Fish, and plankton. And sea greens, and protein from the sea. It's all here, ready. Fresh as harvest day. Fish and sea greens, plankton and protein from the sea. And then it stopped coming. And they came instead. So I store them here. I'm ready. And you're ready. It's my job. To freeze you. Protein, plankton…

Evil Dead 1.5?

But - "stakes" require people to fool themselves into feeling attached to specific outcomes.

Ingrid Goes Bananas - like Herbie

I am eating some cheese right now!

People are all hermaphrodites. It's just more obvious with some people than others.

- Seth Brundle

I am ready! The more interesting things about sci-fi are the worldbuilding, how changes in tech and society affect everybody's lives. Not the drama of the monster/encounter/emergency of the week.

All names are unisex if you are brave enough - or intersex.

"American audiences are not familiar with Ghost in the Shell in the least, nor even the cyberpunk genre."

It is not really based upon a film. It is based upon "franchise" originating in manga. Not only was this not a remake of the 1995 movie, but Oshii's two features have been easily the least GITS-like stories extant, being their own little conceptual universe.

"the issue was they had to do a bunch of origins BS and establish the world"

Ghost-hacked movies are pathetic! And this poor bastard's been hacked pretty badly.

Hey, I don't remember losing my memory! You can't fool me!

I'd say that she doesn't sell the wit and no-BS commanding attitude I associate with Ksanagi. The voice actress Atsuko Tanaka set a high bar. Johanssen IMO has little to recommend her here other than action-movie chops. I think she is miscast, but they could have done worse.

"I don't really think a single movie can effectively distill the essence of what made them great."

Why not? Aren't ALL cartoons "anime" to the Japanese? I was under the impression that it was the USians job to cry about what what their term is really supposed to mean.

Nuts is good. There isn't much reason to adapt anime to be boring.

But did David kill them *because* he was "extremely dangerous" - or because of the extra-legal abductions, torture, unethical experiments, etc?

I think it's that David has already gone through the worst existential angst over the past couple episodes, and come out the other side. Also he might have felt vitalized from finally being whole again for the first time since infancy