Ghost in the Shell 4K 1995 Ultra HD 2160p

2029 year. Borders between states have finally collapsed thanks to ubiquitous computer networks and cyber technologies. When a long-wanted hacker named Puppeteer begins to interfere with politics, the 9th Department of the Ministry of Public Security - a group of cybernetically modified police officers - is tasked with finding and stopping the hacker. But during the investigation, the question arises: who is the Puppeteer in the world where the line between man and machine is practically erased?

Ghost in the Shell 4K Review
I love cyberpunk. My interest in this direction of world art arose after games a la Deus Ex or Syndicate and was further reinforced by the worlds of Blade Runner, Shadowrun, The Matrix, and so on and so forth. But among all the 'obvious' (essence - known) cyberpunks lying on the surface, I missed a few less popular, but equally significant for this direction of works, such as, for example, 'Ghost in the Shell'. I began to correct this mistake and read first of all the original 12-chapter manga, thanks to which I caught a stream of disappointment in advance. This manga was simply full of superfluous characters, scenes, sometimes whole chapters, all superfluous. The husk behind which was hiding, it turns out, is a quite solid semantic shell. But the manga helped me see all these meanings, and the film adaptation that came out in 1995.

Although you know, it is quite possible that in the manga most of the meanings that are embedded in the anime were not even in sight, and the authors of the film simply turned out to be smarter than the person that the original source wrote, based on (namely, 'based on', and not 'based on which ', this is one of those things that allowed the anime to be better than the original source) which was filmed.

Be that as it may, the main advantage of the film is that it does not contain the very useless and ugly husk that I mentioned above. Yes, this 'Ghost' takes some chapters from the manga, takes the general plot outline, but takes it wisely - only the most necessary, cutting off the unnecessary. That is why it does not look like manga, despite borrowing the setting, characters, scenes and everything else. If the Puppeteer appeared in the manga for chapter nine (out of twelve, let me remind you), then here he immediately appears and is at the head of the corner. The plot does not stand still and constantly moves, managing to show both a juicy action game with gore (although okay, gore does not appear so often, but if it is, then there really is a lot of it), and the relationship of the characters with their dialogues about life, cybernetics , politics and the like.

Technically, everything is done at the same level. The animation pleases with smoothness and detail. If during peaceful scenes she can still hurt with unnecessary slowness (there was a scene where the character looked into the distance for 10-15 seconds, during such time the fastest person on earth can make tea for himself), then in combat scenes he reveals himself to the fullest and pleases the eye. One cannot fail to mention composer Kenji Kawai, whose music is truly impressive and echoes the prize ... sorry souls.

But at the forefront of anime, there is still an idea that is about evolution and growth. Robots and computerization in the modern world evoke both admiration and fear and apprehension. And no wonder: all these possibilities were once created by human hands, but won't the creatures decide one day to overthrow their creator and take fate into their own hands? Fears were reinforced by the same cinema, 'The Terminator', for example. The 'Ghost in the Shell' does not see anything bad in cybernetics; on the contrary, it builds its philosophy on this. What is life, what is life? The "ghost" states directly: growth, development, evolution - there is life. We all grow, we all develop, take this away from us, will life remain in us? The creators of the anime say no, and it's hard to argue with them. Someone says that we must always remain ourselves, but if we spend all our years trying to remain the same, there will be no growth, there will be no evolution, and if they are not there, can we be considered alive? No no and one more time no. Life is the growth of the body, consciousness, thinking, soul, spirit, life is a change in the outlook, life is movement forward, without movement there is no life. And cybernetics, that very computerization, including, is shown here in all details precisely because these are clear examples of evolution, examples of movement, examples of the development of life.

And almost everything in 'The Phantom', just as I love, works for the idea. The setting, the plot, the characters with their actions, dialogues and sometimes even the action are subordinated to it: a robot-futikoma that shoots up to a 'man' according to the evolutionary tree, for example. There are many interesting characters in the 'Ghost', full of entertaining dialogues - a conversation with Bato on the boat is my favorite scene in general - and in order to catch all such moments it is useful to watch the anime once or twice. This makes the 'Ghost' one single, holistic story, which is why the 'Ghost' wants and turns out to admire. And it was precisely the lack of integrity and the presence of a huge amount of husk that irritated the manga. There is nothing superfluous here, and the anime only lasts a little over an hour, not even an hour and a half. That said, it looks like brevity is really the sister of talent.

Perhaps Ghost in the Shell is the best that the anime genre has to offer me. Although do not be alarmed ahead of time - I did not see much of Japanese animation, I missed all Miyazaki's creations, for example, and only watched all sorts of pop series a-ki 'Naruto', 'Bleach', 'Fairy Tail' and 'Death Note' ... And the Ghost is truly superior to them all.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (59.98 Mbps)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio
Japanese: Dolby Atmos
Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio (48kHz, 24-bit)
Japanese: Dolby Digital
English: Dolby Atmos
English: DTS-HD Master Audio (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital

Subtitles
English, English SDH, Spanish.