Koukaku Kidoutai: SAC_2045 Season 2

The year is 2045. As a result of the Global Simultaneous Default, an economic disaster that shook every country on Earth to its foundations, as well as the explosive evolution of artificial intelligence, the world has plunged into the Sustainable War, a planned war that can be continued indefinitely. In this near future, the decline has not yet become bad enough that people can sense in their daily lives the risk to human survival posed by A.I.

To combat cybercrimes by the Posthumans, a new breed of human being that has suddenly arisen, Public Security Section 9, led by the fully prosthetic cyborg Kusanagi Motoko, makes its way to Tokyo, which was reduced to ruins in a previous war. What they find there are a refugee group that calls itself "N" and a hostile American Special Forces unit. As the risk of nuclear war set off by a hijacked submarine grows ever greater, the three-way battle between Public Security Section 9, America, and the Posthumans intensifies.

(Source: AniDB)

Kusanagi, Motoko Main

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Batou Main

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Togusa Main

Yamadera, Kouichi Japanese

Aramaki, Daisuke Main

Naka, Hiroshi Japanese

Tachikoma Supporting

Tamagawa, Sakiko Japanese

Saito Supporting

Ookawa, Tooru Japanese

Ishikawa Supporting

Nakano, Yutaka Japanese

Pazu Supporting

Onozuka, Takashi Japanese

Borma Supporting

Yamaguchi, Tarou Japanese

Esaki, Purin Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Kamiyama, Kenji Director, Series Composition, Screenplay

Aramaki, Shinji Director

Takagi, Hajime Sound Director

Suárez, Luis Leonardo Script, ADR Director, Dialogue Editing

Reviews

Sep 4, 2022

SingleH

Recommended

First of all, just to operate with full disclosure here, I’d like to address the fact that, at this point, my brain is just complete mush. I’m at the point now where I can physically feel how much more difficult it’s become, in merely the last five or six weeks, for my fingers to functionally type out my thoughts, jumbled as they already are. I’m not even sure I’m intellectually capable of critically analyzing an anime such as this anymore. I mean—fuck me backwards—some would say I was never intellectually capable of critically analyzing anything. “Thank god you quit reviewing, your reviews were borderline headache ... inducing and a blight on any anime review section. You act like this is a full time job and it's sad, go outside. It's okay you can maybe review the sky or the grass instead of anime :)” So now? All bets are fucking off. Even reading through my own past reviews is difficult, with me subtly slurring my words and tripping over my tongue. I’m literally, not-a-joke fucking dying. This isn’t even mentioning how my short term memory nowadays is completely zero. I still remember my life, and I remember who I am, and why I am who I am. I remember things and the world. But as far as events that happened recently, or what I said recently, or anything recently? That is all fucking dead, zero, nothing. Tiny little minutes will pass where, blink, I’ll just forget everything and all thoughts will have permanently evacuated my fucking skull. Randomly, in the middle of the day. Most of my reviews are drafted, written, and edited weeks—even months in advance, but I watched all twenty four episodes of SAC_2045 in the last two days and wrote this review in the exact same time frame…hopefully, at least, it isn’t as bad as I think it is. I suppose you, my sweetheart reader, will be the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner on this trail. [laughs nervously] Please just try to be lenient. I’m SO sad and lonely. Hug me, please; don’t hate me. Squeeze hard. I’m small and thin and fragile, but I promise you won’t break me. So squeeze, like you mean it. I’m ready.

