Review of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) by Rainer K — 31 Aug 2012

The first Ghost in the Shell movie was already above everything I've ever seen in an American animation film both in terms of dialogue and themes.

Innocence takes it to a new level though. It's more profound, more philosophical and has considerable less action scenes.

This time the film centers on Batou (who was the partner of the protagonist Major in the 1995 film), another cyborg agents who works for the mysterious Sector 9 (which is some kind of FBI/counter terrorist agency) and he's a completely different type of character - violent and reckless and in contrary to the Major anchored in the real world (the film features a cute basset dog who is imo the reason why Batou is not so critical to the material world and doesn't choose the cyber world and life as a ghost over material existence - the dog somehow anchors him in reality).

Innocence is by far not as influential thematically (Ghost in the Shell was one of the major influence for the Wachowski's The Matrix for example) and its visuals lack a certain grandeur (possibly because of a bigger use of CGI that sometimes irritated me a bit - the solely 2D animation of the 1995 film was far superior) but if you like sophisticated animation, anime and science fiction you'll find a lot to like about this film.

I'd say Ghost in the Shell is the better movie but Innocence is not far from it and I'd love to see a continuation of the series (I'm starting to like the setting and the characters...).