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Friday, September 17, 2004
'Ghost' sequel's deft use of spectacle and subtlety should set to rest animation prejudices
Mamoru Oshii's original cyberpunk classic "Ghost in the Shell," an animated thriller with heady, metaphysical themes under its visionary designs and dazzling animation, was a wake-up call in the United States. American audiences still struggle to imagine animation as anything but kid stuff, but no such prejudice exists in Japan.
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The film was a smash hit and, inevitably, spawned a sequel just as heady and even more visually exquisite and rich. Both are based on a manga by Masamune Shirow.
The Tokyo of this future bears a striking resemblance to the sprawl of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner," an urban jungle of techno-architecture with organic touches under a sky of almost perpetual night. In this dark city, bionically enhanced super-agent Batou and his 100 percent human partner Togusa work for the covert Section 9 team, a covert law-enforcement unit that specializes in cybercrime and runaway androids.
Their latest investigation concerns a series of murders perpetrated by experimental female sex androids that self-destruct while repeating the words "Help me." Meanwhile a hacker taps into Batou's e-brain and sends him on an odyssey that resembles nothing less than a sophisticated video mind game. The detour ultimately takes him to the heart of the mazelike mystery.
The character drama may be lost on anyone unfamiliar with the original "Ghost in the Shell" (the film assumes at least a minimal familiarity with the characters), and the dramatic revelations of the climax is less a stab of horrific realization than a startling narrative twist. Yet the experience of the odyssey is riveting.
Oshii gives his images a palpable texture and a dimensionality that both echoes live-action imagery and creates its own insular animation world, as impressive for its stillness and subtlety as for its spectacle. The impressive marriage of CGI backgrounds and traditional hand-drawn characters gives Oshii more tools to sculpt his vision in color and light.
If Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away") is the greatest teller of tales in contemporary animated cinema, then Oshii is the most ambitious explorer of ideas. The cyberpunk metaphysics at the core of the intellectually demanding mystery are more demanding than the ideas behind most American science-fiction films. Not bad for a cartoon.
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