So…the sequel no one wanted to the series no one asked for. What an enviable position to be in? I’m speaking as if there are separate seasons of this and not just one, twenty-four episode show that Netflix cut in half and budgeted separately, but whatever. Point is, we’re back, and the curtains have closed properly. At the end of the day, I would say SAC_2045 was essentially consistent. In my review for season one, I think I remembered ending with the CG talk, but, this time, I think I’m going to start with it. Most people seem to be approaching it from the perspective of, “Oh, wtf lol. This is shit. These faggots are incompetent.” But they unfortunately aren’t. They’re some of the best in the industry. This look? This was intentional. It may not look good to you (or fucking me), but THIS is what they were aiming for. So please realize that. This wasn’t a technical failure. It was an audience failure. They didn’t fail to animate what they set out to animate; rather, they failed to look at their audience and agree on what the end goal and end product should’ve been. Berserk 2016 was a failure; Ex-Arm was a failure; Hand Shakers was a failure; all the other CG trainwrecks you’re thinking of were failures. This was not a failure; this was a miscalculation. I mean, if we’re at the point now where Scott Matthew is coming back and participating in Ghost in the Shell productions, who are we to continue crying that this project was an unnecessary bastardization of anything? This is all original creative staff, with the original cast, and everyone’s original spark. The balance is just slightly trifled with by the sometimes excessive Shinji Aramaki visual action. So, Max, you’re right. Atsuko Tanaka’s performance as the Major really was commanding enough to overcome Ilya Kuvshinov’s sex doll female character designs. It’s not that our cyberbrains are infected with the nostalgia virus. It’s that we’re simply watching a well-written, well-acted show, and no amount of “muh CG” is going to change that, especially when the CG’s shortcomings are exclusively stylistic.

The visual post-processing in the second half is much more shiny and the definition on the models is much more, for lack of a better term, “bright” and defined, and the colors are infinitely superior, but the actual animation techniques and the energy which results on screen is identical to the first. Whether you like the designs they use or not, Sola Digital Arts has perfected their mocap animation style. Every step of every character looks technically flawless. The mocap approach to animation results in natural, weighty, anatomical movement, and after taking into account whatever engine they use to render the shadow placements and whatever program they use to apply so much body definition, you’re left with the perfect CG anime, assuming we’re still talking exclusively about anime that we want to “look like anime” (think GANTZ:O). Again, I don’t think I’ll ever truly welcome the change entirely, especially in the first half which wasn’t nearly as polished as the second [insert Ilya Kuvshinov’s self-insert backflipping naked up the stairs], but I suppose I’m just trying to be as objective as possible here. There’s this one retrohead who writes pretty good reviews about retrohead anime, but he tried writing one for Hathaway’s Flash, and it just came across as completely out of touch. According to MAL guidelines, you cannot comment on other people’s reviews, so I can’t tell you the user’s name or link the review itself without putting this review in jeopardy, but his argument was essentially, “As we all know, old thing good, new thing bad. And this new thing doesn’t resemble old thing enough, so it’s bad.” The only tangible complaint in the whole review was the movie looked too modern, as if that wasn’t only a bad thing according to his personal opinion. I think I’m just scared of coming across like that, especially when it was far from SAC_2045’s CG which turned me off to its visual presentation. I mean, “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” doesn’t exactly jump to mind when I see a wacky waifu with pink hair exclaiming, “EEEEEHHHHHHHH?!!?!?!”

However, speaking of the nostalgia virus and what I personally see as being tonally appropriate to include within a season of Stand Alone Complex, I must say that when I see a Tachikoma laying in pieces on the ground, expressing its excitement to finally see Togusa again, with Sakiko Tamagawa’s ever-adorable voice, and I feel something, is that all nostalgia, or is it that these are still engaging and endearing characters? Does it matter? I, personally, am increasingly doubtful it does, because these twenty four episodes—comparisons to anything aside for a moment—are really fucking well written. When I’m watching an episode about Japanese pensioners robbing a bank, because they don’t understand anything about how the financial system has evolved and how it’s not terribly possible to really even quote-unquote “rob” a so-called “bank” anymore, and they’re doing so because 1) two of them had their retirement funds lost to a global banking default that they don’t understand 2) because one of them was an employee at said bank who was trying to get revenge against his much younger manager, who manipulated him into putting up his pension as seed money for crypto investments, only for it to all be lost to the markets, and 3) because one of them came to the bank to withdraw all her savings, fly to a country like Switzerland where euthanasia is legal, and literally pay to die, only to learn that all her savings were in an outdated currency which, when converted to current yen-dollar bills, wasn’t enough to enact her plans, I don’t sit back and think, “This episode is nothing but an imitation of my precious Koukaku Kidoutai! Look at that CG! Fucking GAY LMAO!” I think, “Wow, Kenji Kamiyama has done it again.” His ability to get so technical yet keep it so grounded is astonishing. That, combined with Shotaro Suga’s character writing and Masayuki Yoshihara’s visual direction, is what made Stand Alone Complex the masterpiece it was. However, as I described at great length in my review for part one, SAC_2045 is sorely missing two of those three factors.

