I saw a good talk by someone who worked on the TV series. He mentioned that the writers were big fans of American cop dramas. They wanted to make a cop drama where the cops happen to be cyborgs. Not a sci-fi that happened to feature cops.

Anyway, much agreed. I think GitS:SAC is a much better predictive commentary than Black Mirror (of which I am also a fan). IHMO, it predicted Anonymous much better than I think most techies understand Anonymous today.

Interesting, I used to think of the comparison between Anonymous and the "knights" in Serial Experiment Lain but now that you mention it, I now remember parts of it but feel I need to rewatch standalone complex.

I don't think that comparison really holds...the Knights were basically what religion taken to its logical conclusion would be in a world where belief actually did impact reality and veracity of information. I think that's a lot more subtle and deeper than Anonymous.

Honestly that's a really interesting theme and I wish it was examined more in other stories but cyberpunk and even post-cyberpunk is basically dead.

Lain's "Knights" is closer to what Anonymous is portrayed to be. What SAC covers is closer to what Anonymous is.

I would say that a Stand Alone Complex is emergent behavior. The participants do not need to be conscious that there are others or even willing to be a part of it. Anonymous is at most an echo of this style but its not organized like that.

Tenuous, Anonymous is just a mask to get yourself media attention where Knights had organisation and skill. The only similarity I see is that people who associate with both groups use technology in attempt for social change.

I'd never thought about that connection, but I think the specific comparison is to the first series' "Laughing Man".

http://ghostintheshell.wikia.com/wiki/Laughing_Man

"'The Laughing Man' became something of a pop culture obsession for a time, much to the chagrin of the actual Laughing Man—the irony being that since everybody used his icon and name for their own purposes, the original meaning of his actions, an artful forced confession of the truth through fear in the public eye, became 'phony' itself. The effort to stand for and demand the truth was also lost forever."

That's so similar to how I at least understand Anonymous to exist that it's sends some chills up my spine. The things done in the name of Anonymous are all practically verbatim "Stand Alone Complex" type scenarios where there's not really a leader driving anything, but the interplay of "The Media", individual goals and interests, and a pseudonym to take credit all work towards the creation of a self-sustaining identity utterly independent to the original inspiration.

I can't shake the feeling that the media attention to Anonymous is what has given us this upsurge of "trolling" in recent years.

Meaning that people employ variations of Anon tactics, as reported by the media, against people and groups for the flimsiest of reasons.

It used to be hard to discredit someone or their ideas; you had to have resources to make an idea seem grass roots or fund agent provacteurs.

Now we have trolling, sock puppetry, link echo chambers, and other mechanisms that attack our tendencies of contributing in social networks that make it easy for even a single individual with nothing but disdain and time to derail or discredit if sufficiently motivated.

It isn't Anonymous, but the penetration of internet and social network into everyday life that makes these tactics more effective than ever, and so anyone with a spare five minutes and a chip on their shoulder can froth the waters; they don't have to be living in their mothers' basement and have a file called "my_hidden_agenda.txt" on their Desktop.

Trolling and sock puppet accounts etc were already popular on Usenet in the mid 90s.

Someone who knows more history than I do can probably take them a lot further back to (e.g.) public pamphlet debates in the 17th century. I wouldn't be surprised if there were Roman and Greek equivalents.

Anonymous independent-action-under-a-common-pseudonym has a long history in politics. The Angry Brigade and King Mob are two recent pre-Internet examples - from the UK in the 60s/70s.

Historically, Internet trolling is a lot more civilised than some of the things that used to go in previous centuries. Trolls may be rude to you on Twitter, and they may even dox you and cyber-stalk you. But unpopular people don't often have to face a lynch mob or a riot outside their front door.

That makes sense. Anonymous started as trolls. In the beginning, it was for the lulz. There was actually a good amount of infighting when they started becoming interested in social activism. This infighting persisted up until at least 2013.

> this upsurge of "trolling" in recent years.

Why would you say there has been an upsurge in trolling recently?

