Ghost in the Shell Arise 1-4 & Alternative Architecture 9 &10 -
So yesterday on a whim I decided to watch the
Arise stuff. Maybe the movie hype got to me or maybe I was in the mood for cyberpunk, I don't know. I burned through the original Arise OVAs as well as the two new Architecture episodes, that serve as a lead-in to the movie. Each of the OVAs are relatively episodic although they had references to each other and a continuous subplot involving the virus Firestarter. The two episodes are much more serial in nature as they continue almost directly from the fourth OVA and both episodes tell one story. So this was a rather interesting watch as I'm not a die hard GitS fan although I hold the original and SAC in very
very high regard, obviously for different reasons. Arise is something of a mixture, like if you threw all the previous entries of GitS into a blender and turned it on low. You have chunks of this and that everywhere but it never really comes together to have its own unique vision.
Let me start off by first discussing the sexuality in the show. Some of the first shots in the original Arise OP (it seems like they went through a number of them) are literally of Motoko's ass. Really. If the first shot or second shot wasn't enough to show off apparently how sexual she is, they need to focus on her lips in another one. That along with the large number of scenes in which Motoko doesn't have on anything other than maybe underwear, gave off a feeling of male gaze and exploitation. Yes, this isn't particularly new to the franchise as seen by Motoko's one piece in SAC however it feels even more unnecessary due to the raw number of scenes having her running around near naked. For example, she's diving while in her underwear and someone invades her net space so she runs out of the apartment and through a park in her underwear to try and track the guy down. Now I'm sure someone is going to try and argue, "Well she was in her underwear trying to relax. What do you expect her to do? Put on some jeans while the bad man escapes?" however it was the writer/director's decision to time the intrusion in that manner to the point where she had little clothes on. That's in addition to the stuff where she sees a robot out of the corner of her eye and tries to chase the illusion out of the bathroom while naked. The first OVA sets a pattern of female exploitation, and not in an insightful manner. It's not just Motoko though, as her military commander at the 501st
has her tits near hanging out in a professional setting. JESUS CHRIST. I can't even take the woman seriously as a villain as what military outfit would let a woman dress like that in an office setting?
It's not just the first episode with the camera lingering but more fundamental writing issues in the third. So Motoko has almost always been depicted as some super badass in all incarnations of her. However the third episode shows her in a somewhat new light, as essentially having a crush on someone. Now I understand this OVA series is supposed to be set earlier than almost all of the GitS timeframes, to a point where Motoko isn't her cold emotionless self however the depiction here seems to take it a step too far. She feels somewhat out of character as a way of making her the jilted female lover whose man betrays her and she has to stop him (look at Shinobu in Patlabor for further examples). It's not handled with any of the subtlety found in SAC 2nd Gig with Kuze.
Why the fuck are you reciting her own resume to her?
Continuing on the point of writing, I'm highly disappointed with Ubukata's writing in the OVA episodes. The episodes are chock-full of technobabble and exposition that makes following the actual narrative of each episode extremely hard. They're just way too dense and the line delivery makes it even harder at times to understand. I have a general gist of what happened in each of the episodes but then there's some element that just seems extraneous and makes everything even more convoluted. One example would be the detective shot by another police officer in episode 3.
Yes the show explains what this means but why even drop this line if you have to explain it anyway?
The show tries to compensate for the complexity by having these exposition dumps but again the dialogue serves to muddle everything up.
Am I supposed to remember from some previous entry what a ghost dub is? The show also suffers from prequel syndrome where there's a bunch of winks and nods to later events such as Motoko gathering her team with, "Hey look isn't that Batou/Togusa? Oh boy, I can't wait till Motoko recruits them!". It's not handled with any sort of cleverness and instead just serves as bad fanwank.
That said, I think the writing in the Alternative Architecture is noticeably better. While there are still the usual double/triple crosses, the writing is much more succinct and easier to follow. This is probably related to there being less jargon and more emphasis on action. I also suspect that the plot having to be broken up into two episodes with distinct ending points meant that there was less of a chance of everything becoming jumbled up.
I do like the Wizard of Oz references though. The one time where the storyboarding had character.
As for the animation, I would have to rewatch SAC but my first reaction is that the OVAs are comparable to the TV series. That's not a good thing. There are
tons of blatantly off-character models and what action scenes there were, seemed as if they needed more in-betweens occasionally. It's a shame too as there are some stellar animators that worked on this such as Okiura. It doesn't have the polish of what I would expect from an OVA series and especially not one of GitS caliber. This isn't helped by the somewhat bad character designs, although occasionally they can look good such as
Motoko in AA episode 9. Elements such as storyboarding are missing their usual flair and instead come off as flat compared to their predecessors. The backgrounds are probably the only notable aspect of the production and even then there aren't many super high detailed shots. Funnily enough, the
art direction reminded me of Psycho-Pass rather than previous GitS entries. Astoundingly enough, the Alternative Architecture episodes actually looked better than the OVA episodes. The character models seemed to be sharper, the action better staged, and some of the storyboarding was more atmospheric. On the auditory side, the music wasn't Kawai/Kanno-tier. Surprise of the century. I watched this yesterday and I can't remember a single track from the OST. Even the
OP and
ED, usually highlights of a GitS work (RIP Origa), are bland as dirt.
Going into the Arise movie, I'm left underwhelmed even if Arise wasn't complete trash. The four OVA episodes instead just ranged from bad to mediocre. That said, I have a better impression due to the Alternative Architecture episodes as those felt like really good SAC episodes. Altogether though, Psycho-Pass was better.