Half the episodes in each season of Stand Alone Complex were “complex,” which is to say, they were connected to the main overarching narrative, and the rest were “standalone,” yet at no point was the series repetitive or dry of ideas. It was always fresh, innovative, and thought-provoking. It was also never dry of imagination or emotion. It was always surprising, dazzling, and emotive. This entire twenty-four episode series, however, has I think two truly stand alone episodes to flesh-out the updated world, and, while those two were admittedly fantastic, the fact remains that much of the runtime is devoted to action scenes and prolonging physical conflicts without actually using any of this time to deepen the ideas, merely to have fun realizing the visual action potential they’ve made for themselves. This is fine, I suppose. I mean, it isn’t like it’s plagued with particularly poor execution, especially throughout the second half, but this was never the original appeal of Stand Alone Complex. Stand Alone Complex had action, and those action set pieces remain fucking brilliantly stunning to this day, but there were never long stretches of episodes which were JUST action scenes. SAC_2045, on the other hand, can sometimes be JUST an action scene, followed by someone explaining something with enigmatic technobabble, then another cliffhanger action scene leading into the following episode, which then begins with the previous cliffhanger and subsequent continuation of the very same action scene you just saw. I hate contributing to the “muh Netflix” shit-flinging which we love so much around here, but I must also admit that the Netflix model really didn’t help out here, because Netflix autoskipping the ED and not giving you that breathing room between episode breaks really highlighted how the series was just going from meaningless cliffhanger to meaningless cliffhanger when it was focusing more on action, less on…well, what all this was actually supposed to be about. Luckily these fucking roaches didn’t autoskip the OP, or I’d be pissed.

Wait…hold on. That was supposed to be the positive paragraph. How’d I fuck that up so much? Okay, so I was talking about how this show feels like OG SAC in how smartly written it is, and then I got sidetracked with bitching about how the emotional genius of Shotaro Suga and the directorial genius of Masayuki Yoshihara on the original “Kamiyama Team” was replaced by Shinji Arakami’s CG action overload, and how that ultimately ruined SAC_2045…which it did. Wait…okay, I guess we’re not going to have a positive paragraph then, because yes. That’s the problem. Kamiyama’s ideas are never constrained or balanced by his old coworkers who kept his genius creativity in check, and this is made worse by Aramaki exacerbating his love for physical, technical concepts expanding outward into these super-cyber-techno-whatever action spectacles. The old Stand Alone Complex always had, one might say, a point. It was always grounded within the boundaries of the technology, without ever diving into anything like spirituality. The Oshii films did, but that’s because their overall message and themes were profound enough to warrant such moments, and their particular directorial atmosphere was so compelling and different than the technical and “simply realistic” presentation of Stand Alone Complex. In SAC_2045 (and fucking Ubukata’s Arise series, now that I think about it), the technology is no longer the limit. Indeed, someone much funnier than I may refer to it as the “limit break.” I’m just bitching about the ending everyone’s already bitched about at this point, so, before this gets away from me, let me assure you, all SAC_2045 really has to dissuade heavy praise is CG, excessive action, and an ending that made episodes one through twenty-two feel like The Matrix (1999), episode twenty-three feel like The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and episode twenty-four feel like The Matrix Revolutions (2003). The rest is a technically and narratively ambitious comeback by the original creator himself, who made I think the best thing he still could’ve.

The metaphors simply got out of hand. References are one thing, but when I’m at the point where the show I’m watching is so obsessed with codifying all its concepts so strictly in line with George Orwell’s 1984 that I have to pause the episode, stand up, walk into the other room, get 1984 off the shelf, and start flipping through it again, then I think the writer has bitten off a little more than they could chew. In Innocence, for example, characters practically spoke to each other in quotes. Batou has two conversations, one with Togusa and one with Chief Aramaki, where literally the entire back and forth is conducted via quotes. But these quotes were not simply references to larger works which the film required you to intimately comprehend. Rather, they were quotes that were themselves self-contained parables, or allegories, or whatever. They could say it, and you, a thinking adult, could say, “Okay, well, the source escapes me on that one, but I still get the point he made, because I’m literate and can understand words.” I wrote MULTIPLE papers on Orwell’s work in college, and I’ve read 1984 specifically at least five times, yet even I have to sit here and think, “Wait…how is the Miniluv (Ministry of Love) giving you the Room 101 (phycological torture chamber for political dissidents) going to further your goals, when you yourselves use the Thinkpol (Thought Police) to enact justice already and start Sustainable Wars? Sustainable Wars are just societies where the ruling class has allowed for inequality to grow to the point of social collapse, so they can profit off the ensuing riots and violence fueled by weapons they manufacture. Is this sort of chaos not the exact opposite of the regimented Stalinist nightmare depicted in 1984? Is this partisan split within society not the exact thing Big Brother and the Thought Police would want to suppress? Where radicals run around with AK-47s, screaming about who’s N and N-Po, and railing against the one percent???” We’re so many allegories deep by the end of the series, I honestly forgot the original point being made, if there ever was one.