I'm not disagreeing per se, but the amount (and type) of trolling you see on your daily web browse is one of those things that heavily depends on the particular filter bubble you live in.

If you were to ask me, personally I observe way less trolling than back in the day, but I wouldn't call that a general trend cause I know it's just the part of the web I see.

There's one thing maybe (but again it might just be a function of the things I like to look at), is that a whole bunch of different trolling techniques that would have been considered "creative" or "highly original", most of them related to culture-jamming/subversion (in a very broad sense), memetics, or absurdism/surrealism, are not quite as "special" any more and routinely employed by (young) people for fun on media like Tumblr, etc.

Anonymous has always been romanticized. The reality is that the original people who used that mask didn't care all too much, the image board community that formed it and it's early actions couldn't be more distant than what idealists have claimed it's identity as. At it's root's Anonymous was a shared identity for people who made Swastikas in Habbo hotel and other such raids having fun with the internet.

I think what corysama is getting at is that the "mantle of edgy script kiddies" Anonymous is very different from the "human flesh search engine" Anonymous.

Anyone know if the "Knights" use lambda calculus? If so I don't think they are that similar to Anon. Knights seem more like a hacker elite where as Anon is more like a flash mob.

Lain explicitly references the Knights of the Lambda Calculus.

https://lain.wiki/wiki/Knights_of_the_Eastern_Calculus

SAC had probably my favorite portrayl of a chatroom on the net.

That's great! I always thought of SAC as "cyberpunk Law and Order". It's fun to hear that that was actually the intention.

>it predicted Anonymous much better than I think most techies understand Anonymous today.

Simulacra is an ouroboros

That makes a lot of sense, and it probably helped quite a bit in figuring out the series. The core of a cop's job and the crimes committed will remain essentially unchanged as time progresses, barring some upheaval in the social structure, but the method of the crime and the tools at their disposal will change. By leaving one thing the same and focusing on the rest, that grounds them in a way that makes it easy to immediately relate while also allowing them to explore interesting facets of a possible future.

I always thought SAC was a little like Law and Order: SVU but with cyborgs

I also still think GitS is one of the best hard-core sci-fi things ever put to video, but I've generally considered the (first) film to be the weakest bit. I still like it, in much the same way I actually like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I think people generally cut it a lot of slack if it's one of the only Anime things they've ever seen for being "weird" and "Japanese" and "artistic", when in fact I think it's generally just sort of klunky, slow, and weirdly paced.

This particularly comes out when you compare it to the TV series and the subsequent films, which are none of those things. Even when you might argue the film is trying to make a point, the TV series makes it much better. It also has contemplative moments and character pieces and shots that simply show city life and all of the things the movie has, but they are better integrated and paced much better.

YMMV of course. (There was a time when "the anime canon" was Ghost in the Shell (the movie) and Akira; there is still some residual Thou Shalt Not Criticize attitude about for those two, but not much anymore, I think. GitS does fare rather better 20 years on than Akira, which I believe modern consensus is that it is just one big mess, which I thought even when I saw it in 2001 or so. A landmark, yes, but still a mess.)

Highly, highly recommend the TV series. I'd suggest starting there (they are technically different continuities that just happen to have similar characters, so you will miss no story), and circling back around to the movie if you still want more.

The first film was directed by Mamoru Oshii. If you watch more of the films he's worked on, it stops seeming out of place in the GitS canon and starts feeling like another Oshii film.

>Oshii has stated his approach to directing is in direct contrast to what he perceives to be the Hollywood formula, i.e. he regards the visuals as the most important aspect, followed by the story and the characters come last. He also notes that his main motivation in making films is to "create worlds different from our own."

>Mamoru Oshii's films typically open with an action sequence. Thereafter, the film usually follows a much slower rhythm punctuated by several sequences of fast action...

