The Net is Vast

[Popcorn]

Dude, you are so full of shit I don't know how you can walk without leaving brown stains on the carpet. How many times did you even watch the movie?

Once. Why, are you supposed to watch everything nine times before you're able to have a legitimate opinion on it?

[Green Gibbon!]

Sometimes, yes. The more there is going on in a film, the more time it takes to absorb the clues and piece information together. To me it seems that the more I like a movie my first time through, the less I enjoy it on successive viewings because there just isn't as much to pick up.

I remember I didn't think much of Ghost at all on my first viewing (granted, I was 17, less cultured, and more impatient than I am now). It really wasn't until just a year or so ago that I picked it up again as research for my senior project (particularly I was studying movies with thick sci-fi urban backdrops), and it finally totally fell together. I think it was the third or fourth time I'd seen it, and I've watched it another three or four times since, loving it each time more than I did the last.

It's true that I'm a sucker for boobies, but in all seriousness, I would say there's very little nudity in Ghost that I would consider gratuitous. There's the (beautiful) opening credit sequence where Motoko's body is being created, and thereafter she's only ever nude when using the thermo camouflage. Her totally apathetic attitude toward her own nakedness is also an important element, because it helps to drive home the fact that she doesn't consider this "body" a part of her, and the whole theme of the movie is this consciousness struggling to find proof of and meaning in its apparent existence in a world that seems utterly fabricated, including the robotic body she's using.

Now granted, the orgininal Ghost comic has two sides: it's got the deep existential side all Philip K. Dick sci-fi heavy, and then it's got the utterly superflous babes, guns & robots geekbait side, the themes in most of Shirow's work. In fact, it starts off almost totally in the vein of the latter and slowly evolves to be something deeper and more substantial as it progresses. Still good stuff altogether, boobies and all (one of my favorite things about it is the way it merges these polar opposites together in a way that I think is extremely pulp slick), but the movie carries over very little of the superflous side, and what it does it uses to good effect.

[Popcorn]

I remember I didn't think much of Ghost at all on my first viewing (granted, I was 17, less cultured, and more impatient than I am now). It really wasn't until just a year or so ago that I picked it up again as research for my senior project (particularly I was studying movies with thick sci-fi urban backdrops), and it finally totally fell together. I think it was the third or fourth time I'd seen it, and I've watched it another three or four times since, loving it each time more than I did the last.

The first and only time I saw it, I think I was about 14, and almost certainly less cultured than I am now-- I mean, I read restaurant reviews now and everything. For enjoyment.

I don't claim to have a particularly well-founded opinion on it at all-- only a memory of not liking it much and having no desire to watch it again. The only thing I really recall about it was a) it was seriously boring and b) how irritating the nudity was. Now, you can argue that it's presented in a legitimate, non-sexual way all you want, but I won't accept it. Whatserface is a very beautiful woman (cartoon character) who spends a great deal of the story completely butt-naked-- it's just geeky, masturbatory tedium that served no real purpose. Of course, I could be wrong, but I have no desire to check.

Ghost in the Shell was one of the first movies I watched when I was just getting into anime. I remember my father walking in during the opening sequence and thinking "What the hell is this going to look like to him?". The young James Duffy found it to be a meandering wankfest with boring character design, but I haven't spoken to that guy in a long time so I don't know if I'd feel the same way.

[Green Gibbon!]

Now, you can argue that it's presented in a legitimate, non-sexual way all you want, but I won't accept it. Whatserface is a very beautiful woman (cartoon character) who spends a great deal of the story completely butt-naked-- it's just geeky, masturbatory tedium that served no real purpose. Of course, I could be wrong, but I have no desire to check.

So you're defending your own ignorance on this matter, then? Seriously, dude. I know you're better than that, that's why you're the only one I bothered arguing with.

What's your beef with eroticism, anyway? If you're that offended by the simple image of a nude human body, you have cultural issues to work out.

[Grant]

You'd have issues, too, if you splashed out of the same vagina he did.

[G.Silver]

Actually I interpretted it more or less the same way. "Oh look, an anime trying to be all dark and cool by having a naked woman jump out a window! Now let's all watch fucking Ninja Scroll!" Considering all the mainstream hype around GitS it was pretty much impossible for me to view that particular scene any other way. I agree with Popcorn, and I've seen it twice.

[Green Gibbon!]

She was invisible for most of that scene, actually. She was wearing that camouflage suit (in which she doesn't even have nipples, making it more like a wetsuit than buck-ass nakedness).