At some point during the first few episodes of the show, we get this exchange between Chief Aramaki and this American official who he knows to try and use her as a connection to get some leverage on the mission Section 9 had gotten itself wrapped up in, and at the end of the exchange she looks at him longingly and says, “I envy this woman you need so badly.” I was just like, “I’m sorry, WHAT?! Who was that?! What’s their history together?!??! Give me that sweet, juicy gossip!!!” But, looking back, that’s how Stand Alone Complex always was. Stand Alone Complex, Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, Eden of the East, etc. They featured humans, more than they did characters. SAC_2045 proceeded after that exchange to shower me with blissful character moments and dialogues which perfectly recaptured the chemistry of Section 9 as it always had been. Meanwhile, all these plot-relevant ideas for the main narrative build and hint in the background, and as the characters became interested and invested, so did you, because that’s what good stories do to you, and this continued until the final few episodes revealed them all to have been one giant nothing burger that was a complete waste of the minds and technical talent which brought it to screen. It’s not that it’s bad or particularly nonsensical. It’s just unsatisfying and, emotionally, predictable. Max, I see what you mean when you call it a “character assassination,” but the final episode’s script was so fucking bewildering that I can't really examine Motoko's decisions as if I was actually watching the well-established character, "Motoko Kusanagi." It’s not that she’s okay with the entire world living in a simulation, because they aren’t. When you typed, “Doublethink, N, and Shimamura’s grand plan are utterly lost on me. (On second thought, they're all just synonymous with each other, aren't they?)” I just giggled, said, “yes, they are,” and swiftly continued reading. There was no pot of gold you failed to appreciate at the end of this rainbow. It was just, “Oh, ghost hack. That didn’t really happen. Understandable, have a great day.”

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 2, 2022

MakkusuUnfilwin

Mixed Feelings

As a huge fan of Stand Alone Complex, and GITS in general, I find myself to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very conflicted over this season, and understandably so, as this iteration of GITS came the closest to reimagining the genius of Kamiyama Kenji's first outing with the franchise, but, as you'll soon find out, somehow managed to crash and burn gloriously in the final lap and right before the finish line. I have a lot of scattered, disjointed and eager thoughts I feel I need to dispel, but I don’t really know how to organise them into anything resembling a legitimate review ... of this show, so, this write-up will be mostly stream of consciousness. With specific regards to any mention of the visuals, this "review" will, more or less, cover both seasons, as they are ostensibly the exact same. And do be wary. I’m going to drop random spoilers whenever I feel like it.

In hindsight, I probably should have rewatched season 1, despite 2020, and the release of said season, only feeling like it happened a couple of months ago. But, I guess it’s been long enough that upon starting up episode 1, I had initially completely forgotten all this series’ specific jargon. No matter though, because unlike the original Stand Alone Complex, this series isn’t too reliant on it, plus I have google on my side. And it’s only now dawning on me that this exact reason is probably why the compilation movie exists, but, well, I wanted my fix of GITS, so I guess you could say I got what I wanted.