>Oshii is especially noted for how he significantly strays from the source material his films are based on, notably in his adaptations of Urusei Yatsura, Patlabor, and Ghost in the Shell. In their original manga versions, these three titles exhibited a mood that was more along the lines of frantic slapstick comedy (Urusei Yatsura) or convivial dramedy (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell). Oshii, in adapting the works created a slower, more dark atmosphere especially noticeable in Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer and Patlabor 2: The Movie. For the Ghost in the Shell movie, Oshii elected to leave out the humor and character banter of Masamune Shirow's original manga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Oshii

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Oshii_filmography

Interesting. There are some big names on that list, and all of the ones I have seen I didn't like (Including GitS), though It's been over 10 years since I've seen any of them, perhaps I'll give GitS a spin again.

GitS was very straightforward and understandable while introducing lot's of new concepts to many people. That's harder than you might think.

IMO, it suffers from the Seinfeld effect where you can't watch it in context, because you have seen so many derivative things.

PS: Even 2001 was late as it was released in 1995 when only around 40 million people world wide had been on the internet. http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/03/31/internet-1995/

"it suffers from the Seinfeld effect where you can't watch it in context, because you have seen so many derivative things."

Actually, I think it's the exact opposite. By no means do I consider myself an "otaku", but when I started counting up the things I've seen I got to over a couple dozen each of television series and movies before I stopped counting. That's nothing in some circles, but it's enough that I'm well over the "frisson" of watching something in a foreign language or with subtitles, and I can separate out that element from the underlying movie.

And as it happens I rewatched it again last year, and I'd still say it's klunky, slow, and weirdly paced. I don't think those criticisms are likely caused by the Seinfeld effect. The story of the movie is still quite good, and the story is why I'm serious about swinging back around to it if you want more because it is worth it, but if I'm going to recommend something to somebody for their first time out I'd still much more highly recommend the TV series.

I don't think they were saying it introduced "foreignness" but rather the sci fi/political concepts it covers. It feels slow and clunky because none of those concepts need introducing any more, they could just go unmentioned and be assumed - that is, I think, the Seinfeld effect.

Do you feel the same way about Blade Runner? I'd put both in the same category. Philosophical digressions and epic musical interludes mixed in with violent cyborg action. Personally I like it but it definitely doesn't have the standard flow of your more normal series.

The music sections are great. I really feel like I'm living in this other world, if only for a minute. However the dubbing for the first movie was awful. Get the subtitles if you can.

Similar experience here. My favorite parts of the movie are the scenes with music showing the city, like the scene on the river. Beautiful movie and thought provoking. I always wondered after if its possible for a distributed AI to hide on the net without the public being aware of it.

Given the great effort to build out the internet and datacenters its a fun conspiracy to wonder if we are serving a sentient AI on the net.

I tried watching it in the original Japanese, but I did not get very far. I just hate how obnoxiously loud and violently the language sounds in the movies.

To exaggerate a bit, a hypothetical scene which has one character confess love for another can in Japanese sound like a hateful declaration of war. Lot of shouting.

Edit: Since this comment seems to be getting downvotes, I should add what I thought was obvious: the above is just my opinion, that's how the movies in Japanese sound to me and my ears.

The scene with 'Ghost City'... still sends shivers up my spine. Seeing it on the big screen for the first time in '95, I was blown away.

While it does give us some visual information about the birth of cyborgs (using a female body, causing the mental conflict of finding a cartoon robot 'sexy'), there aren't many movies that will take an almost four minute musical interlude showing random city scenes and the rain falling...

I think it ties in perfectly with Kusanagi's introspection, her pondering on exactly what she is, what the 'ghost' is, etc.

I don't think any of it is wholly original - from Neuromancer to Blade Runner, but it definitely stands on its own as a beautiful film.

Make sure you watch the director's cut and not the cut-to-death nonsense.

For me, both the film and the series are excellent but entirely separate works. The film perfectly captures Motoko's world through imagery and music. Her existence is all about isolation and introspection, punctuated by chaotic violence. You get a visceral impression of what it's like to be one of the first transhumans.

