I didn't say that goal was entirely realistic, but you miss all the shots you don't take, isn't that the saying? While seeing a work that's actually good be given a low rating burns me, seeing a horrible work be lauded as a masterpiece is near the top of a long list of things that burn me even worse.
Now, onto the review!
Looking back on the series, the first serious problem I had with GitS:SAC 2nd GIG absolutely must be its distinctly downgraded visuals, with whole episodes suffering a severe drop in quality. It was episode 7 that was given this treatment first, but a more interesting case study would definitely be episode 14. It fully encomes the spectrum of visual quality of the entire season, and in a way that would be kind of hilarious if it didn't feel so tragic. We open with a scene that looks like any season 1 episode (i.e. really good, even by today's standards), then we transition into a flashback sequence that looks worse than anything I have ever seen come from Production I.G., and it stays this way for nearly the rest of the episode (all of episode 7 was like this, mind you). We then end the flashback segment with a brief scene that has such high quality art and animation that I was only then reminded that Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress was a Wit Studio original and Wit Studio employs a lot of the same people that worked on this show. That's how good that scene looks, and it nearly had me laughing at the baffling dissonance with the rest of the episode.
In fact, that one scene looks far and away better than anything else in 2nd GIG. Very few shots even come close to looking as good as the average action scene in season 1, and the show as a whole is simply not up to par with its predecessor. Somehow, many people still pretend that it looks as good as season 1, and those viewers need a nice, big bucket of cold water to splash them out of their daze. I can type here all day and night, but until they revisit the show, until they see the sheer lack of season-1-quality on display, they won't believe what I write.
The one good thing I can say about the visuals in 2nd GIG is that I am SO VERY GLAD that they finally gave the Major an actual suit that looks like the ones worn by the other Section 9 agents. Don't get me wrong, there's still a ton of gross fetishizing of the Major (seriously, in one episode she offers to have sex with a minor, it's freaking disgusting) and she'll still wear the occasional plunging dress (yes, I am rolling my eyes, too), but at least the fanservice is dialed back somewhat.
In contrast to the visuals, the sound design is consistently on par with the first season. Cars, mechs, weapons, the Tachikomas, they all sound amazing. The English dub is pretty great, too; Kirk Thornton as Kuze was definitely a highlight. The music is also good, being composed by Yoko Kanno and all, and as usual some of the tracks really stand out (though I wouldn't say her SAC soundtracks as a whole are even as good as the work she did for Escaflowne, let alone Bebop). While I enjoy the season 2 opening theme even more than season 1's, its ending theme is infinitely worse; we get a rather slow, methodical, boring song over a STATIC, UNINTERESTING BACKGROUND. Uuuuugggghhhhhhh.
But now for the seriously horrific part, the part that took 2nd GIG from an initial 6 out of 10 down to a 3: the goddamn story and characters. Spoilers from here on out.
In my review of Eden of the East, I made mention of how some character actions (e.g. Takizawa erasing his memory) either don't make any sense within the context of the story or don't fit with the established characters' personalities or (more often) motivations. As could be expected from Kenji Kamiyama, we see instances of both of these in 2nd GIG, but especially the latter type.
Let's start with Kuze, our main not-a-villain-but-still-fights-with-Section-9 character of this season.
When he's introduced, Kuze is portrayed as basically a racist Japanese Nationalist, ing an organization known as the Individual Eleven that intends to "liberate" the Asian post-WWIV refugee population that has recently entered Japan's borders. This "liberation" would mean more autonomy for the refugees until the Japanese population gets fed up with them and drives them all out. Basically, the Individual Eleven's end goal is to get rid of all the refugees. Do you get that? Well, gotcha, because Kuze totally reverses his whole ideology halfway through and becomes THE REFUGEES' LEADER fighting for their genuine freedom and equal rights. It turns out that the whole Individual Eleven terrorist group was just a hoax created by an actual Nationalist, this intelligence agent named Goda, who something something virus that corrupts people something they eventually kill themselves something something the whole group dies in a mass suicide in episode 12 leaving Kuze as the sole survivor.