Nevertheless, I can safely say that, for most of its run, I enjoyed what this season, and SAC_2045 as a whole, had to offer. It almost felt like a well-needed return to form, but at the same time, something new altogether. However, despite that, the show still finds itself with a fair share of issues, some more glaring than others. So, I’ll get one of the most contentious aspects of this show out the way first: the character designs. I think Ilya’s art is nice enough to look at in isolation; I can very much appreciate that. But, for whatever reason, I find his designs have always had this air of pretentiousness to them, which is especially true for these redesigns, particularly the female ones. See, unlike their Arise counterparts, the Section 9 of SAC_2045 sounds, acts and emotes like their usual, badass, slick 'n cool selves, however, due to Ilya's radically different take on the cast, and the new 3DCG look, there's this insufferable dissonance going on between the writing and the visuals, and that goes double for the Major. Thankfully, the woman is so astoundingly charismatic, that at times, I'm tricked into thinking Ilya's redesign doesn't suck. So, even though she looks like a—as SingleH so flatteringly puts it—sex doll, she continues to, without falter, command attention with her mere presence every time she graces the screen, which I think is a testament to how powerful Atsuko Tanaka’s performance is, despite how unauthorative the new design looks. As for the rest of Section 9, everyone looks objectively (if I can use that word here) passable, even if I find Togusa’s rework to be absolutely awful in terms of representation. The design is just so, 2020, for a lack of a better way to describe it. Strangely, it’s not even really Ilya’s fault either. Episode 5 restores Togusa’s glorious mullet, but it’s just that the CG engine is incapable of truly capturing its glory the way I.G did so masterfully two decades ago. Speaking of the CG, it looks—and I don’t care what anybody has to say about this—fucking amazing! Sola and I.G finessed the absolute shit out of what they were given to work with. Everything looks incredibly polished across the board—it really grows on you over time, although, still nowhere near as breathtaking as Kise's Arise. As I said in regards to Vampire in the Garden, there are many ways to say something looks great, and SAC_2045 season 2. Looks. Great. I couldn't really tell if anything was upgraded, visually, since season 1, but I’d like to believe it looks different, somehow—maybe it's smoother? Anyway, this segues into my main issue with how the CG, despite its evident polish, negatively affects the show on a scene-to-scene basis in comparison with the original SAC. So let’s move down a paragraph.

SAC_2045’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, that being the mode by which its story is conveyed: the virtual environment. Don’t get me wrong, the way it’s used here is genuinely great, so great in fact, that I’d argue SAC_2045 might be the best-looking CG TV/ONA series I’ve ever seen. It’s quite enthralling to see the characters traverse the environment as well as interact with props, and one another, in fully realized, aesthetically pleasing renders, masterfully brought to life by I.G and Sola. It's that same filmic movement Kamiyama sought to capture in animation during the original SAC, now given the tools to flat-out do so. For instance, Purin climbing over the hotel bed to get to the robot charging port kinda blew me away. It’s a fairly small, inconsequential scene in the scope of the entire series, and there are definitely better examples I could have used, but you don’t often see characters move through a "set" like that. I was fully expecting her to walk around the bed, but the staff took full advantage of the liberty that the 3DCG allowed them and had her traverse through the z-axis with the camera in tow. I hope any of what I’m explaining doesn’t sound too mundane, but getting back on topic, my point is, that while the virtual environment stuff is great, the freedom it gives the staff hinders their ability to really frame a scene impactfully—if you get what I mean. A lot of really big scenes seemed to fall flat because of the focus on intractability and life-like movement. I feel a more traditional approach to presentation, like in Arise, for instance, would have forced the staff to think long and hard about how to storyboard specific segments, upping the visual impact that I think SAC_2045 was sorely lacking. The trade-off for this, I suppose, was the big-budget action feel a lot of others noted and attributed to Aramaki Shinji, however, I feel this is just as in line with the type of media Kamiyama enjoys consuming (and I guess creating), as he’s stuck his neck out on several occasions to profess his love for well-oiled, Hollywood action, popcorn flicks. As a matter of fact, we've been seeing more and more of this style from Kamiyama as of late—well, relatively—starting with Hirune Hime, or maybe even Re:Cyborg. Of course, that isn't to diminish Aramaki's role on this project, but SAC_2045 just seems more mutually collaborative than most make it out to be. But hey, I know literally nothing about animation, and I have no idea what I’m talking about.

