Harlock, 999, and Yamato

I haven't seen these, so I'll give them a go. I've heard about Yamato and know it was huge back in the day.

Cowboy Bebop

Yep, seen it, also I wasn't honestly a massive fan due to the episodic nature. I know, contrarian.

Martian Successor Nadesico

This is a new one too, on the list it goes.

War in the Pocket, 08th MS Team, 0083, or IGLOO

I've seen Pocket, 08th, and Seed, but not the others. I doubt I'll watch these. Also obligatory GUNDAM! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZszGvGAR5NU&list=PLJFMcRYOCD5xh6DhuHrTu2Y89FjY3eJra

Votoms

I've never heard of this one. Looks interesting.

Knights of Sidonia

I completely forgot about this show. I think it was on my list earlier already.

Thank you for the excellent list, sleet person.

Man, I should watch Crest again. In the meantime:

• I'd rank Harlock, 999, and Yamato up there as far as world-building, although the characters are more "interesting" or "amusing" than necessarily realistic. For Yamato, I think the original and 2199 are about on par - the original seemed more serious, while the remake has much higher visual quality.

• Cowboy Bebop, although I'd assume you'll have seen it if you've seen Crest and LoGH.

• Martian Successor Nadesico was an interesting take, more focused but definitely trying to bring a more serious tone... mostly.

• I definitely feel you as far as Gundams go, although I'd suggest checking out War in the Pocket, 08th MS Team, 0083, or IGLOO as I find the side stories and OVA series to bring much higher quality both in terms of writing and production. Of the mainline series, I think Turn-A and Seed are probably the best you can get in terms of tone and world-building, and even then there's a lot of goofiness.

• Have you seen any of Votoms? I haven't finished it, but it sure has the "bombastic space opera" feel, even though it starts out with a very tight focus.

• Other than that, maybe Knights of Sidonia? It tries to be less "space opera" and more "hard SF", but I'd say it's on the edge - like the difference between Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.

Huh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gankutsuou:_The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo

I had never heard of this. Seems interesting.

Came here to say LGH, though I've only seen the new one.

Does Count of Monte Cristo count? I forget the Japanese name. It is a retelling of the classic Dumas novel, but it's set in space. So it's about a guy who is falsely imprisoned, escapes, comes into a large fortune, and plots his rivals' demises, often at their own hands. It's good, but the animation is a bit weird. You know that thing where, in any anime ever, if someone's wearing clothing with a pattern, and they move, and the pattern doesn't? Like it's a whole other layer and they're a cutout, moving through it? That's super obvious in this one. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's possible you've never noticed it. This anime will make you notice it not only in itself but in every other anime. It can even be a little nauseating (if you can get motion sickness from your TV) as well. Otherwise, good anime.

I would definitely love to listen...

I think it will definitely reach us somehow...

I got down-voted a lot on reddit shit because of my opinion on it but it's not like it was terrible but it didn't hit like renting the original movie I rented from blockbuster.

Ah yes "Hello Mrs Moon" and shit like that haha

Nothing changed since "komi-san ..." I see

oh i see, my mistake. Sorry. I was thinking about this film I watched a little while ago where the subtitles had a literal translation of a characters name, instead of their name

Did someone seriously just link to AO-fucking-L in the year two-thousand and twenty-six anno domini?

Translation:
Pen name: Ochinpo Tatsurou
Explanation:

• Ochinpo, pronounced Ochimpo, contains the honorific "o" prefix followed by an informal word for penis.
• Tatsurou: male given name, uses the characters 達 (tatsu, accomplish) and 郎 (rou, used at the end of male given names).

Real name: Tatsuno Saori
Explanation:

• Tatsuno: name of a town, uses characters 辰 (tatsu, dragon from the Chinese zodiac) and 野 (no, field).
• Saori: female given name, uses characters 沙 (sa, sand) and 織 (ori, weave). Both 砂 and 沙 mean sand and can be pronounced sa (or suna or in a few other ways), but 沙 is typically used in women's names and 砂 is normally used in words.

Yes, I am referring to the untranslated text box

Think they are referring to the text box there, which is completely untranslated.

I actually hate it when names get translated

how does it make sense?

Unless the viewer is a manga reader, the only obvious one is the Mag Union.