A big question that the main characters ask is how Kuze survived the virus; the provided answer is that he has a consciousness that copies the minds of the millions of refugees' cyberbrains (yeah, soak that in) and somehow this consciousness saved him from carrying out the virus' final directive. Well, MY question is this: why even bother with that whole "Individual Eleven hoax" part? Why not just skip to Kuze being a nuanced, sympathetic character instead of wasting our damn time with what amounts to pointless filler? The phrase "Individual Eleven" is so irrelevant that it's barely even spoken after Kuze emerges as the refugees' leader. Some may say the hoax was necessary to establish Goda as an antagonistic figure pulling strings in the background, but could they not have found some other way to do that than with a scenario that ended in a total butt-pull?
Also, let's further consider that consciousness thing; Kuze, a man with a totally prosthetic body, is able to copy and store the minds of millions of people into his own? I get that this is to make him empathetic, but it just feels so... artificial. His whole backstory as a soldier-turned-beneficiary-to-the-oppressed could have been enough, but apparently that wasn't cyberpunk enough for GitS. Also, if he can store millions of individual minds in his head, he must have some serious storage space, so why the hell couldn't he realize that the Major was the girl who survived the same plane crash that he did? Did he really not someone so important to him? Well, psych, it doesn't even matter in the end because that plot thread goes absolutely nowhere; neither Kuze nor the Major change in any meaningful way after meeting each other near the end, and it's not as though Kuze even HAS A FREAKING CHANCE to change.
Let's break this whole finale sequence down:
1. Major and Kuze are stuck under rubble, talking some meaningless babble with apples in hand while Batou digs them out with a giant cross (there is no way I could make this up).
2. Americans launch a nuke, Tachikomas "SACRIFICE" themselves to destroy it. Yeah, it's not as though they can easily their AI somewhere else and survive, RIGHT?!?!? Nooo, they have to sing a ham-fisted song about how they are all "alive!!!" and try to make the audience cry while they die. Screw you, show. Of COURSE they show up in Solid State Society.
3. Kuze is arrested, Goda decides to defect to the Americans.
4. The Prime Minister tells Section 9 to just straight-up murder Goda so they send freaking everyone (like, seriously, EVERYONE) to stop him and the Major riddles his stupid face with bullets.
5. The Major is like, "Oh crap, that's right, the Americans are here and they're probably going to kill Kuze!" so she jumps out the window to try and get there in time to save him. OOOOOPS!!!
6. Major mopes cause she's an idiot who didn't trust Togusa and those hundred other cops to just shoot Goda. It's not rocket science.
Million dollar question, everyone!!!!!:
If Section 9 knows that basically everyone wants Kuze dead and that the Americans are waiting for a chance to kill him, why the flying hell did the Major LEAVE HIM ALONE?!?!?!?!!??!?!
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Look, Eden of the East had some bedrock of themes and a core message (about how NEETs can contribute to society as well as anyone else) and with that, I was able to describe how the franchise fails from a thematic standpoint, going back on some of its ideas and not doing enough to realize them. GitS:SAC never had any real themes; it was just about telling a cool mystery-thriller story in an awesome cyberpunk setting and showing off great production values. So, and note that I have nothing against political thrillers, this was just executed horribly, why is it that 2nd GIG tells a rather boring story with lacking production quality and doesn't attempt to explore any themes but still tries to force some Christian symbolism in the finale like it all meant something? There's nothing to this show, nothing to latch onto in a way that can actually make the viewer think carefully about something, and that automatically puts it beneath Eden of the East. At least that show had ideas that it got across to me, even if it didn't do it in a way that made sense in the context of its narrative and characters.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG is more of a meta-tragedy than an actual one, even if its ending would try to convince you otherwise. It completely cheapens its predecessor by being lackluster in basically all but two ways, those being less fanservice and a better opening theme, but both of those are subjective to my personal enjoyment, so I can't even really count them. Maybe upon revisiting the first season I would find a bunch of problems with it that I hadn't seen before (like the garishly bright color palette, for one); maybe it doesn't deserve that 8 out of 10 that I gave it. But, even after seeing both seasons only once, I know for a fact that 2nd GIG absolutely pales in comparison on every level, but for no reason more than because Kenji Kamiyama shows his true lack of writing prowess with this season.
There's a reason why the Bandai release of the first season can be so easily bought online while you have to pay out the nose to get 2nd GIG.
It's not worth your money, it's not worth your time, and, unlike Eden of the East, it's not even worth an iota of your brainpower.
Happy Watching!
- LC
