watch a lot of titles that have fallen out of favor or been all but forgotten as the eternal sands of time shift ever forward and bury everything under the advancing mountain of Naruto episodes, I figured there was no real point to avoiding such reviews. It's important, after all, that crusty old dudes like me dedicate ourselves to reminding the younger generations about Golgo 13, Wicked City, and of course, Odin (you will bow to Odin). There have been a couple anime reviews on Teleport City in the past -- both of Leiji Masumoto creations -- but those reviews were written a long time ago, when the world was young and the site was still in its infancy, and both are of particularly poor quality and thus not entirely worth the time it would take you to find them in the archives. So just as 2006 is the year for increasing the amount of Bollywood representation on Teleport City, so too shall it be the glorious year that I review a couple more anime titles.


Having prefaced this entire piece with the proclamation that I watch mostly old stuff that the bulk of anime fandom has no interest in exploring, thus leaving it relegated to the ranks of a few aging bums who can't figure out what the hell thing it is people at conventions have with cat ears, I now intend to undercut that entirely by reviewing one of the higher profile anime feature films to make the rounds in the United States. Trust me, though, in the next week or so I'll review both Golgo 13 and Odin, and the elation you will feel shall cause you to run triumphantly up and down boarding ramps, high-fiving your fellow travelers as soaring glam metal plays in the background. It just so happens, however, that the wheel of fate that controls my Netflix queue served up two of the more well-known titles before the onslaught of nostalgic classics lined up behind them.

Normally, I would hesitate to link two reviews together so closely, as it short-circuits their stand-alone long-term lifespan once they're filed away in the archives. But Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII not only showed up at the same time, but also share a number of traits that makes combining the two titles into a single review logical, at least from the viewpoint looking out from the twisted sinews of my brain, soaked as it is in rum and whatever addictive pixie dust they sprinkle on Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints.

Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII made the arthouse circuits around the United States at more or less the same time, give or take a year. Close enough for atom bombs, anyway. Both were received well by critics. Innocence was received well by fans. Patlabor somewhat less so, for a number of reasons. Chief among those reasons would be that Ghost in the Shell enjoys a much higher profile in the United States, either because the darker cyberpunk edge is more appealing to American fans, or because it features a hot, nearly-naked cyborg chick with a huge rack (of guns, I mean), while Patlabor has the merely cute, fully-clothed Noa Izumi. Both films took the bold step of eschewing the characters with which the series is most strongly identified in favor of focusing on previously supporting or entirely new characters. And both films are essentially detective stories that apply an old-fashioned approach to science fiction in which the technology and gee-whiz futurism is scaled back in favor of a plot centered primarily on characters -- which is nt entirely unexpected given the tendencies displayed in the overall body of work associated with both franchises.

We'll delve into the thematic similarities in greater detail shortly, but I also want to mention, for those who don't know (and even for those who do, since you've already read this far into the sentence, and there's no point in turning back now), that Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor share several common links behind the camera as well. To bring up to speed anyone who may not follow the ins and outs of the Japanese animation and comic book world, here's the gist of things. Ghost in the Shell, like pretty much most Japanese cartoons, started life as manga (Japanese comic book) written by a cat named Masamune Shirow. Shirow wrote all sorts of stuff that got plenty popular during the eighties and nineties, including Black Magic M-66, Appleseed, and Dominion: Tank Police. When it came time to turn Shirow's Ghost in the Shell comic into a feature film, director Mamoru Oshii was tapped to sit in the seat. Oshii was best known at the time as the director of the Patlabor series, based on comics written by Yuki Masami. Oshii also directed the first two Patlabor feature films, as well as a host of other projects with substantial followings, including Jin Roh, some of the Urusei Yatsura (Lum) movies, and the live action/computer animation hybrid Avalon. If you ask the average casual fan of anime to name a few directors, there's pretty much a 95% chance that if they can name anyone, they're going to say Mamoru Oshii and Haiyao Miyazaki. If you are lucky, they may be able to trot out Katsuhiro Otomo, but more likely they'll just say, "Oh, and that guy who made Akira."


