I’m going to second (third, whatever) Death Note, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actross That last one I don’t think has been dubbed–my copy isn’t anyways. I’ll also throw in Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+ (note, they’re not in continuity). The latter is a great series that manages to be dark without dragging you down. Sidenote–these came from the same studio that made the GitS animations.
Since somebody mentioned Macross, the first series is available as Robotech: The Macross Saga FYI. The later parts of the series are actually different series–the three were rewritten to make a single storyline. It’s a bit dated now, but still well worth watching.
The IMDB page on Millennium Actress mentions English actors, so presumably there is a dubbed version. However, the same director’s Tokyo Godfathers has not been dubbed. (“Tokyo Godfathers” is the Japanese title – or, more accurately, “Tōkyō Goddofāzāzu” is – and it’s another of my favourite anime.)
Incidentally, it would be hard to dub Tokyo Godfathers – at one point, one of the central characters (a high-school-age girl) tries to speak in English, without much success, because the person she is talking to only speaks Spanish. So how do you dub broken high-school English in that context?
Ack, late again, lots mentioned that I would agree with liking too.
Appleseed is worth a try, I got it in a double feature with Battle Angel Alita. There’s a modern update to Appleseed and a sequel, but I’ve not been able to catch either of them.
Has anyone mentioned Patlabor? No? Good, I’ll recommend the second film over the first and what I’ve seen of the series. Not to say that the latter two aren’t any good, I just prefer that second film a lot more.
Thanks anyway Pushkin (and everyone else in this thread!).
That reminds me of a question I had though, I read a small part of the original Appleseed manga and I got the impression that Briareos was original a black man before he got cyborgised but in the Anime he isn’t depicted as such. Am I wrong, if not why was the change made?
In addition a question about Ghost in the Shell (apart from, what the hell is going on?!?) I thought Major Kusanagi was a cyborg who’s only original component is her brain and piece of her spinal cord however she is depicted transferring her conciousness from one cybernetic body to the other by cables only. Does she have any biological components left or is she only her conciousness (the ‘ghost’ of the title) which can run on any given cybernetic frame?
I can’t answer your other question, but your first impression is right. She is able to remotely control other bodies, but a person’s ghost resides within their physical brain and cannot be copied. It’s the defining characteristic of a human in a world where androids are commonplace.
Any other GitS questions? I’m a bit of a fangirl, so I’ll be happy to answer anything I can.
All the ones I own or have watched have been mentioned except for one.
Hellsing Alucard, a vampire, is in the service of the Hellsing family who run a secret government sanctioned organization to get of bad guys, mostly vampires. Alucard is bad ass. My step-brothers got it and one day when I was over visiting we watched the whole damn thing. The next day I bought my own copy and watched it again over the course of a week.
Special shout outs to Paranoi Agent and FLCL.
Both of these shows I caught an episode or two here and there on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and I just had to know the whole story so I bought them.
FLCL is my favorite because it makes fun of anime and takes anime staples to the extreme.
At the end of Ghost in the Shell, the Puppet Master actually merges his consciouness with Kusanagi’s within her biological brain (as I recall, the PM’s body is utterly destroyed, while Batau manages to save Kusanagi’s head, after they’ve merged ‘ghosts’). So while she still has her old biological brain, her consciousness is actually something more than who she formerly was, and as we see in GitS2:Innocence, is very well capable of running along the network without the body. Her ‘ghost’ has reached a higher stage of evolution, so to speak.
Most of my anime knowledge comes from Adult Swim or TechTV’s Anime Unleashed circa about 10 years ago or Saturday Anime on SciFi Channel about 15 years ago, but here’s what I remember:
Last Exile - A somewhat steampunkish style series about a pair of young couriers who get caught up in a war between rival factions. Lot’s of battles between giant antigravity airships that look like a cross between the Hindenburg and a WWI Dreadnaught armed with steam powered weapons. CGI similar to Appleseed but with more of a traditional 2D look.
Demon City Shinjuku - Fucked up movie about some dude rescuing a girl traped in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district after a demon powered earthquake turns it into a hellish wasteland. Trivia: A frame from this film was one of the images that unlocked Johnny Mnuemonic’s brain.
**X ** - Also by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the director of Demon City Shinjuku. Another really messed up demonic battle between good and evil film.
**Iria: Zeiram the Animation ** - Kind of a weird flick about a female bounty hunter (Iria) and her battle against an indestructable bio-weapon (Zeiram). Stylistically, it’s kind of like Alien meets Shogun.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team - I’m not a fan of the Gundam series, but I did like this one. It’s a lot more realistic than most as the main characters are typical soldiers, not super-aces and the robot suits are portrayed as powerful, but vulnurable mass-produced war machines, not superweapons.
Oh and** The Animatrix ** is good too. It has clips directed by Shinichirô Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop), Peter Chung (Aoen Flux) and other big anime directors.
Thanks, and Jayn, see thats the part that puzzled me. In the GITS: SAC series she is shown transferring her conciousness from a damaged body to a new body and it seems to be done by a process of attaching cables and not physically moving her brain. In addition at the end of the first series (if I understood it correctly) she is shown being shot in the head by a sniper, destroying her brain, so her mind resides only within cyberspace before being given a new physical body.
Well, in SAC the transfer never actually took place. She did remotely control the body on a couple occasions, but her cyberbrain was still in the original (so to speak). She was probably remotely controlling the body in the end of the first season, though that’s never made clear.
The movie is vaguer. However, there is a comment about her brain not being recovered–Batou saved it and found her a new body. But whether she still resides in a body at all in Innocence…hard to say.
Have you seen Solid State Society? That’s even trippier on the subject.
Thanks, the remote manipulation of another body helps clarify things (though that does call into question what range she can manipulate an extra body for and how many bodies she can control at once!). I haven’t seen Solid State Society, to be honest I wasn’t overly impressed by the Innocence movie.
Would any of those French/Japanese “anime” series from the 80s count? They’re probably a bit too juvenile in comparison now, but I remember being wowed by “Mysterious Cities of Gold”, “Ulysses 31” and others.
Mysterious Cities of Gold used to be one of my favourite shows as a kid, though they kept showing it in random order. Anyway, I went to look it up, and apparently they’re making a film of it. Neat.
SSS answers one of those questions (she can manipulate two bodies at once). Ir’s also part of SAC, so if you preferred that to the other movies (which I’ll admit are rather dull) then SSS should be a definite watch.
The first has the better story, but the second has better graphics. Both are worth watching.