The local fleapit are showing the animated version of Ghost in the Shell tomorrow night. Presumably in preparation for the live action CGI-fest coming soon. I remember reading the anglicised manga decades ago. Should I go see it or wait for the live action version?
Which one? The original classic movie (1995), the new animated movie (2015), or one of the other sequels/side stories/spinoffs?
If you’re talking about the original, go see it, then go home and watch The Matrix. That should make you feel warm inside.
It’s an animated version by Mamoru Oshii.
More than likely, that’s the original movie from 1995, although it could be the … I don’t know how you’d say it - “remastered” Ghost In The Shell 2.0 from 2008.
Go see it. You liked the manga, didn’t you? It’s impossible to capture Shirow’s attention to detail in a moving picture (c.f. every Tom Clancy movie ever made), but on the other hand, you get the bonus of seeing his creations come to life.
Judging by the description, it is the remastered version.
But will it sour me on the live-action one?
Ehh, if it does, then you’ve seen the better one. If it’s the 1995 one, even better. I’d go if it was local to me.
I probably saw the remastered version and loved it. If the live action movie is nearly as good I’ll be surprised. That being said, it depends on how much you want to see the live version. If you don’t mind spoilers, then I definitely recommend seeing it.
The movie doesn’t match the style or feel of the comic, pretty much at all. So if your standard is that you liked the manga, that’s not going to take you terribly far.
At a high level:
There’s no fuchikoma. 
The movie is less fan-servicey than the manga.
The movie is a psychological drama paired with a few action scenes, where the manga was basically just action with some interesting commentary by the artist on why different bits of technology had been drawn that way (usually, as an elaborate excuse for the fan service).
After watching the movie, the Wachowskis thought, “Gee, that was cool!” And remade it into the Matrix and garnered 20 times more fame for doing so than Oshii did for making GitS. This then pissed off Oshii, so he did a live action film, Avalon, in the same style as Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix. Avalon ended up being a much better sequel to The Matrix than the Wachowskis ever made.
Personally, I was never impressed by the manga. The art was nice, but there was no story worth talking about, and the fan service was too much by 10.
I never much cared for the movie, either, but that’s because I didn’t find Oshii’s techno-psychology monologues to be anywhere near as deep and meaningful as he did. Of course, he probably mostly wrote them in so as to fill time with cheaply animated dialogue scenes so they could nicely animate the big action sequences. And those are cool. But, personally, I don’t rank movies on the popcorn scale, so it’s a big meh for me.
The Matrix was a worse movie than Ghost in the Shell. It was more poorly plotted, the action sequences weren’t quite as good as GitS, and the techno-psychology babble was less well written. I mean, it’s a perfectly fine movie. But I would agree with Oshii that it was a rip-off of his film, and a worse one.
Avalon is decent. Not a favorite, but better than the others. Though, being live action, the action sequences aren’t anywhere near as good as Hollywood’s since it was made on a Japanese budget.
But basically, if you liked The Matrix, you should like it. Probably, you will like it more than the Matrix since it’s a better movie. Of the four things I mentioned, I’d recommend Avalon.
I can’t really concur with anything you wrote, Sage Rat, except I would agree that Avalon is an overlooked film that deserves a wider audience.
You think that Ghost in the Shell the manga and the movie are similar in style and substance?
You think that how much someone likes The Matrix would not be a particularly good predictor for how much they like Ghost in the Shell, the movie?
Yes.
No; not necessarily.
The fan service has always been there… in Appleseed, Dominion, Black Magic… but it really seems like that’s become Shirow’s bread and butter these days what with all the illustration jobs he’s taking that lead to what you see in his Intron Depot books.
I would have to agree with this. I barely finished my first viewing of The Matrix, but own and have watched Ghost In The Shell several times. I’ve also watched the sequels and the series of GITS. I haven’t bothered watching any of The Matrix’s sequels. Hell, I don’t think I’ve watched anything involving the Wachowskis since. (checks wiki) Wow, nope. Everything involving them looked like garbage at first glance.
I’m back from the showing, and it was the original Japanese with English subtitles and, I think, remastered for HD.
It was a surprisingly slight film in terms of scenes (probably thanks to the amount of exposition) but also deceptively deep in the questions it raised. Very Zen.
I think GitS is meant to be that way (deep). Some of Shirow’s works are steeped in this, while others (usually the comedies and other shorter works) only touch on it.
For example, I was flipping through Appleseed the other night looking for the scenes where Magus and Morton are wearing “Orpheus” landmates. The amount of dialog between the characters in Appleseed may seem obsessive, but there are some serious philosophical questions in the background that inevitably drag the heroes (Deunan and Briareos - Magus and Morton are just the “comic relief”) in.
On the surface, both GitS and Appleseed are about special police who fight certain types of crime that the regular police wouldn’t be able to handle. Underneath, though, it’s about exceptional individuals faced with choices that expose these big philosophical questions. For Appleseed, it’s about the ethics of doing what’s best for Humanity, even if that could mean replacing (most, if not all of) us. In GitS, it’s about being forced to draw the line between living things and those traditionally regarded as not being alive - in a time where the technology has advanced so far that the old standards might not apply any more.