Because, presumably, Oshii was occupied with Innocence, he was unable to serve as director for the third Patlabor film, which was instead directed by the team of Takayama Fumihiko (who has previously directed Gundam: War in a Pocket and the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV) and Takuji Endo (a first-time director whose only previous experience was as a second unit director for the TV series X -- it never even occurred to me that an animated film would have a second unit, but I guess it makes sense, even if you're just sending them across the room to shoot the animated establishing shots and landscapes). Not being able to rely on Oshii to direct the third film might have seemed a hindrance to carrying over the tone of the first two films, which were fairly dark and serious, in contrast to the series which had relied as much on comedy as it did action and tension to create and hold onto the huge fanbase that followed Patlabor throughout its entire television and OAV run. But Fumihiko seemed a decent fit even if he wasn't the superstar Oshii was, and he did come from an eighties background that suits the feel and fans of Patlabor.

Of the two titles, Patlabor definitely came with more baggage than Ghost in the Shell. Besides the manga, there was the much-beloved television run and two OAV series, not to mention the two previous films. Patlabor has never enjoyed the soaring popularity in the United States that I thought it deserved, but even so, there were more than enough fans to put the pressure on the third film, especially since the original two had been so good. Ghost in the Shell, conversely, had the manga and only one other movie. Since the average -- and I'm referring to this proverbial person a lot -- anime fan doesn't read very much manga, we can almost discount its influence in both instances. Ghost in the Shell also had a television run in the form of Stand Alone Complex, but at the time of Innocence's release in the United States, very few people had seen the television series, and even so it was only in its first season.

You could argue, of course, that Patlabor never aired on American television, nor did it get a VHS release. Therefore, that body of material is as viably dismissed as the manga. On the one hand, I'd say you have a point. On the other, I'd say that it's because none of it aired that it becomes that much more valuable. The only people who had seen Patlabor, for the most part, were hardcore fans, people who had taken the time to seek out fansubs when no other alternative existed. Their affection for the show was pretty intense. So the people who would be seeing a Patlabor movie would be, presumably, well versed in and dedicated to the series history, where as Ghost in the Shell, with its higher profile name and less back material, would tend to attract a more casual viewer.

Thus, parting ways with the main character from the first Ghost in the Shell film was less of a gamble than parting ways with the entire core of characters established in the Patlabor titles, at least as I see it. But both films are notable for their willingness to shift attention to other characters. In the case of Ghost in the Shell, Innocence concentrates on cyborg cops Batou (voiced by Akio Otsuka) and Togusa (Koichi Yamedera, who has a tendency to show up in bit parts in Godzilla movies but is probably best known as the voice of Spike Spiegel on Cowboy Bebop or as Captain Harlock on all the more recent Matsumoto titles).


Batou is pretty familiar as he plays a pretty big role in the first film as Major Kusanagi's partner. Togusa gets a fair amount of attention in the Stand Alone Complex series, but fans who saw Innocence before Stand Alone Complex will be fairly unfamiliar with him, though because of the TV show he became my favorite character and emerges as an obvious counterweight to Kusanagi, who shows up in Innocence only at the very end, and then only as a disembodied consciousness downloaded temporarily into a body. Incidentally, Kusanagi is voiced by actress Atsuko Tanaka, who among other credits, appears as Saeko Misaki, one of the main characters in Patlabor: WXIII.

Where Kusanagi is so dedicated to technical modification of the human that, by this film, she has ceased having a body at all and exists only as a "ghost" in cyberspace, Togusa is the least cybernetically enhanced member of Section 9, the special police force to which he, Batou, and formerly Kusanagi belong. Togusa has cybernetic implants in his brain, as all police do, but that's it, and even that he seems to have solely because it's a requirement of the job. Somewhere between the two extremes stand Batou, heavily modified but also perfectly happy maintaining his existence as a physical human being.