[Popcorn]

So you're defending your own ignorance on this matter, then? Seriously, dude. I know you're better than that, that's why you're the only one I bothered arguing with.

What's your beef with eroticism, anyway? If you're that offended by the simple image of a nude human body, you have cultural issues to work out.

I saw the film and can say that I didn't like it. I saw it a long time ago, so, as explained, I'm unable to express with any real precision why I didn't enjoy it, or deny that I wouldn't spontaneously love it if I watched it again now. Hey, why is it that every time we argue you say something like "I know you're smarter than this" even though it must be increasingly evident to you that I'm not?

I don't have any beef with eroticism whatosever. In fact, I find it quite erotic. But, like anything in any medium, it has its place. To quote someone or other: the only thing worse than arty French porn is arty French porn thinking it's porny French art. I dislike the way that, in GITS: Stand Alone Complex, Matoko just struts around the place the whole time in her low-cut cyber-leotard-- there's no justification for it whatsoever except for its thinly-veiled wankfactor, and yet it still attempts to veil it.

[Green Gibbon!]

So what's the difference between eroticism and "thinly-veiled wankfactor"? You can hardly deal with an idealized human figure and not have it seem erotic, it goes with the territory.

The line between art and pornography is something that's endlessly debated and in truth I have no strong opinions on the subject - eroticism is as much an excuse for itself as anything, as far as I'm concerned.

[Popcorn]

So what's the difference between eroticism and "thinly-veiled wankfactor"? You can hardly deal with an idealized human figure and not have it seem erotic, it goes with the territory.

The line between art and pornography is something that's endlessly debated and in truth I have no strong opinions on the subject - eroticism is as much an excuse for itself as anything, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not attempting to define what that line is. Evangelion dealt with the whole fan service factor by, well, serving it up as fan service-- there were dedicated moments where you were practically encouraged to get out your fireman and start extinguishing the flames. There is no feeble attempt at seriousness or any justification for a gratitious jugshot other than "we enjoy jugs". The plugsuits, meanwhile, remain in my eyes a quite brilliant bit of design-- they're feasible, attractive and pretty damn sexy, too.

[Green Gibbon!]

So then what's the difference between that and Ghost?

[Popcorn]

Between what? The dedicated fan service slots or the plugsuits?

[Green Gibbon!]

The use of eroticism, nimwit.

[Popcorn]

Well, GITS' attitude seems to be: we're all horny males and we like drawing naked chicks, but we're going to pretend we're not and that we didn't have one hand down our trousers while we were animating the scene where Matoko is forced to extract vital terrorist information from the slippery vagina of a female android using her tongue. The entire premise is frankly masturbatory, which I'd have no problem with if it didn't simultaneously try to pass itself off as intellectual, straight-faced sci-fi. I can't remember the movie clearly enough to cite examples from it, but as I said, even SAC's skimpy body armour is irritating, simply because it has absolutely no justification other than tedious self-indulgence but thinks it can get away with it. It adds nothing to the series, and it's utterly transparent.

In Evangelion, meanwhile-- or countless other Japanese examples, like Dead or Alive or FLCL-- the eroticism is completely self-aware. It's tongue-in-cheek/vagina nonsense, and it proudly displays itself as being just that; it's not to be taken seriously. GITS, meanwhile, has an awful lot of naked martial arts that wants more than anything to be taken seriously.

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm not talking about Stand Alone Complex, I still haven't seen that. I mean the original movie.

[Popcorn]

I know we were discussing the original movie, but the point still stands. SAC has that same level of 'erotic content that pretends it isn't erotic' that I'm arguing against.

[Green Gibbon!]

How you can pretend to not be erotic, though? You're associating eroticism with comedy, and they're too very different things that don't need to accompany each other to work.

It's not comedic that Motoko's stealth suit is skin-tight (in fact it makes perfect sense that it would be), but it's still hot to watch her fight in it, and nobody's trying to pretend that it isn't. It doesn't detract from the mood of the scene or the movie, and again, Motoko's indifference at her nakedness or near-nakedness is an important element, just as she's totally oblivious to her body being ripped to shreds by the giant Fuchikoma-looking machine near the end of the movie.

[Pepperidge]

GG! is right about the nudity being justified on those grounds. Yes, it is primarily eroticism, but I don't see why you should begin criticizing it when it has a plausable idea to go along with it (as opposed to covering it up.)

Oh, and that's another problem with the movie: no fuchikomas.

[Popcorn]

How you can pretend to not be erotic, though? You're associating eroticism with comedy, and they're too very different things that don't need to accompany each other to work.