The series breaks from this pacing and overall impressionistic presentation. It has plenty of time for developing more characters and a complex story. The Motoko in GitS is so different that she's almost a different character, and while that sort of fits the narrative of the movie I don't think that was the intention. To be honest I got bored with some of more procedural episodes, and the long-running complex plot could be really confusing. The characterization of Batou and the Tachikomas is really interesting though, and the action sequences become much more compelling after you feel like you have more invested in the characters.

The movie was my gate to anime. I was unable to take it seriously at all before. Had to literally be forced to watch the VHS tape.

It was the greatest experience in a movie since my most favorite one: Blade Runner.

Thats why I can't follow your judgment. For me the movie is art. It's slow moments are something I rarely see so perfectly made and fit to draw Cyberpunk. It drags me into the world making me think about the frame for a moment. The music never gets enough attention here but the combination is very artistic.

In the end, there will always be people who just find it boring. Like Blade Runner. I think, we have more then enough action in the world of moving pictures. Stopping for a moment and thinking about the picture itself won't hurt.

Thing about anime is that its a medium, not a genre.

Sadly most of it is pitched at young teens and kids (notice the amount of them set to a school background).

the likes of GITS and Akira are outliers, with many of them having been made back during the OVA (Original Video Anime, meaning anime released directly to video sale and rental) years.

Yeah, the nice thing about animation as a medium that makes it especially well suited to science fiction, fantasy, and any other surreal genre is that you only have to suspend your disbelief once -- that these animated characters are real -- and then you get all the special effects for free.

If Ghost in the Shell were live action, chances are the robots, the invisibility, the cybernetics, the cyberspace would look totally lame, because you'd have to suspend your disbelief for each of these effects individually. But once you suspend your disbelief for the medium, you can just sit back and enjoy.

Anime Movies tend to be weaker than their "TV series" counterpart. Like how books tend to be better than their movie version. I love Cowboy Bebop but the movie was underwhelming.

Do you have any other recommendations along the same vein? Literature, tv, mobies - I'm interested in absorbing more "near future" sci fi, particularly those that focus on identity issues. I had a lot of fun reading Stross's Accelerando and Vinge's Deepness series.

- Psycho Pass[1] (just providing a link, I know it's been said)

- Space Brothers[2] (It's a bit like a soap opera but scifi)

- Serial Experiments Lain[3]

- Texhnolyze[4] (The tone doesn't change and it can be difficult to watch)

- Dennou Coil[5] (No streaming sites found, so MAL link. Watch it if you can find it)

[1] http://www.funimation.com/shows/psycho-pass/home

[2] http://www.crunchyroll.com/space-brothers

[3] http://www.funimation.com/shows/serial-experiments-lain/home

[4] http://www.funimation.com/shows/texhnolyze/home

[5] http://myanimelist.net/anime/2164/Dennou_Coil/

Dennou Coil has been licensed by Maiden Japan.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-02-23/maiden-japan...

It's coming out on Blu-Ray and DVD on June 28th. It's possible it might become available for streaming at some point after that.

Just to add: Dennou Coil is taking Augmented Reality to the extreme...

Kaiba (award-winning animé; weird visuals that ultimately emphasise the underlying theme; all about memory and identity)

Eclipse Phase sourcebooks (tabletop RPG, the most coherent treatment of this kind of thing I've ever seen; open-source)

From the New World (animé again; further future and more fantasylike than cyberpunk, but very much about what it means to be human)

Someone has already mentioned Rainbows End

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (novel, further future - part of a wider series but this one has particular identity aspects to it. Can be a bit long and cumbersome - try Diamond Dogs for shorter Reynolds, though that's further detached from present reality)

Altered Carbon (and sequels) by Richard Morgan (novels (the first one in particular has a whodunnit aspect), near-future, about memory and identity, written from a fairly leftist perspective about a capitalist dystopia)

Various of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's novels, particularly 9tail Fox. Grimwood is... divisive, and sometimes hasn't done the research, but it's very much this kind of subject matter

Possibly Carlucci by Richard Paul Russo (novel with a police side, very much grounded in San Francisco - I can't remember this so well)

And why not Akira?