Similarly, Patlabor: WXIII does not focus on the ensemble cast that makes up Special Vehicles Unit 2, the focus of all the previous entries in the series (though the second movie focuses less on the unit as a whole and more on a single character, their captain Goto), and instead concentrates on two police officers, the aging Detective Kusumi (who I assumed was the same character as aging Detective Matsui from the first Patlabor film, but I'm pretty sure I was wrong about that, though they might as well be the same) and the younger Detective Hata. Kusumi is voiced by Katsuhiko Watabiki, who has surprisingly few credits to his name but did appear in Junya Sato's 1988 historical epic The Silk Road, which I haven't seen in a good dozen years or so. Hata is voiced by Hiroaki Hirata, who has done some work in the new Galaxy Express but seems to spend most his time doing work on Digimon. He also did the voice of Koga in Innocence. See, these two ventures really ought to just do a cross-over at some point. You wouldn't even have to hire much additional cast.

The plots of the two movies are neither entirely similar or dissimilar, and what they do share is as much a product of ongoing thematic links between the two titles as it is the simple result of there being a few pervading themes that run through the greater bulk of Japanese science fiction anime. Let's begin with Innocence, which kicks the action off by informing us that Major Kusanagi has more or less disappeared entirely into the net, leaving her former partner, Batou, to team up with Togusa on a case involving the tendency of a particular model of "doll" -- basically a life-size, computerized humanoid robot that can be employed for a variety of purposes (you can guess some of them) -- to go on the fritz and murder their owners before self-destructing. As with the first film, and as with much of Shirow's writing, the film dwells heavily on popular anime themes such as the merging of man and machine and the difference in human versus machine intelligence, and when does the latter start to become the former -- or in the case of increasingly cybernetically enhanced humans, vice versa. Batou and Togusa follow the trail of clues through the yakuza underworld and finally to the doll manufacturing plant itself for the final revelation as to why these robots are killing their masters.

Innocence is served well by a thoughtful, expertly paced story that relies heavily on identification with the two main characters, which it pulls off remarkably well. Sad, in a way, that animated cartoon characters are often more fleshed out and better written these days than their live-action film counterparts, who rely increasingly on flashy visuals and computer animation to carry flat scripts and thin characterization. There's a Masamune Shirow penned story in there somewhere. Although Innocence isn't exactly lacking for action (anyone who has seen the previous film or episodes of Stand Alone Complex knows that it's rarely an action-oriented show anyway), the sublime moments come in the down time between shoot-outs. Batou's interaction with his dog is particularly strong, albeit it simple, at making you warm to his character. I think it was a wise decision to place the weight of the story on his solid shoulders. As a man who is equal parts futuristic cyborg and old fashioned flesh and bone lug, he proves to be the most compelling of the Ghost in the Shell characters. Even though Togusa may be my favorite, he's too far to one end of the spectrum to effectively embody the push-pull between technology and biology that sits at the core of Shirow's entire Ghost in the Shell universe. Batou, on the other hand, is perfect for this.

When the film does shift to action, it's executed remarkably well. A mix-up in a yakuza bar and a hallucinogenic freak out in a supermarket are warm-ups for the finale though, which is both exciting, sad, and hypnotic as Batou and Kusanagi (or at least, her consciousness downloaded into one of the doll bodies) fight their way through a labyrinthine factory en route to uncovering the truth at the core of the case. The interaction of image and music is, as with the first film, dramatic, and Kenji Kawaii provides another stellar score for this film, same as the first and with obvious common elements to tie them closely together.

Even though it isn't an action scene per se, there's one scene in particular that is almost overwhelming in how well it's pulled off, and although the rich texture and detail of the animation (which is, as is often the case these days, a mix of perfectly realized cel animation and so-so computer animation) can't be denied, it's really the use of Kawaii's music that makes it so effective. This would be the surreal parade sequence that occurs as Togusa and Batou hunt down a potential informant. Absolutely stunning sequence, though I don't know if I could really explain why. It's one of those scenes that just really sticks with me because it works so hard at creating a completely unreal world that is also completely real and recognizable as something not all that far off base.

