Ghost in the shell. Where do I begin?

[Mutant1988]

Stand Alone Complex series. It is by far the high point of the franchise.

Then I would say the first movie, but do bear in mind that it has a rather slow pace and somewhat obtuse plot. Oh, and a lot of exposed cyborg breasts.

I couldn't get into the other movies and I haven't looked at all at the newest anime series.

There's also a really old (as in my dad copied it back when The Sci-Fi channel ran anime as filler) anime called Tank Police that was written by the same guy. If you can find it, it's much more faithful to the source material, tone wise. I felt.

First series maybe. New Dominion Tank Police? Not at all. Art wise though, it's closer to the original style of the artist.

It's very heavy on the comedic tone (This applies even more to the first Tank Police anime), with a greater focus on action rather than a deep plot.

New Dominion Tank Police is good though. And the opening song is absolutely amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJQFXYb1mso

Pity almost nothing of that footage is from the actual series.

 

[DoPo]

Right, I shall make this thread arise, since I just finished watching Ghost in the Shell: Arise. Here is my previous statement on that anime

Right, I just finished the first Arise and...I liked it. I'm not much into reboots myself, however, Arise I liked. It does change some stuff around but I wouldn't be bothered.

And I'd like to amend it - I didn't quite like it as a whole. Not as much as the first episode, at least. I'd say that the first episode is the best, then the rest are of varying degrees of quality. The third one is either absolute genius or the worst - I personally thought it's the worst.

I feel it didn't package up it's story right - each of the episodes was pretty much self-contained with a thin overarching plot that gets resolved in the final episode (or very sort of resolved). It could have worked better if it either had more playtime to lay out more of the overarching story, or maybe to have a bigger focus on it rather than separating the episodes that much. Or do the opposite and not have the overarching plot or at least leave it as just a common thread in the background.

At any rate, I think the first one is worth a watch, at least.