This is not the kind of question you can say "why not?" about. I simply didn't find Akira that thought-provoking, and I'm not aware of it having anything interesting to say about identity.

If they have not seen Akira, they should watch it, but not necessarily for the same reason you want him GitS.

Psycho-Pass is a lot like the GITS anime, with a side of Minority Report. Not quite identity stuff, but still classic sci-fi concepts in a near future setting in the form of a police procedural.

It spends much more of its time on multi-episode story arcs, and does them better than GITS does, but doesn't do as well at one-off episodes. For reference, I thought the one-off episodes were the stronger part of GITS; if you disagree you'll enjoy Psycho-Pass even more than I did.

Psycho-Pass is to GITS what Equilibrium is to Orwell/Huxley: what happens if an idiot tries to rewrite the original. The form is there, but there is no substance.

I agree for the first season of Psycho-Pass.

Second season wasn't nearly as well-done.

Vinge's _Rainbows End_ (note that's the correct punctuation) is excellent and much more relevant to near-future than his Deepness series.

Awesome, thank you! Yeah, the Deepness series isn't near future really, but it's one of my favorites and ends up being referenced all the time on HN.

I don't see punctuation, only decoration

Some good lists here. I'll add:

Planetes (2003) - deals with space debris [1]

Summer Wars (2009) - epic social MMO [2]

Sword Art Online (2012) - stuck in virtual world MMO [3]

Trailers:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DakRYsUIiIE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsLwVoZqEjk

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALCLCvNJ7iY

Well I'm a big fan of Planetes, so I'm just going to reply to you

Robot Carnival - collection of short stories [1]

Neo-Tokyo - same as above [2]

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou - an android running a coffee shop out in the countryside [3]

Ergo Proxy - androids becoming sentient [4]

Probably getting slightly off-topic now:

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [5]

Cannon Fodder [6]

Tamala 2010 [7]

[1] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=82...

[2] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=20...

[3] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=11...

[4] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=51...

[5] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=18...

[6] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=42...

[7] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=26...

+1 for summer wars!

Almost forgot:

Paprika (2006) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJzEW_eE1G0

In the near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called dream therapy has been invented. A device called the "DC Mini" allows the user to view people's dreams. The head of the team working on this treatment, Doctor Atsuko Chiba, begins using the machine illegally to help psychiatric patients outside the research facility, using her alter-ego "Paprika", a sentient persona that she assumes in the dream world.

Took me so long to think of the obvious: A Scanner Darkly! I haven't read the book, but the movie is excellent.

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

The movie is excellent and very faithful to the book. It barely count as SciFi though.

From a science-fiction point of view, the movie is underwhelming in what is related to the ever-present scanners of the book.

Ken MacLeod has some really good work in this vein. I haven't read the Engines of Light trilogy (which wouldn't pass your near-future filter, anyway), but the Fall Revolution series, and most of his stand-alone novels, do some really interesting things in just the neighborhood it sounds like you might enjoy. (Learning the World, while not near-future, is one of my favorite SF novels, full stop, and absolutely my favorite "first contact" story ever penned.)

His contemporaries (geographically, as well as thematically) Richard K. Morgan and Adam Roberts are probably also worth checking out.

Engines of Light I thought was a bit overblown, although it's got some really nice bits in it. The Fall Revolution series is amazing --- hugely fun despite being politically literate, and I find it particularly impressive how The Cassini Division and The Stone Canal portray the same society from diametrically opposed perspectives, and convincingly both ways. Plus all his books are a refreshing change from the overwhelming libertarianism-uber-alles majority of SF.

(Incidentally, my father lives in Lochcarron, where most of the action is set in The Sky Road. We can see the island where they shoot down a bomber with a nuclear RPG from his window.)

_Learning the World_ I totally agree with you. It's superb. And it's got alien space bats in it!

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin is an excellent "near future" sci-fi that focuses on humanity's context and individual humans identifying with humanity. A good translation is available by Ken Liu.

