Back to Spunkie's Profile Spunkie's Profile

Firstly if you went in expecting anything storylike you'll be weirded out. This is an audio/visual experience that's bound to be presented on multi panel display. For those of us watching it on our home theater the effect is hugely diminished.

"Open Your Mind" takes you on a thrill ride to Oshii's mindscape. It can be interpreted as Oshii throwing abrupt imagery at the viewer and it closely resembles a shroom trip. Whatever it is, the strongest emotion present is oneness with the universe. Qatsi Trilogy, especially the latest instalment Naqoyqatsi probably left an impression on Oshii.

Kawai's soundtrack is as sweet and uplifting as ever and ... saves this otherwise dismissable episode of Oshii.

3D cgi work with lots of composites works well to great %50 of the time, rest of'em comes around as cheesy.

Oshii once again stepped on my nerves with the extraterrestrial Dog-God and human offspring morphing into puppies. Off with the bullsh.t man, 20 years and you are taking this dog metaphore nowhere, it's ruining your work.

Like Sky crawlers it left a sour taste in my mouth. I can not reccomend it freely, but it is good enough for a single view, especially for the crosslinks between Oshii's body of work.

I'll only go into revisional details assuming you haven't ever watched GITS and checking out which version to watch.

The major difference in 2.0 is the un-matrix-isation of it. GITS was a green movie, in revision it is shifted to a red hue. This makes it way more colorful than intented and a bit disrespectful to Oshii. The introduction sequence is mostly redesigned with 3D additions, it's quite good and gives the impression this will be a complete revision of the original (which is not the case). The credits Matrix copied over is completely taken out.

Lack of transition between newly introduced 3D with the old ... 2D is extremely uneven and confusing to the audience. There are some panoramic sequences of the city very similar to GITS: Innocence, they manage to fit in, but character 3D ruins it.

I didn't notice any difference plotwise, so if any is present it should be minor. My dvd copy of the original has lots of artifacts, especially in the dark scenes. They did a good job digitally cleaning the film on 2.0.

Overall this renewal feels clumsy and makes GITS more generic than it is. Only a blu-ray renewal should have been more than enough. If this'll be your first time with GITS I strongly advise watching the original first. If you are checking it for a rewatch there is no harm with trying 2.0.

Chibis jumping up and down, talking about hard core scientific facts is the last thing to expect..if this wasn't Anno's work.

This little extra paves the way nicely for the series both for factual and fictional background. It's a clever way to keep the series tidy of unending explanations and surely saves space in its short running time.

It's a good idea to come up with teaser trailer shorts, just a little market enquiry and must have been fun to do for the creators.

Dismissable except the 2nd (Champlooesque alternate) and 8th (Macross&Eva crossover with quality animation) ones.

Still there is no harm watching it if you liked the series. There are almost no spoilers since these are imaginary what if? trailers, you can barge in whatever point you are on the series.

I'll keep it short. This series succeeds in being watchable without pushing the boundaries.

Up until 4th episode it seems redundant. With the introduction of Teresa a story base is established and it moves forward with quick slashes. Best thing about Claymore is tightness of the flow. There is no room to catch your breath, every 2 ep.s apart it tunes up a notch till the end. Without the intention to do so, I became addicted and drained it in 3 days.

Each Claymore basically looks the same except the haircut, as the numbers multiplied I had a hard time differentiating between the characters. Same cocky attitude, ... different techniques, similar motivations.

It's generic fantasy world and ending wrap up makes it forgettable for me. In order to enjoy the thrill ride I tried not to read too much into it.

- SPOILER -
The explanation about all the Claymore's being female presents an interesting subtext. Triggering of Yoma powers feeds on sexual pleasure, and every male experiment ended up -awakening-. Once men get excited to the limit, it results in a premature ejaculation. Makes sense to me :).

In two words; underwhelming and underdeveloped. If I haven't believed in the sincerity of the creators I wouldn't bring myself to finish it.

Artwork is nice, the usual oav quality. Storytelling is consistently boring. The issue of immortality and long time span of the oav brings in lots of potential that's rarely tapped into. There are a few plot twists which tends towards a home run then gets lost quickly.

Most interesting things are the main character Rin and background details as the time goes on. A few lifestyle changes and interfaces are introduced in later episodes, but it has been used way better in ... Gits:Sac and they don't effect the flow of the story much. It's not as gory and sexually exploitive as people seem to think .

All in all I felt that Mnemosyne would have worked way better in a 26 ep. series assuming some inspiration comes into play and it gets further developed.