I've always thought, though it wasn't my original thought, that both horror and science fiction are at their most effective when they take realty and tweak it just enough to make it feel at once comfortably familiar and unnervingly alien. Blade Runner excelled in this capacity, and its no surprise that a film like Blade Runner became the inspiration for so much Japanese animation -- especially Ghost in the Shell, which seems to understand how to be influenced by Blade Runner more than most movies do. Meaning, that is, that Ghost in the Shell takes pointers from Blade Runner's art design, which many movies do, but also knows how to tie it in with similar but not identical questions about the future.

Anyway, it's a great scene. The first tour we get of Neo Tokyo in Akira is another such scene that sticks with me even though it's almost a throwaway establishing shot. But it's another hyper colorful blend of intensely detailed art and expertly conducted music that lets you glimpse a world both completely outrageous yet imminently believable.

The finale of Innocence is similarly haunting, both in the action sequences involving the battle with wave after wave of unblinking, flailing dolls and in the final revelation, which unlike many revelations, makes perfect sense placed within the overall theme of Ghost in the Shell. The movie at this point is transfixing through and through, but it obtains an even higher level here, one that is really flat-out mind-blowing. Suddenly, the horror and beauty of everything you've seen -- from garish Chinatown parades to twisted laboratories, twitching half-dead gynoids, Batou's apartment -- comes crashing you’re your head, and you, or rather I, realized just how gorgeous and powerful Innocence was. It's almost a Stendahl Syndrome sort of experience -- there is so much to absorb, everything is so detailed, so rife with meaning and theology and philosophy, that at some point you simply can't take it all in. I watched Innocence spread out over two nights, then watched it again in its entirety a night later. Still, even as I'm writing this epically long-winded review, the main thought in my mind is, "I want to watch it again right now." It's like heroin, or maybe Girl Scout cookies, which are even more addictive (and delicious) than heroin.

Its central questions remain vital as we advance toward a future that may not be exactly like Ghost in the Shell in the details, but certainly bears some considerable likenesses. We may not be downloading our consciousness William Gibson style into the internet, but we're certainly uploading more and more of our personal lives and social interactions. Our party invitations, friend networks, personal diaries -- these things have all become part of a colossally confused and often nigh unintelligible jumble, but this is really only a decade or so into this new medium we call the Web. The potential for it to play an ever-increasing role in our lives exists, even if it still seems like the stuff of Ghost in the Shell and Neuromancer at this point.

If we've proven anything as a race it's that we're absolutely wretched at accurately predicting the way technological advancement will shape our future. There are simply too many variables and unexpecteds that come form left field. I mean, who, when Henry Ford hopped atop his first automobile, could see that the invention of the car would not only change the face of transportation, but would be a direct cause of the rise in the importance of Middle Eastern nations, which in turn means we take an active interest in places that were previously nothing but backwaters visited by religious pilgrims and pipe-smoking British archaeologists who needed some more mummies. Look at how network technology has transformed society in just a few short years, and then try to imagine what it could do with another fifty. This isn't to imply that the change is either good or bad, simply that it has happened and will continue to happen, and that impossibly far-fetched things have a nasty habit of becoming run-of-the-mill realities if you give them a few years.


Likewise, Ghost in the Shell pokes at the question of what becomes of us, morally and spiritually, as the convergence of technology and biology advances. The Gynoid (all female in form, obviously fromt he name) dolls that are going berserk are regarded as malfunctioning machines, but at what point do increasingly human machines become the moral equivalent of increasingly mechanized humans? Where is the line that divides a gynoid from Batou, or from Kusanagi, who is still considered human even though she has forsaken her body and become a completely digital lifeform. Is it the heritage of having once been human? In that case, then what of machines that are infused in some way with human consciousness? Or human babies that are given cybernetic modifications shortly after birth?

