Ghost In The Shell
The pre- George Lucas’d version
Release Date: OUT NOW! 1995 | 15 | 83 minutes | £ 29.99 ( Blu- ray Steelbook) Distributor: Manga Entertainment Director: Mamoru Oshii Cast: Akio Ōtsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Kôichi Yamadera, Tamio Ōki
If Akira is
the Star Wars of anime, then Ghost In The Shell is its Blade Runner: the anime movie the cool kids prefer. It’s a cyberpunk thriller infused with the kind of existential angst that would be pretentious wibble in a standard Hollywood movie, but put through a Japanese cultural filter feels deeply philosophical. Packed with cyborgs, cyberterrorism and bloody action, it transforms hardware, combat and cityscapes into painted poetry. It’s hard as nails with a soft core.
Until now it’s never been on Blu- ray outside of Japan. Not the real version, anyway. The mongrel Ghost In The Shell 2.0 Redux ( 2008), with its ill- advised CGI, has been available here, but now, mercifully, the original is out in the UK in a limited edition.
Based on the same master copy used for the Japanese Blu- ray, it arrives pure and untweaked. The English soundtrack is in 5.1 DTS- HD, but the Japanese track is the slightly less crisp 2.0 PCM – the same as on the Japanese disc, so we’re not being deprived.
You don’t need to like anime to love Ghost In The Shell, just decent science fiction.
Extras: The actual disc is disappointingly vanilla, but you do get a 24- page Making Of booklet featuring an all- new interview with Oshii and more. Dave Golder The numbers you see in the opening credits are actually the names of the crew written in computer code.