However, I do know what I’m talking about, especially when it comes to things that I know what I’m talking... about, and the ending falls into that category. The ending of SAC_2045 was absolutely atrocious—or was it? I really don’t know whether or not I absolutely despise this ending, but what I do know, is that it left me incredibly disappointed and wholly unsatisfied. It's for sure going to be the most polarizing component of SAC_2045’s narrative. Like, what the fuck were they thinking? At first, I thought ‘N’ was a relatively cool idea, though nothing as ingenious, inventive, intelligent, imaginative, innovative, incredible, intuitive, impeccable, impressive, indispensable, or inspired as the Individual 11 nor The Laughing Man, but still, relatively cool all the same. But the idea just kept growing and growing until the stakes were at a global level, and here I thought Gouda’s nationalist renaissance was big money. Boy, was I wrong. This ‘N’ bullshit just kept getting more and more contrived the further it went, until it eventually imploded in on itself like it was the end of some cookie-cutter, milquetoast, bag-cereal, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, top-ramen, dollar store, teen-fiction, dystopian novel, where there are seemingly no consequences for the character's actions. But who knows, this might just be another case of, “I’m too stupid to understand the nuance, and with time, I’ll accept this as some legendary subversion, or extension, of GITS as an intellectual property.” I hope the fuck not, though. The concepts got so big and ill-defined that even the characters couldn’t explain them. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was where Satou Dai’s authorial hand came into the picture. I love the man’s work, but this is right in line with the big-concept stupidity he often indulges in. LIKE, WHAT IS THIS? THE MATRIX? THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE STAND. ALONE. COMPLEX! DOUBLE-THINK IS JUST PURE TECHNOMANCY BULLSHIT! I don’t even remember any of this being established in season 1, apart from the aptly named “nostalgia virus,” though its connection to double-think, N and Shimamura’s grand plan is utterly lost on me (on second thought, they're all just synonymous with each other, aren't they?). Like, I understand what the plan is, and how it works, but isn't it just a little juvenile, especially for SAC, given its reputation for grounded, hard sci-fi? Also, that ending scene was absolutely masturbatory—undoubtedly the worst version of the backdrop (or whatever you want to call it) to date. And man, what were they thinking with Shimamura’s final design anywho? He’s decked out in a school-shooter trench coat on top of already looking like a cross-bred Joker and Minato Arisato. That’s just a recipe for disaster. And a disaster it was, as I attribute everything wrong with SAC_2045’s rushed, frankly baffling conclusion, to him. Now, in the same vein as Shimamura, Purin is a character I SHOULD hate, but surprisingly, don’t. I don’t know what to tell you: she just grew on me. All that Ilya pretentiousness I was talking about earlier melted away thanks to Megumi Han's (huh, wait a minute, I was just explaining a couple of days ago how I thought she carried Vampire in the Garden’s emotional crux, go figure) brilliantly emotive performance. And hey (I bet you just love how I keep using "and hey" to nonchalantly add some stupid, obvious tidbit), they even decked her out in a plug suit, so I guess Eva really did alter anime eternally. Anyways, I thought that was real cool and—to use a smark term—it got a pretty huge pop from me. But you know what also got a pretty huge pop from me? Scott “basically god” Matthew, that’s what. When was the last time you heard an Australian singer in an anime? That’s a rhetorical question of course, and yes, this is ironic lampshading. So anyway, on top of receiving an insert song from the man I’m going to dub, "the voice of SAC," we also got an insert song from EMI FUCKING EVANS of all people! Those two additions to the soundtrack fixed what I thought was lacking from season 1’s OST—an emotional punchline that underscores those big scenes, which are supposed to make us, as viewers, care. It’s what Kanno’s score did so flawlessly on the original SAC, and, to an extent, it’s replicated to decent effect here (wow, this paragraph is huge).

Alright! I’m going to end this “review” by mentioning a few things I thought were interesting.

So, first of all, you have no idea how happy it made me to see Batou in his original SAC design during that Purin flashback, as blatantly fanservice-y as it was. It made me so happy, in fact, that the unfortunate co-occurrence of it, and a retcon to the stand-alone Marco Amereti episode, didn’t even matter, although it probably should have. Secondly, it really seemed like someone on the team lifted the whole soldiers crying, laughing etc thing right from Guns of the Patriots, anyone else? Thirdly, when the fuck did “3D printing a cow” become a thing in SAC? What is this, Star Trek? I half expected to see Data come out of that thing instead of Mizukane, lol. And lastly, as hard as that one rock track is trying—and failing—to be Run Rabbit Junk, it surprisingly, like Purin, grew on me, to the point whereby the last couple of episodes, I was doing air guitar every time it played. Yeah, isn't that cool?