I think despite the censorship, and the myriad reasons it could have (simple, nuanced, cynical - your choice) the alleged inspiration to the renames makes sense. Whether or not viewers can find that inspiration just by watching (whether or not they're manga readers or just new viewers) is another matter.

I would love to see a breakdown of all the differences between the show and the book. I've been doing a readalong to the show and I've noticed a few things. They took out references to the Soviet Union and fax machines but left floppy disks. The porn manufacturing on the virtual yacht was toned down a lot for TV, but not as much as the American version of the book. There's a scene in Sagawa Electric where she makes a mistake and says "I'm such an idiot" in both versions, but in the book only she goes on to say "let me leave that out of my official report", which is funny and humanizing. At one point Batou calls Kusanagi "hysterical" in the book, but it was changed to "violent" to the show, presumably to reflect changing views on misogyny in Japanese society. (Kusanagi had thrown a coffee mug at Batou's head. In the book, she's drinking coffee in one panel, and then you see Batou lying on the floor with a bump on his head and a coffee mug next to him on a separate page, but the show includes the mug in-flight, which, yeah, I struggled to understand what was happening when I first read it.) I could go on.

Those are all good points and thoughts.

Having now seen the rest of the show I do feel it picks up in the second half, and the narrative becomes more cohesive, so my overall opinion of it is improved :)

When I suggested the show could lean harder into being retro, I didn't mean only the art style - it's good this is a close fit to the original - but also the production style and cinematography, which were all very different then than now.

What I'm saying is that I'd love to see what a faithful anime adaptation of the source material would have been like, if that adaptation was done in the 90s.

But in the end, we can't turn back time.

[...] it felt crazily fast-paced [...]

It would have been a much better show in my opinion if it had simply slowed down a bit.

To be fair, the original manga that this show is faithfully reproducing was kind of disjointed and jumped around between plots, while also having the Puppet Master plot lingering in the background until it became relevant at the end.

Those small Japanese paragraphs that pop up randomly in the corner of the screen? Those were etched in the margins of the manga. Shirow Masamune had so much world-building in his original work that he didn't want to slow down his story to explain everything. So he would write blurbs between manga panels explaining the details of the world so you didn't have to stop the story to absorb more lore. If you wanted to learn more about how the world worked, the info was there, but it was not essential to the plot.

So yes, it was definitely rushed. But a product trying to faithfully recreate the original manga was going to be, as the original work itself crammed a handful of random stories into a single volume.

If they try to make a season 2 based on volume 2 of the manga, expect it to be even more disjointed. With the Major no longer a central focus of the story, the manga started really bouncing around between plot points and characters, not having a real solid focus on anything. It's probably why there was never a volume 3 made. Volume 2 just wasn't as interesting or easy to follow as volume 1. It got really absorbed in world-building and not as interested in telling an actual story.

I found the 2026 show to be much easier to follow by binging it as one extra-long story. It feels rushed if you're watching one episode per week as it's airing. But if you view the whole show in one sitting as one story stretching across a year or so, each episode feels more like pieces of an overall plot that start to fit together near the end.

My wife and I had to binge the whole show at the end because she was having a hard time following the threads of plot that each episode was weaving. But it all made sense when we saw it all at once.

I found the intentional lean into a more retro style to be fun, but my biggest gripe is also related to that - because they didn't commit to it hard enough.

That was one of the things I loved the most about this show. It actually replicated Shirow Masamune's original art style from his manga. No other version of Ghost in the Shell looks anything like the original manga.

If anything, I really appreciate them replicating his art, but modernizing it a bit to look cleaner and more detailed. The original manga was written in the late '80s/early '90s, so none of it is very high-def in appearance and it can be hard to make out what's going on in some extra detailed panels. But he has an unmistakable unique style that's not seen in any other manga or anime. So it's nice to see an anime series done in his particular flavor.

If they had truly committed to "retro" anime style, it wouldn't look anything like Shirow Masamune's art. So I'm glad they stuck to his work exclusively.

It was alright. Great art, but the pacing made it very hard to follow.

My first exposure to GITS was through Stand Alone Complex. I don't think anything's gonna change my mind on which adaption I prefer at this point.

It's quite hard to pin point my exact disappointment - but I think I either wanted something new, or something with greater depth. Preferably both.