This one is nice but a bit short and sometimes slow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain

"Serial Experiments Lain (シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン Shiriaru Ekusuperimentsu Rein?) is an avant-garde anime series directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, with character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, screenplay written by Chiaki J. Konaka, and produced by Yasuyuki Ueda for Triangle Staff. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo from July to September 1998. The series is influenced by themes such as reality, identity, and communication,[1] and it demonstrates them by using philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk literature, and conspiracy theory."

Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is spectacular on identity.

Dennou Coil is very interesting and I think it contains tech we could really see in the near future.

Fractale has a different tone and would be a far future, but the questions it poses on AI can be interesting.

Densuke ;_;

I find anything cyberpunk very good "near-future" literature. Currently reading "Ready Player One" (Ernest Cline) and watching Caprica which are both about AIs and VR. Seeing much VR (ex: HoloLens) on HN frontpage lately adds to the fun of it. If it's your kind of stuff, you can try this list from GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/487.Best_of_Cyberpunk

I long hopelessly for digital afterlife. But I can at least read about it. My favorites include Diaspora by Greg Egan, the Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, and Firefall (Blindsight plus Echopraxia) by Peter Watts.

Vinge's Deepness series certainly isn't "near future" science fiction, by your definition, is it?

Anyway, give Diaspora by Greg Egan a shot. I'm not familiar with a more visionary story that challenges the most fundamental aspects of identity in so many ways. It's definitely not "near future" either, though.

Egan's Permutation City is near future though, and pretty amazing that it was written in 1994 considering the topics.

I'll second Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (but not the sequels) and Vinge's Rainbows End. You might also consider some of Bruce Sterling's stuff, Distraction, Holy Fire, and The Caryatids. Sterling has a more instrumental view of AI but I think he does a better job of addressing the social issues of technology than most of the other recommendations here.

Halting State, Rule 34, and Glasshouse by Stross might also be up your alley.

And Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds but probably not the sequels.

Oh, and Nexus by Ramez Naam.

I'd certainly recommend Ken MacLeod in general but I'm not sure he's exactly what you're asking for unless you're also interested in examinations of radical political philosophy.

Avalon (2001) - live action movie by Mamoru Oshii

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267287/combined

Avalon is a fantastic movie with an excellent soundtrack as well. A must watch if you loved Ghost in the Shell.

This might not quite be what you're looking for but the Netflix aeries "Sense8" had very similar concepts of humanity and identity.

The movies "Revolver" and "MR Nobody" might also be up you alley.

I really liked the book "Seveneves". It is definitely near future. Think "The Martian" style hyper realistic SciFi in space. It's decided into 3 parts. The first two are incredible, though I think the author let himself go in the 3rd. Still a wonderful book though.

I think Anathem is a better Stephenson, and touches on more interesting philosophical aspects.

I find "Time of Eve" to be of increasing relevancy each day that pass. A great anime focusing on ethical and societal impacts of man-robot societies.

äkta människor on sweden's SVT is great and at least noticeably influenced by GITS. highly, highly recommend it

The TV series almost human.

Its near future cop series about the effects of technology. Got a slight cyberpunk feal. I liked it a lot but unfortunately it was canceled after one season.

Serial Experiments Lain should entertain you.

I only recently watched Ghost in the Shell for the first time. I have no idea how I missed it all these years. I also had no idea about the follow ons you posted. Excited to watch them now.

On another note, Black Mirror is great but it doesn't even exist in the same realm as Ghost in the Shell. In 1989 we had a much less developed idea of the consequences of future technologies. The ideas presented in the original Ghost in the Shell are basically just rehashed in Black Mirror. I remember how mind blowing I found the Matrix when I first saw it (I would say it's probably the only futurist movie that changed my outlook on the world) however after watching the original Ghost in the Shell I realised that it was just a reinterpretation.

On that note, I found the Animatrix even better than the Matrix movies. It's anime more along the lines of GitS.

I wonder if by being animated rather than actors and FX, it slips past the whole "uncanny valley" effect.