It's not comedic that Motoko's stealth suit is skin-tight (in fact it makes perfect sense that it would be), but it's still hot to watch her fight in it, and nobody's trying to pretend that it isn't. It doesn't detract from the mood of the scene or the movie, and again, Motoko's indifference at her nakedness or near-nakedness is an important element, just as she's totally oblivious to her body being ripped to shreds by the giant Fuchikoma-looking machine near the end of the movie.

I'm not at all claiming that eroticism has to be comic. Did you see the movie Closer recently? The scene with Natalie Portman as a stripper was simultaneously dramatically engrossing and violently hot-- and it knew it. The scene is intentionally sexually-charged, but GITS is just pretentious. It aspires to be something other than cheap ogling.

[Green Gibbon!]

The scene is intentionally sexually-charged, but GITS is just pretentious. It aspires to be something other than cheap ogling.

So where do you draw the line between being "simultaneously dramatically engrossing and violently hot" and just being "pretentious"? It would be "pretentious" to watch Motoko doing a pole dance that had nothing to do with anything else for three minutes (not that I still wouldn't enjoy it, mind). It would even be pretentious in the context of the movie to have a silly bouncing boob shot even in the name of simple fanservice, because it wouldn't be in tune with the mood.

Having Motoko fight in a skin-tight, flesh-colored stealth suit is certainly erotic, but I don't believe it's their intent to hide that fact, nor do I believe it detracts from anything going on. It's fanservice in the context of the mood, you might say.

[Popcorn]

So where do you draw the line between being "simultaneously dramatically engrossing and violently hot" and just being "pretentious"? It would be "pretentious" to watch Motoko doing a pole dance that had nothing to do with anything else for three minutes (not that I still wouldn't enjoy it, mind). It would even be pretentious in the context of the movie to have a silly bouncing boob shot even in the name of simple fanservice, because it wouldn't be in tune with the mood.

Having Motoko fight in a skin-tight, flesh-colored stealth suit is certainly erotic, but I don't believe it's their intent to hide that fact, nor do I believe it detracts from anything going on. It's fanservice in the context of the mood, you might say.

I don't think it's feasible that a cyborg agent has to wear a skin-tight, flesh-coloured stealth suit at all, and that it's (very blatantly) nothing but an excuse to fap. GITS may as well have a three-minute pole dance instead, for all it adds to the film.

[Green Gibbon!]

I don't think it's feasible that a cyborg agent has to wear a skin-tight, flesh-coloured stealth suit at all, and that it's (very blatantly) nothing but an excuse to fap.

Okay then, but your argument is that they're trying to hide this, and I'm saying that's not the case. It is sexy, and it is an essential fight in the story, and it also makes sense that she'd be wearing the camouflage at that time. It's a sexy scene in a serious movie. What's your dilemma?

[Popcorn]

It's just so blindingly naff. It doesn't need to be there. It's like if the animators had a fetish for pink bunny ears and gave every character pink bunny ears simply for the purposes of enjoying pink bunny ears-- well, that'd be one thing, but to pass them off as high-tech communication devices and them have all the characters fight the villains in them is quite another.

[Dark Crow]

I have to agree with Popcorn. I honestly still don't understand why is it necessary for Mokoto to cloak in such a revealing outfit, because I recall that ghost-hacked guy shooting AP bullets at the van to have therm-optics as well, and it wasn't necessary for him to wear such a revealing outfit. And if the reasoning behind it is that she honestly doesn't care what people think because of her body practically being all robot, then why not have Batou doing the same thing? He seems to be just as much of an android as the Major. Why did the creators of GitS want to give a sense of modesty to all of the male cast and none to Motoko?

[Green Gibbon!]

Pop, that analogy is absurd and irrelevant. The stealth camouflage isn't the "excuse" for her nakedness, because it could well be black or purple or pink or paisley. Motoko is a character with sex appeal, and I don't think there's any "cover-up" to the fact that this fight scene was meant to have erotic value as much as anything else. Yes, it is an important fight scene in terms of relevance to the story, and yes, it is also important that Motoko snuck up on him by being invisible, but the fact that she looks naked when the camouflage is turned off is pure erotic license. You're blowing it way out of proportion.

Incidentally, Crow, Motoko is pure cyborg, the only part of her that's still human is her consciousness, the so-called "ghost". Her body is even part of a mass-produced line. Most of Batou's body is human, and also, Batou isn't the one struggling with the existential angst.