Ghost in the Shell Review

Oshii's version is less a thriller than an argument delivered through ambience. The famous city sequence, three minutes of rain, canals, mannequins, and Kenji Kawai's wedding-chant score with no dialogue and no plot advancement, is the film working exactly as intended, and the layout, compositing, and early digital overlays handed cyberpunk a visual grammar that Hollywood then copied wholesale. Kawai's score, built on Bulgarian harmony and Japanese folk wedding song, is the best thing here and one of the finest in any animated film.

What holds it back is the human element. Motoko is a deliberate cipher, thematically defensible and dramatically inert, while Batou, Togusa, and the Puppet Master are functions rather than people. Long stretches of dialogue state the themes instead of dramatising them, and the plot itself is a thin conspiracy that exists to reach the final merge. As atmosphere and craft it is close to unmatched; as a story about anyone in particular, it is cold and slight.