So, while SAC_2045 had some really, really interesting ideas pertaining to the American empire, a sustainable war, post-human cyborgs, and crazy world-building events like the synchronized global default, it also had some really, really rushed, horrible ideas that only served to muddy what could have been a legitimately good sequel to one of my favourite anime of all time. Though, despite its lopsided shortcomings, watching the Section 9 gang get back together at full force warmed my cold, black heart. I expect to revisit this “review” to add or fix some things, seeing as it’s 6:22 AM, and I’ve spent the entire night watching this show and writing this garbage, so I can only imagine it’s riddled with spelling errors and inconsistencies. Hopefully, someone more adept at writing can produce a review that clarifies what the actual fuck was going on with those last two episodes plot-wise, so they can explain to me, in clear terms, why the ending didn't suck. Well, the net is vast and infinite, so I imagine that's not a big ask.

Thanks for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 10, 2022

Some1Else_

Not Recommended

Well-written

In my initial review of the first twelve episodes of this season, I lamented over how so many franchises were being brought back tailored for new audiences that completely miss the point of the original show. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever see a legacy franchise successfully resurrected with the way entertainment is being handled lately.

But then Top Gun: Maverick came out. So, it is possible. With the right writing. Any idea can work with good writing, really. But the people who did this show? I wouldn't trust them to do a nursery rhyme.

As before, I will limit myself to five points. Spoilers ... ahead.

Use what worked before. That’s fine. But don’t depend on it. The first season dealt with someone who took a book too seriously. The second season dealt with a dude who attempted to get his hands on a nuclear weapon to get his point across. Let’s use them again! The new idea is post-humans, which had the potential to be interesting on its own, but they just go ahead and do what the Laughing Man and Kuze did because nobody will notice. Leaning too heavily on what worked before is a subtle way of your plot not being strong enough to stand on its own.

It had previously been my understanding that the members of Section 9 were the best of the best, mainly by their own merit. And then Batou admits to an AI helping all of them aim. Great. This is as bad as the Major downloading how to box. Our heroine and her heroes are not the best of the best. They have the right bodies to handle enhancements that make them superhuman.

Saito’s augmentation makes sense. He had to have his eye ruined before he was able to use his little gizmo. A sacrifice was necessary. That’s compelling and adds to his character. Well, now we can all be Saito! And we don’t have to have the Major poke our eye out! Just so long as we have the right prosthetic body.

Why should I care about characters whose talents are not unique? I guess all one must do to be special here is download a Wikipedia article and find an AI to fill in the blanks. How does one get to be a member of Section 9? I mean, they let Purin in. It can’t be that hard to join them.

Accepting the finality of death demonstrates a mature perspective of life. Of all characters, I would have been willing to bet the Major would understand this. But she is not interested in the ethical implications of her decision, despite how philosophical she can otherwise be. They needed Purin’s brain. Because nobody else in Section 9 is talented enough to hack the Pentagon. Uh-huh. Here’s a thought. Did the writers really have to kill Purin in the first place? Evidently, because they wanted to use this trope, and they made the Major look like an absolute idiot while doing so.

Having said that, it will come as no shock that I found the ending to be on par with how Neon Genesis Evangelion concluded. Rebuild included. Everyone’s consciousness is in “heaven” because the world is in the throes of nuclear war. The Major is given the chance to pull the plug, but relents. Yet she can’t live in a fantasy world, so she decides to retreat into the net. To essentially live in a fantasy world.

Yet it is not all negative. As before, I applaud the dub. Everybody did fantastic. I got mad respect for Cherami Leigh's portrayal of Purin. This is one of the few shows I prefer to watch in English, but the dub was not ready at the time this first came out due to the pandemic. I wasn't enthused enough to watch the first twelve episodes a second time despite how much I like the English voice cast for this show, so I missed Leigh's performance. Until this season. As much as I do not like Mary Sue---oh, excuse me. Purin! As much as I do not like Purin, Leigh made her tolerable.

Where do they go from here? It would take a miracle to come back from this. Oh, wait! A Rebuild. That’s right, it would take a Rebuild to come back from this. Maybe when they get to 2045 a second time around 2055, they’ll get it right. But I doubt it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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