Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (Blu-ray) (1995)

"That rare sequel that surpasses the original.  Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader
"You can call me fanboy, but this is the best anime I've ever seen.  J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Editor's Note The makers of "Akira" present another milestone Japanimation epic in this futuristic odyssey about an elite half-cyborg female agent sent out to apprehend a cyber-genius data thief who is plundering the very contents of people's minds. Contains nudity and violence. The Collector's Edition includes a special 30-minute documentary on the making of the film.

	Kenji Kawai - Composer
	Kodansha - Producer
	Kazunori Ito - Screenwriter
	Toshihiko Nishikubo - Director of Animation
	Mamoru Oshii - Director

Another visually sensational animated film from the producers of the acclaimed "Akira."| Major Motoko Kusanagi is a beautiful cyborg who works for Section 29, Japan's secret police force, in the year 2029. Motoko's supervisor, Aramaki, orders her to find Puppet Master, a sinister computer terrorist created by a rival organization. | Helping her is fellow cyborg Bateau and the almost entirely human agent Togusa. Because their prey has the ability to hack into the minds of his enemies, the evil villain must be stopped as soon as possible.| But as the tough cops close in on their target, Motoko realizes that she and Puppet Master seem to have a lot in common. Sight and Sound
"...Richly imagined....Slick and visually dazzling..." 01/01/1996 p.39

Entertainment Weekly
"...A knockout vision of a machine-run cityscape..." 06/21/1996 p.76

Total Film
"...[With] a Disney-bashing level of detail, prolonged musings about the human soul and an eye-saucering hard line in action..." 12/01/2003 p.130

Uncut
"Sublimely realised, intellectual ponderous, cheesy fun." 12/01/2003 p.159

The New York Times 9 of 10
Androids don't dream of electric sheep in Mamoru Oshii's hallucinatory meditation on life in the shadow of the machine world, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. They dream of suicide, an unlikely act of violence that one android, or gynoid, a sexual pet with a tragic face and luridly flexible limbs, commits by clawing at its synthetic skin like a grieving widow. In this plaintive, often stunningly beautiful anime, where sex dolls commit virtual seppuku against a swirl of film noir intrigue, philosophical speculation, eye-popping images and serious science-fiction cool, a toxic cloud hangs over all tomorrow's parties...A palimpsest of allusions, like almost every science-fiction film of the last two decades, Innocence owes its greatest conceptual debt to Ridley Scott's visionary masterpiece Blade Runner, a debt that Mr. Oshii openly acknowledges. A study in earth tones and gum-shoe rectitude, Batou is a self-conscious cross between the detective played by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner and the runaway android played by Rutger Hauer. Drawn along the same solid lines as Mr. Hauer, Bateau comes clad in the classic world-weariness worn by Mr. Ford, one difference being that Mr. Oshii's tough guy keeps a basset hound. A floppy bundle of love and slobber, the dog is a link to the ghost (human identity) in Batou's machinery and, perhaps, as the hagiographic images of the hound suggest, something else...What matters most here isn't the number of gigabytes it took to make the feathers on a seagull look palpably real. It's the way the camera narrows in on the bird's eye as if Mr. Oshii believed the answers to the film's questions might be found in the natural world and its brutalized remnants, in that solitary place beyond the machines. In one of the film's most hypnotically lovely set pieces, a kaleidoscopic cavalcade featuring enormous animal effigies, grimacing warriors and shimmering golden pagodas, he also suggests that the past may offer up yet other answers. In Innocence past and present, ghost and machine jostle alongside one another, while the mysteries of the universe, seen in the swirl of cream in a cup of coffee and spirals of flying gulls, continue. - Manohla Dargis