Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex is one of my favourite animes of all time, drawing me in with its cyberpunk setting, great atmosphere, powerful emotive music, strong animation and of course, the allure of the mysterious Major. It was a complete package that truly immersed you in its deep detective-style narrative.
SAC 2045 has almost none of this and falls apart from both the top-down and the bottom-up, it's a completely different show, despite featuring the same voice actors and directors as the original series.
If like me you watched the trailer and were concerned over the animation style, whatever your expectation, the reality was likely worse. Facial animation is almost non-existent and the concept of lip-sync appears to have long since been forgotten in the year 2045. Character animations are equally awkward, feeling rigid and unnatural with poor timing and there's a notable lack of detail in the world as a whole. Even the characters themselves feel unfamiliar, Bato appears to have had a nose job and features a new, slimmer facial structure, whilst the Major looks as though this is just her 2nd-gig (pardon the pun) for when she's not dancing and singing on stage as a member of AKB48, instantly losing that hint of maturity and mystery that had previously surrounded her. In a nutshell, the show's animation is what you might expect if you were to produce a B-rate clone of a Borderlands game, a similar look and feel, with vastly inferior level and animation detail, with character designs not dissimilar to 1997's Tekken 3 CG cut-scenes.
Sound is present and not particularly lacking musically, but it feels out-of-place (again think Borderlands) and lacks the same emotive and narrative telling properties of the original series.
The story itself has shifted from the detective or law & order and cyberpunk genres to one more of a post apocalyptic action something or other, I can't quite place a finger on it. This alone I could forgive as an effort to progress the world of SAC but the additional focus on action, at the cost of realism, and the short-run of the series leaves both the narrative and sociopolitical undertones intrinsic to SAC all too shallow in depth. The Californian setting also does little to backup the futuristic and cyberpunk elements of the show and further hinders attempts at creating a convincing atmosphere.
What makes SAC 2045 so utterly terrible is that were it in any other media, my imagination could be used to fill in the blanks, the acting, the lip syncing, I could even apply some creative licence to the atmosphere as a whole, however, instead I'm force fed a world that is just about as unconvincing, uncompelling and bland as it gets, there's no room for an immersive atmosphere to form, no overall experience to draw me in. This isn't the same as an anime where the animation style doesn't quite work for you but a few episodes in you learn to love its nuances and are taken away by the story, SAC 2045 just doesn't grow on you.
Sharing the thoughts of other reviewers, I dreamily wonder if this show was somehow powered by advanced Netflix Cartoon Creation AI and that the parallels between this and Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama's vision of GitS was the lure that hooked them into working on this show, because that thought is much more comforting than the likely reality that they simply sold out their creative integrity to Netflix.
Don't watch this.
SAC 2045 has almost none of this and falls apart from both the top-down and the bottom-up, it's a completely different show, despite featuring the same voice actors and directors as the original series.
If like me you watched the trailer and were concerned over the animation style, whatever your expectation, the reality was likely worse. Facial animation is almost non-existent and the concept of lip-sync appears to have long since been forgotten in the year 2045. Character animations are equally awkward, feeling rigid and unnatural with poor timing and there's a notable lack of detail in the world as a whole. Even the characters themselves feel unfamiliar, Bato appears to have had a nose job and features a new, slimmer facial structure, whilst the Major looks as though this is just her 2nd-gig (pardon the pun) for when she's not dancing and singing on stage as a member of AKB48, instantly losing that hint of maturity and mystery that had previously surrounded her. In a nutshell, the show's animation is what you might expect if you were to produce a B-rate clone of a Borderlands game, a similar look and feel, with vastly inferior level and animation detail, with character designs not dissimilar to 1997's Tekken 3 CG cut-scenes.
Sound is present and not particularly lacking musically, but it feels out-of-place (again think Borderlands) and lacks the same emotive and narrative telling properties of the original series.
The story itself has shifted from the detective or law & order and cyberpunk genres to one more of a post apocalyptic action something or other, I can't quite place a finger on it. This alone I could forgive as an effort to progress the world of SAC but the additional focus on action, at the cost of realism, and the short-run of the series leaves both the narrative and sociopolitical undertones intrinsic to SAC all too shallow in depth. The Californian setting also does little to backup the futuristic and cyberpunk elements of the show and further hinders attempts at creating a convincing atmosphere.
What makes SAC 2045 so utterly terrible is that were it in any other media, my imagination could be used to fill in the blanks, the acting, the lip syncing, I could even apply some creative licence to the atmosphere as a whole, however, instead I'm force fed a world that is just about as unconvincing, uncompelling and bland as it gets, there's no room for an immersive atmosphere to form, no overall experience to draw me in. This isn't the same as an anime where the animation style doesn't quite work for you but a few episodes in you learn to love its nuances and are taken away by the story, SAC 2045 just doesn't grow on you.
Sharing the thoughts of other reviewers, I dreamily wonder if this show was somehow powered by advanced Netflix Cartoon Creation AI and that the parallels between this and Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama's vision of GitS was the lure that hooked them into working on this show, because that thought is much more comforting than the likely reality that they simply sold out their creative integrity to Netflix.
Don't watch this.