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Ghost in the Shell Manga
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Title Info
- seen: 1 of 1
- type: manga
- grade: worthy
- people: Shirow
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
First off, forget the movie of the same name as this source manga bears few similarities, serving more as an idea source. And to be honest this is probably what Shirow does best, his active imagination, wide ranging interests and staggering understanding of technology fueling a rich soup of idea's. In addition his ability to represent complex and competent characters who swim like sharks in the murky waters of his worlds is always impressive. In these stories we follow Motoko Kusanagi, a special forces cyborg, and her squad as they confront terrorists, criminals and the complex competing political interests. The underlying theme is on the merging of cybernetics and humanity, and the various effects this has on the culture, but this is not as central as in the movie. The problem is that this flow of ideas and scenes work against the interests of story and structure. The multiple stories in this novel almost collapse under the complexity of plot, philosophy and event they are expected to bear, and confusion can easily result. In a similar way Shirow's drawing style is wonderful, especially for technology, but it is obvious that some scenes interest him more than others, leading to a variability in quality. Still, there is much solid work here, most of the stories are very good and the action is superb leading to this being a worthwhile work to explore. Bonus points for Kusanagi herself, competent, deadly and believable.
This novel also had some pages removed, featuring Kusanagi making some extra money by doing full body recording (I believe) but this was at the request of the Author. Scan's of these two pages, plus dialogue translation, is available here, is not the net wide and wonderful?
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:18 WST 2009