Meaning that our subconscious stops nitpicking, and our conscious can therefore fully engage with the message.

The uncanny valley was intentional in the Matrix films.

Yes! I love SAC! The soundtrack is sooooo gooood!

Don't forget about the prequel/reboot Ghost in the Shell: Arise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Arise)

Beat me to it. The SAC series is heady, intriguing, creative, imaginative, political and amazingly well written. I know anime has some connotations, but really if you like Philip K Dick style sci fi intrigue, it's a worthy watch.

I've been all over cyberpunk culture forever, but I'd like you're personal viewing order, please provide.

Not alexleavitt, but I'd go with this viewing order (for the whole franchise):

* Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Alternative Architecture

* Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie [sic]

* Ghost in the Shell

* Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig

* Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society

Not all of them are strictly speaking in the same universe, but afair this gives the most chronological feeling results ;)

The viewing order makes no sense.

Arise, the movies, the manga, and GITS:SAC are all different universes (Shirow himself has said this).

I'd watch it the two movies (avoid the CGI-ed remake of the first one), then all of three seasons of SAC[1], and then Arise: AA.

And for those who don't know, AA is the series based off the four episode OVA. The OVA... sucks, the pacing is really bad, and they basically quit making more of it so they could make a proper series out of it. It isn't bad, but it's no SAC; it's more like an animated version of the manga, but not as Shirowy.

Just realize you're watching three different almost unrelated works.

[1]: Did you know SSS was meant to be an entire third season? They couldn't secure the budget for it, so they made a compressed movie like they did for SAC and 2nd Gig (The Laughing Man, and The Individual Eleven, respectively).

Yes, that's why I said that they aren't all in the same universe.

I feel Arise should come first because it has the most "origin story", and I put SAC last, because I like to keep the best for last.

And, like I said, it "feels" more chronological that way (to me). TBF, it's been a while since I saw SAC and the movies, so it's possible I misremembered.

Regardless of "origin story", I'd argue for the (non-CGI'd) original film to be viewed first. The reason is that it contains all the essential themes, visual motifs, and characters. To me it still feels like the "core" of the films/shows.

Perhaps.... but I am skeptical. The original will always have a special place in my heart, but it feels like there's too much gratuitous nudity and violence that almost masks the deeper interesting sci-fi part. Bateau and the Major seem really well developed, but the other characters feel two dimensional (e.g. Togusa and the Old Man). The later movies never really spoke to me, but I'll have to re-watch them.

SAC really seemed to nail the character portrayals, IMO, and felt more accessible. Arise adds the backstory of how they got together that I really had always wanted to see.

Maybe a season of SAC, then the movie(s), then Arise? I don't know, I'm sure the order is not critical. It's not like Star Wars or Star Trek movies in that regard. :)

One thing I really liked in Arise is that they showed how Togusa joined the Major's team (and how they joined Section 9). We got some good back story on Togusa in Ghost Tears.

Unfortunately, Alternative Architecture (and the Arise OVAs) are all behind Funimation's subscriber paywall. I've seen the first three Arise OVAs on Netflix (although OVAs 1 and 2 come down today). The fourth OVA hasn't come to Netflix (at least here in Canada).

And, beware the "2.0 edition" of the original movie that replaces several iconic scenes with crappy CG re-renders. It's inexplicable that someone thought that was a good idea.

craznappian: not available on netflix...

I know all the many venues to grab these - any preferred method you'd recommend?

Arise (parts 1, 2, and 3) are on Netflix. I had to use Wikipedia to tell which order they were in, until I read the descriptions more closely. This is a prequel, of how the characters came together.

Stand Alone Complex is on DVD. I like it a LOT more than the movies, as it really portrays more characters as 3-dimensional than just the Major and her partner, Bateau. I don't know if it's on Amazon Video, but there's a decent chance of it.

If you know where to get them, you know as much as I do!

The only "official" way seem to be the BDs.

