Children's Express journalists review what's on offer at the 2001 Belfast Festival at Queens.
| It’s like being in wonderland the whole way through the film. |
From the manga comics of Masamune Shirow to the animated big screen comes an epic tale of politics, covert actions and cyborgs with too much attitude.
This hard hitting (15 certificate) adventure-action-thriller manga movie was pretty cool but had its down side too. There was loads of stunning animation, especially in the amazingly gory action scenes.
However, the plot was extremely complicated and pretty hard to follow at times. Even though the film is six years old the quality of animation is still very strong.
"It is like being in wonderland the whole way through the film, because the plot is so complex and filled with jargon and code language," said Hugo McIlveen, 15.
Fifteen-year-old, manga fanatic, Chris McCartney said "The long running comic series has made it to the playstation and now to the big screen. Unfortunately unless you are up-to-date on Ghost in the Shell or are truly a science whiz, it is easy to become lost in the film at certain points."
Ghost in the Shell is set in 2029 in Hong Kong, in a time when humans live with cyborgs that are part human, part machine and part computer. The shell refers to all bodies both organic and artificial and the ghost refers to individual identity. In this world, ghosts can move from organic to inorganic bodies but artificial bodies cannot create their own ghosts.
The central focus of the plot revolves around the slick 'n' sexy android heroine Major Kusanagi. For quite some time, she has been on the trail of an evil android hacker known as the 'Puppet Master.' As she is closing in on the evil nemesis her cyber-cop squad, section 9 is pulled off the case by section 6.
Major Kusanagi defies orders and stays on the case. Using optic camouflage, working with her partner Bateau and listening to her 'ghost whispers' (inner soul to lesser mortals) she finds out that section 6 actually created the Puppet Master.
While on Puppet Master's trail, the Major begins to think about her own existence - she want to return to a human state but knows that if she does she will lose her own ghost.
In the end, after a mind-blowing consciousness transferral, helicopter attack, some nifty surgical moves, the audience, if still conscious (no pun intended) find that the Puppet Master is not such a bad dude, that the Major's brain has merged with her former evil nemesis and they re-enter the world sharing the body of a child.
It was a complex film but certainly an experience. The plot was too heavy-going and it was difficult to relate to the characters. No-one really cared when the Major Babe got blown up. There is not much humour throughout the 82-minutes of Japanese animation, although admittedly slick.
For fans, this film may seem like the end of an epic Ghost in the Shell tale, using incredible CGI graphics and manga animation the Major finally gets her man or should we say merges with him.
The film, out on DVD and VHS is great for those who enjoy manga.
Chris advises manga-newcomers "to pick up a copy of the newer graphic novel from Dark Horse featuring the collected eight issue series that sold so many copies on it's first comic run. It is 352 pages of pure magic and will no doubt help explain the Ghost in the Shell concept - you'll must likely get hooked on the series at the same time."
About the team
This article was produced by Hugo McIlveen and Chris McCartney, 15. It was published on the Belfast Festival website, and again in Citywide.
