Ghost in the Shell 2 (Innocence) movies/tv

[Mk5]

I went to this movie on saturday night.

 

The very first thing that struck me was that the voices weren't dubbed. I TOTALLY did not expect this (the movie article said nothing about this and neither did the previews) and I think it detracted from the overall sense of the movie because instead of watching and taking in the facial expressions/body language associated with the dialogue I was spending my time reading the scrolling text at the bottom. Add to this that there are quite a few culture specific references in the text and it makes the dialogue sometimes hard to follow.

 

Besides the lack of voice dubbing (and the lack of mention of said lack in the newspaper article) the movie seemed to creep along at some times. From what I can remember it was something like this: Fight scene, talking scene, talking scene, talking scene with lots of metaphysical talk (what is real? what is reality? that sort of theme), Fight scene.

 

Possibly the reason I found this tedious was because of the constant reading I was forced to do, let me be honest I go to most movies without expecting to do alot of reading and when a movie that I didn't expect to be undubbed isn't dubbed that makes my mental score-chart for the movie go down a few notches.

 

Besides the above mentioned problems I thought the movie was decent, It had a sort of realism in that some of the characters were easily relateable (I made that word up) and you could put yourself in their shoes. Despite the dialogue being in japanesse and the numerous culture specific references I was able to gain an idea of some of the main points of the movie because of the great job that the movie did through visualization.

 

Some of the CG scenes are breath-taking in their complexity and sense of looking like something real and tangible. The movie raises some interesting questions and although I do not agree, in some areas, with how the directors seem to be leading you to certain conclusions only I do see where they are coming from and can emphize with them.

 

Overall I would give this a 83/100 mostly because of the lack of dubbing.

Edited October 18, 2004 by Mk5

[dwEEziL]

Haven't seen it yet but for the record, myself and a bunch of my friend's who are hardcore anime freaks (I am not but do have many friends that are) prefer subtitles over dubs. It seems more distracting to me to see a non-sync'ed dub (as all foreign language films, animated or not, are) then to read the subtitles.

[Acid-Flux]

The dubbing wasnt really a problem for me, would have been nice but I guess we will have to wait untill the DVD is released for it.

[Cyklik]

As someone who watches a lot of anime, we really look down on dubbing. Watching something dubbed oftentimes removes the emotion or feeling, and it's practically impossible to watch something dubbed and not be distracted by the lack of sync.

 

On the topic of GITS, I watched the first movie several years ago before I really got into anime, so my judgment of it may be slightly off. I thought it was boring and not even half as good as some of the other titles I've watched. Again, this was at least 5 years ago, and before I started watching any other anime. I haven't seen it since, but my friends and I have been discussing picking that up again and then watching the new movie and series.

[Dennis]

dubbed movies are crap....im a hardcore fan of all asian film and over time have learned how to read and watch the movie at the same time.