I personally feel like there was not the level of character development I wanted. In the second gig, when the guy at the end had his brief soliloquy, "I'll go on ahead." It was great. I was connected. And the music in that show, amazing, the whole plot of international deceit with "terroristic immigrant populations." It was amazing.

Dunno. I know that we are in "rerun territory" but, I expect better.

I'm ok with people disagreeing with me though. Maybe this one isn't in my style or something.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. As someone who's been a huge fan of Ghost in the Shell for literal decades, I'm excited to see a new series that's not only a faithful adaptation of the original manga, but the first video media to replicate the original art style and preserve personalities from the manga. I'm tired of seeing a Major who's either borderline robot or a strict leader/boss type. Her character has depth and emotions in the manga! She could be hot-headed too!

Other variations of the media have been interesting in their own isolated universes, but nothing has come close to recreating the original work.

I'm actually binging the whole 2026 series right now. I haven't seen the final episode yet, but my wife was getting lost on the overall plot, having only watched it one episode per week as it's releasing. So we're re-watching everything, including the final episode, tonight. I'm excited for the conclusion!

I'm also curious if they'll make a season 2 that follows volume 2 of the manga. The original work was written as a singular isolated volume, but its popularity led Shirow Masamune to write a second volume after the fact. Plus a volume 1.5 to fill in some gaps between the two volumes.

Regardless, this sole season should tell a complete story without any additional episodes or seasons. That is, if it stays loyal to the manga. And I'm fine with that.

EDIT: I just finished the show. Yup, it was loyal to the manga, right to the end. The Puppet Master bit near the end felt a bit sudden and rushed. They had a few episodes where they could've done a better job building it up instead of info-dumping at the very end of the final episode. But otherwise, I highly approve. I'm glad to see a manga-accurate retelling for once.

The 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie was the closest thing to retelling the original manga we've had before, and if you've seen it, you'll probably recognize similar scenes and stories in this 2026 show.

But the movie changed the look and personality/behavior of everyone. Not to mention, it had to condense an entire volume of manga into an 80-minute film, so it solely focused on the Puppet Master story, with a few philosophical discussions mixed in. Gotta touch on the philosophy of what the "ghost" in the "shell" is all about, right?

The 2017 Ghost in the Shell was just a live-action retelling of the 1995 movie, with a slightly altered plot. But it flopped because they cast ScarJo to play a typically Japanese main character. Even if they provided an in-universe explanation for why the Major looked American. It didn't sit well with audiences.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is its own thing, set in a similar world and maybe touching on a couple familiar stories from the manga, but mostly creating its own plot to explore. It's excellent on its own, but it has almost nothing to do with the original manga.

Same with Ghost in the Shell: Arise. It was a prequel series, showing the Major's early days, but it's not connected to the source material at all. If I recall, I don't think it's even canon with Stand Alone Complex either.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this 2026 version and it will be the version I recommend to anyone who wants to get into Ghost in the Shell without reading the original source manga.

I think the main complaints from most people are that the pacing is a bit hard to watch. I know the original manga was fast paced and a little goofy, I read quite a bit of it back when I got super into gits years ago, a far cry from the slow and cerebral movie adaptations, but I think I had hoped this more direct and true adaptation would find the middle ground.

I'm enjoying it, but it's hard to watch, i'm nearly 40 and have always preferred "slower" media, and some shows can be either fast or slow paced and an episode is over in what feels like 5 minutes, regardless of how much or how little has actually happened, but this one is often a bit of a slog, never quite getting me into that flow state in a lot of episodes.

I doubt it's the last GITS adaptation we get though, I love when we get different interpretations of a source material whether every one is better than the last is irrelevant.

I'm quite enjoying it, since I like the manga quite a bit, and I think it looks great, visually, but the pacing is a bit difficult.

It's not Anime of the year material by any means. each episode feels fast but also slow if you know what I mean, some shows can have nothing happen at all yet a 24 minute episode is over in the blink of an eye, and others can advance a story a dozen chapters and feel like a complete slog to get through the episode. this adaptation is a bit of a slog to watch, despite being as busy and fast paced as it is.

I know people always ask for more direct adaptations of manga to screen, but sometimes you do have to change things, skip things, add parts, extend scenes, slow things down, rearrange plotline timing, etc. to make it work on screen. this adaptation needed some more of that.