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What even is this special? Over 70% of the run time is abridged version of the first half of Part 4 aka "Lupin III (2015)" Thus the actual original content lack any time to develop and is rushed near the end.

And I have to say, by this point when you say "Count Cagliostro" in a Lupin III story, nobody is gonna realize you are referencing the original Arsene Lupin story, everyone's gonna assume you are talking about the one from "Castle of Cagliostro", it's already a bad choice and the special also didn't do a job stating that case.

With so little actual run time, how ... are there even any mystery to the supposed mysterious villain, since this Special is supposed to happen in between Part 4?

There's really not much watching value to this, even though there are some good parts, for one, the train chase scene is pretty good, so much so I'd rather it's its own 20 min or so episode.

Also the Opening is really awesome though, sadly it's attached to this excuse of a clip show.

I never thought I would ever see a new installment of "Stand Alone Complex" in this life time, not with all the original cast and Kenji Kamiyama back on both the writing and the director's sit. Yet here it is.

Though there are still changes, both visual and the music.
The absent of Origa and Yoko Kanno really shows how much they played into the identity of SACs. But with the former sadly passed away a few yeas ago, and the latter basically retired from the anime industry by now, it really can't be help.

However, even knowing that, the music is still just underwhelming, especially ... the opening, which I find myself constantly skipping, it could just be me but the style kinda annoys me.

As to the visual, the 3D CGI and art style shift seem to be what worry most people, I must say I was worried too, the CGI is kinda weird looking at times, but it nails the action scenes perfectly, and it gets the job done when it comes to the character acting as well, which we should most likely thanks Shinji Aramaki.

Though, I am not a fan of Ilya Kuvshinov's character design, especially his depiction of the Major: She looks much younger and slimmer than her former self, it's especially jawing when Atsuko Tanaka's mature voice comes out of that face. But if we step into the forth wall for explanation, I guess it's logical that as you grow older, one would only want to look younger.

Another problem with his work is that all the young (looking) female characters look like they are made from a same mould, and it doesn't feel like it's intentional.

However, visual and the music are merely the surface, never really the core when one talk about the good of SAC. They could be overlooked if the plot and performance could hold up.

Fortunately they do.

Kenji Kamiyama didn't have much of a career after the original run of SAC, I was worried that he might have lost it before going in, especially after seeing his more recent film "Hirune Hime".

Now, 12 episodes in, and I am confident that he's still got it, so far the plot is very much in the same tone with the original run, with Kamiyama's signature political conspiracy thriller and familiar narrative techniques. Nothing can get more close to the original SAC than this after a 14 years gap. Hell! I'd say it has no right being so close after such a long gap.

If you still have doubts if this series got the SAC spirit, I'd say maybe try episode 7 first. The first 6 episodes are more like setting up the story. Episode 7 however, is returning to the old "Stand Alone" format of the original SAC run. There you can judge by yourself if Kamiyama still got it to run SAC.

I don't get why in the hell a manga adaptation of an existing show could be so unfaithful to a point that could enrages fans of the show.

The author of the manga clearly favors Rin Setsu A (or Lin Xue Ya if you prefer the Chinese pronunciation) and changed a lot of the minor details to no only add some more screen time for him, but make him look way better than he was in the actual show, in which he was just a few steps away from being a horrible person.

Lots of moments that was meant to let other characters shine in the ... show got changed in favor of Rin Setsu A. Even the supposed protagonist Sho Fu Kan of the source material can't escape this fate.

One could argue that I shouldn't compare the two, but see them as two separate things. The problem is that this manga isn't its own thing. Just like an anime adaptation of a manga or light novel, it owns a lot to its source material, and creative library should only be made with understanding and respect to the original. Which this manga clearly didn't have at least one of those in mind.

Basically, skip this and go watch the puppet show.

If you think "Ito Junji: Collection" was not good, well this is worse. Being an BD special OVA of said series, the art and animation is poor even for this series' stander. And it's rushed as hell, lots of monologue from the source material of episode 1 was cut out. Episode 2 was not as noticeable but they still cut out more than a little stuff, which hurts the atmosphere of the story, since those parts really helped building up mood in the manga.

Episode 1, You'd think this being an adaptation of Ito's first story ever, there are lots of place they could have improved. ... But they didn't. The editing on transition is especially bad...

Episode 2, this was actually the first half of a two parter in the manga... why would they choose to adapt this but not the second half? If you can only do one more episode maybe choose one that's actually stand alone?

Also, somehow they still forced two story into one 22min episode for This. It doesn't have that time limit here! It's an OVA, you can make it how ever long it needed to be.

It's a mess, my local streaming service got this one for some reason, otherwise if I had to pay for the BD to watch this... I would be pissed.

Ito deserves better, Tomie deserves better.

So far (Episode 6 ) I'm pretty disappointed with "Ito Junji Collection" for two reasons:

Firstly, the pacing is not very good, I think it has a lot to do with their decision to force two stories into every 22mins episode, therefor a lot of minor points got cut out, which hurt the atmosphere building drastically.

Then the art varies form passable to just bad, I don't know how much budged they had making this show but it doesn't seem to be much. And the overall color palette is too bright, not moody enough.

Needless to say this doesn't do justice to Ito's work.

This film just came out last week in my country.

Kamiyama Kenji has always been a very special director to me. His S.A.C. series is by far the best take on the Ghost in the Shell IP in my opinion, it's one of, if not THE one all time favorite anime of mine. I always hope this guy could get more attention and get more things done.

However "Hirune Hime" is kind of underwhelming. It's not really a bad film but the pacing is weird, the narrative is kind of childish, and the dialogue said too much.

In parts it kind reminds me of some of Kon Satoshi's ... work, with the theme and the way it was approached, sadly it's not done nearly as good.

The animation is decent but not spectacular, the music is serviceable. Again, it's not really bad. But the story and the narrative just don't work... I can't help but see a better film, a great film buried deep within it.

I guess I was expecting way more from the man and the trailer. But how can you blame me?

The story is all over the place. After the second watch I kind of get the narrative and it's not linear at all, it really hurts my brain... My best attempt of telling what time did a certain scene happen is by checking whether Green's girlfriend (or maybe ex) has the ring he gave her.

And some of the side-story really has noting to do with the plot,for example: the entirety of Logan's plot line can be cut out easily.

In the end I kind of get what the director/writers wanted to do with this film. And I don't really like what they wanted to say. ... Yea, the idea is interesting: there's never a real Lupin, all of them are just copies without an original, and the greatest of them all get to be recognized as the "real" one.

Which could explain the difference of all the Lupin from different series/films having various personality and appearance.

However this made a light-hearted franchise unnecessarily heavy, especially for a anniversary special. Also, the narrative is too complicated for it's own good.