Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface

Not a continuation of the story, but a continuation of the same theme and setting. Motoko Aramaki is a hyper-advanced cyborg, a fusion of multiple entities and identities, deploying remotely controlled prosthetic humanoid surrogates around the globe to solve a series of bizarre crimes. There is quite a lot of military technology described, questions on the moral rights of animals (pigs), mentions of Japanese mythologies (Kojikl, amanojaku, etc), and religion (Shinto). In parts it made me laugh out loud (the cyborg hurting her head when she dived through the water and hit her head on the river-bed). The quality of art was better than the first volume (and an obvious use of computer graphics). There seems to be no limit for brain show more expansion in the virtual world, but who exactly is in control?! show less

A bit heavy on the soft-core porn (Shirow really needs a girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever), but if you can look past the images, there’s a fairly complex, if confusing story here. The artwork is also quite nice, sometimes beautiful, sometimes amusing.

First things first - if you were puzzled with story lines of Matrix, Inception, Dark City and Brazil movies this one will leave you more than puzzled and saying whaaat? page after page.

I like SF, have been reading it for decades now (hehehehe, man time flies by :)) but this comic is so filled various SF concepts and techno-lingo (and I come from IT background) - basically you get bombarded with so much terminology you'll loose the story thread in no time.

That's one thing I did not like - story line is so convoluted and hidden under the layers and layers of sentences like 'barriers are down.... deploy cetbots and combat suit K... My mines are duplicating.... Deploy decot at position H using code name K....' etc etc that only after show more reading more thoroughly through the novel way you'll figure out that story line is not so complex at all (I've seen more complex GitS TV episodes) - complexity seems to be artificial in nature.

What was the intent of the author - to experiment with the comic as a medium or something else, is completely beyond me, but I have a feeling that this would have been much better executed in movie media - in comics you only end up with excellent graphic, bedazzling effects, lots of hi-tech mumbo-jumbo [at least for most people, event seasoned SF lovers] but at one point you won't know what is going on in the first place story-wise (which should be a main point for each and every novel/graphic novel/comic).

But nevertheless it is an interesting concept. Considering the time when this issue was released it is very modern and not-so far-fetched (I can only say congrats to author for creating such a believable universe). If you enjoyed the GitS 1 and 1.5 you'll love this one but don't expect to figure everything out in the first,second or third reading :) show less

The CGI artwork is very well done, occasionally even stunning, and the story isn't uninteresting. However, while the fuchikomas in the original were cute, funny and just full of general awesomeness, their substitutes are weird, pervy and largely devoid of character. While reading I nicknamed the main trio Pervs, Pervier and PervyMcPervison insofar as I could be bothered to tell them apart.

Heck, even the slightly odd pervy that was already present in Ghost in the Shell made the change from cute to pervy, as nonsensical as that might sound. All in all I'd love to like this more than I do because the artist is definitely very talented. I wasn't going in for some kind of would-be Barbarella and it felt out of place at best.

Como secuela está OK. Como historia es inentendible, sobre todo por la cantidad de lingo informático que mete por todas partes. Como edición, imposible de leer, y no precisamente porque (yo) tenga casi 35 años, sino porque la letra es diminuta y los colores del fondo muchas veces se fusionan con la tipografía. Como arte manga, un exageradísimo tratado de anatomía femenina y lencería usada (que ya sé que es la marca del autor, pero SE VA A LA MIERDA con la cantidad de ecchi). Le pongo dos estrellas y no una porque se redime con el final. Sí, con el último capítulo y el epílogo. Malísimo, la verdad.

I found this one even more difficult to follow than the first volume, for the most part. Although, I did enjoy the pretty pictures!

Experiments in Reading

Masume is becoming something different, something both more and less and is trying to come to grips with this and investigate soem strange changes in the temporal universe.