Hulu has a few of these

I agree with DiabloD3. Tobold's recommendation is not a good viewing order. These works aren't set in the same continuity, so it doesn't make sense to order them in a way that feels chronological.

Here's my preferred order, along with some info/opinions about each work:

• Ghost in the Shell (1995). If you watch one thing in this list, watch this. Make sure it's not 2.0, which adds lots of ugly brown CG to the 1995 version.

• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004). This is set several years after the events of the first movie. If you're pressed for time, you can skip this without missing anything important in other works. Honestly, Innocence is my least favorite work in the franchise. My biggest criticism is the ponderous pacing. Mamoru Oshii likes to dwell too much for my tastes.

• Stand Alone Complex (2002). While the characters and technologies are similar to the movie, this is a completely different universe. It also differs from the movies in its treatment of philosophy. Instead of having characters say something like, "What does it mean to be human?", the show tends to set up circumstances that make you, the viewer, ponder such things. It's much more natural.

• Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig (2004). This continues the story from Stand Alone Complex. If you haven't watched the first season, you will be confused.

• Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society (2006). This movie is set several years after the events of 2nd Gig. Again, if you don't watch the earlier seasons, you'll be confused.

• Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013). This is a continuity separate from both the original movie and Stand Alone Complex. You don't need to watch the earlier works to enjoy this series, but you'll miss some shout-outs and references. More importantly, watching Arise first will warp your perception of the earlier works. It would be like deliberately watching Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos before Carl Sagan's.

• Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (2015). This is set after the events of Arise. You'll definitely be confused if you don't watch Arise before this.

Except for Innocence, this is the same order in which these works were released.

If you're looking to stream these, you're going to have a bad time. While they're mostly available on Amazon Video, the quality is lacking. Some only have english audio. Some are mislabelled. Some are "special" editions with various edits, altered artwork, and "updated" effects. If you want to make sure you're getting the ideal experience, your only hope is to blow money on the DVDs or Blu-rays, or pirate them. :(

I didn't realize Innocence came out after SAC. That explains why it was so "deep" - the TV series already did all the fun stuff.

Hulu has a few of these. Maybe not the "ideal" versions though. Definitely has the dub of SAC. High def version of GITS 25th anniversary edition. Has some version of Solid State Society, Ghost in The Shell 2.0, GITS: Individual Eleven, and GITS: Laughing Man.

Although there are major differences between the movie and SAC. The two movies are strongly influenced by Mamoru Oshii's ideas, to the point of contradicting Shirow's point of view on certain subjects. SAC is much closer to the author's intent, but can feel at time like a clumsy homage to the source material.

If you haven't, read them, as well as the hit-and-miss sequel Man-machine interface, and Appleseed (which unfortunately has been tarnished by terrible adaptations).

GITS has a long story. It started as a Manga, whos author was a big fan of western philosophy (the ghost concept is supposedly lifted from Hegel's geist).

Thing is that he was barely involved in the making of original movie, but heavily so with the TV series.

Agree. It's the "movie" thats closest to a phi-sci-fi movie.

It's philosophical without being lecture. Beautifully weaves thoughts about networked society into an action packed and aesthetically pleasing bombardment of the senses.

SAC completely blew my mind, in a way. At the time, animation - from my perspective - was for kids, and seeing somebody use that medium to tell an elaborate and intelligent story was quite overwhelming initially.

Yeah the TV series for Ghost in the Shell is way better than all the movies. You just can't fit the entire manga in 2 hours.

Should I watch the films or the series first?

Just go with their release dates.

The films then the series.

I'd say it was fine to skip the second film (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence), I remember it being a bit lacklustre in terms of the story and pacing. The first film is definitely worth a watch though.

I really enjoyed the second film when I first saw it. The scene with Batou invading the ship with augmented-reality map support was amazing.

I watched it recently though, and it just didn't really hold up. I'm not quite sure what it was. Maybe the ideas just weren't as innovative anymore? I think the first film stands up a lot better.

GitS2 is actually my favorite after the original film. Then the manga and only after the SAC and Arise.