This may seem like waxing philosophic on hypothetical questions invented purely so we could wax philosophic about them, but science fiction usually adds a layer of the fantastic on top of something otherwise real. Think of online crime, something with which we're still attempting to learn how to grapple. Not credit card fraud, mind you, but something like online stalking. At what point does an act committed in a virtual, digital environment deserve to carry the same weight as a similar crime in the real world? And the more time we spend online, doesn't that legitimize it as an equally real world as the physical world? Can you cheat on a spouse online, and how is it the same and different from doing it in person? We may not have implants and cybernetic eyes and arms, but we're an increasingly mech/tech oriented society. As machines continue to become increasingly commonplace as the conduit for our communication and interaction, at what point does our online presence become as liable for our deeds as our physical body?

Exploring these questions in general, and in particular the ever-evolving relationship between humans and the machines we build, is certainly nothing unique to Ghost in the Shell. It is, I would say, the prevailing theme in most science fiction anime from the 1980s on. Masamune Shirow's stories just happen to be the most literate in ruminating on these topics, though he stops short of ever really making a definite proclamation about the future, which is wise. Speculative fiction's job is to pose questions, not provide answers. This isn't just an excuse for vagueness, however. The world is stuffed with sci-fi that tries to pass its ill-conceived and half-baked plots off as speculative or "open ended" when in fact they're just bad. Innocence asks the questions, but it remembers to ask the questions in a way that makes you actually want to ruminate on them a spell after the film is finished.

Patlabor: WXIII does the same thing differently, or maybe it's something different the same way. I'm not sure. Patlabor has always been somewhat less fanciful in its vision of the future (which was, at the time, 1999). The basic science fiction premise is that a variety of large robots are commonly employed in a variety of heavy lifting tasks such as construction. But these aren't Gundam type super robots. For the most part, they're ugly, functionally designed, pieces of construction equipment. Only within the realm of police and military work to these robots -- labors -- take on a more anthropomorphic appearance. With the rise of labors, there was also a rise in labor-related crimes, most of which consists of crackpots in bulky construction labors smashing things up. Sort of like joyriding through Manhattan on a backhoe. To combat this new type of crime, the police began using the patrol labor - patlabor, for short.

But other than that, the future of Patlabor looks pretty much like the present, even more so than Ghost in the Shell, which also stays close to reality, or at least presents its fancier elements in such a way as to make them seem perfectly integrated in a world that is still full of convenience stores, apartments, and droopy faced dogs. But Patlabor really is just the present, but with fancier construction equipment.

So now you have the basics, and you can pretty much forget them because labors, patrol or otherwise, play an exceptionally tiny role in the plot of WXIII, which seems to ask many of the same questions as Innocence, but as relates to the continuing evolution of artificial biological life forms rather than electronic ones. Strange things are afoot in Tokyo Bay. Fish populations have plummeted, and construction labors working around the bay keep turning up smashed, with the drivers either missing or gorily splashed across the scene of the crime. Detectives Kusumi and Hata are called in to investigate the murders and presumable acts of sabotage, which may or may not be related to a controversial artificial land mass being developed in Tokyo Bay, which has been the source of much protest and trouble for much of the Patlabor series, film and television. The two cops quickly discover that all the labors were manufactured by Schaft Enterprises, or at the very least were running on Schaft motors.

Eventually, however, they discover that the crimes have nothing to do with the labors, and that there is, in fact, a monster in the Bay. It may seem a bit weird if all you've seen is the Patlabor movies, but the television series never shied away from paying homage to old giant monster movies. Kusumi and Hata then begin to trace the origin of the monster in hopes that discovering where it came from will help them figure out how the heck to deal with it, especially since it seems to boast incredibly regenerative powers.


The story that serves as the basis for WXIII was, some have said, not written to be a Patlabor story. However, it's not hard to retrofit it for the Patlabor universe, even if it isn't about the familiar Patlabor characters. Series regulars Noa and Shinohara make a brief cameo, and SV2 captain Goto has a couple brief scenes, but for the most part, no one from the previous Patlabor titles shows up until the very end, when the nature of the monster has been revealed and SV2 is called out to deal with subduing the thing. Fans were pretty evenly split on this approach to the movie, but it seems to me to be a natural progression based on the previous two films. The first one deals pretty normally with the SV2 crew. The second film, however, relegates every character but Goto to cameos and centers almost entirely on the enigmatic captain who seems to be a lazy bum but has far more going on in his head and his past than anyone would guess. In the third film, then, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that Goto himself becomes a cameo appearance and the story focuses on characters even further removed from SV2. As with Patlabor II, the story itself is very compelling, so that once you get over the absence of your favorite characters, you are quickly drawn in. Then, when the familiar faces of SV2 do show up at the end, it's like a reunion with old friends you're much more excited to see because of their absence up to that point.

I don't think WXIII realizes Kusumi, Hata, or Professor Saeko Misaki quite as well as Innocence does Batou and Kogusa, but both are still interesting. They just don't come with as much philosophical baggage. Kusumi is old and Hata is young, but that's not really something that plays a large role in their dynamic. It's not as if Kusumi is some old dude who can't deal with all this crazy new stuff. He's pretty competent, though hindered by a bum leg. And Hata isn't some hothead who chafes the old man. He just a good understudy. Where the philosophy of WXIII comes into play is with Professor Misaki and the creature lurking in Tokyo Bay. It's asks the same questions, in many ways, as Innocence. At what point do our biological experiments become living creatures entitled to the rights of other animals? When does something stop becoming an experiment? It never really meanders into the "tampering in God's domain" admonishment, and seems to basically say that, one way or the other, biological advances are coming. They may hit stumbling blocks, like moral opposition to stem cell research, but that doesn't mean they aren't coming. And when they do, when we start making breakthroughs, are we going to be ready to deal with the results? The safe answer, based on our track record, would be, "probably not." And while these things may not manifest as a giant creature grown from cancer cells, their impact on society could be no less dramatic.

WXIII is a slow film. There is very little action, and most of what we get is a police procedural. Fans of the Patlabor series probably won't be surprised by this though. The series was already well-known for being a giant robot anime that often had nothing to do with giant robots. The labors could disappear for several episodes as the series explored characters or simply took time out for a ghost story. In fact, some of the best episodes of both the television series and OAVs were the ones that didn't feature the labors (I'm thinking, Goto and SV1's Captain Nagumo have to spend the night in a love motel, or the Kanuka vs. Kumagami drinking contest episode), so the absence of labors until the very end is no big surprise. In pacing and tone, WXIII plays out much less like sci-fi action anime and compares more favorably to features like Tokyo Godfathers or Millennium Actress, only with a giant monster lurking in the bay. Slow doesn't mean boring though, at least not to me, and while some fans thought the double whammy of no SV2 characters and so little action was enough to sink the film, I still found it entirely compelling and quite thoughtful, not to mention tense and exciting when the action does make an appearance (as with the wonderfully done first meeting between Hata, Kusumi, and the monster).

Artistically, WXIII represents a perfect example of the quantum leap in quality that Japanese animation is capable of. As with Ghost in the Shell and some of the other mentioned titles, this is a realist approach to animation. There are no wacky faces or other familiar tropes of popular anime (although some of those did appear frequently in the Patlabor television series, but not in the Stand Alone Complex series). As with Innocence, backgrounds are richly detailed and character designs are true to real life. It may not be Oshii directing the action, but his protoges certainly don't let the master down. And once again, Kenji Kawaii supplies an evocative and effective score to accompany the stunning art and thoughtful script.

I don't think, in the end, that WXIII is quite as good a movie as Innocence, but it's still a damn fine example of just how good Japanese animated films can be. If it had spent a little more time in getting us to warm up to Hata and Kusumi the way we warm to Batou, it would have been flawless. The two films work very well together, and though viewing them side by side certainly isn't a requirement, it was a fulfilling experience for me. I don't think you need to be overly familiar with the mythology of either franchise, though it wouldn't hurt to bone up on the basics, especially since the Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell material represents, for me anyway, some the absolute best material film and television has to offer (and possibly comics, but I've never really read any of them), regardless of country or whether or not it happens to be live action or animated. Along with a few other choice selections, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII stand up as sublime triumphs of anime features.

And then there's Odin...

Labels: , , , , ,

posted by Keith at