Nut Ink. Mini reviews of texts old and new. No fuss. No plot spoilers. No adverts. Occasional competency.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex : Episode 004 : ¥€$ (2013)

Author: Yu Kinutani | Page Count: 256

Not even the shotgun can stop him?!

The previous book was a retelling of episode seven from Season One of the SAC Anime. Episode 004 jumps far ahead and recreates episode fourteen.

It sticks to the same plot, but there are some significant differences in how it gets from beginning to end. Kinutani has sexed it up with more suggestive POV angles and gratuitous panty-shots. That kind of thing has no place in SAC, but the changes made in other areas are interesting. The action scenes have been extended, or in some cases added anew, giving the work more immediacy. There’s some aggressive flashbacks that establish a deeper emotional connection and offer up a more sympathetic view of the antagonist.

Art is great as usual except for the occasional elongated limb that’s very unlike Kinutani. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from inbetweeners on a bad day.

The Tachikomatic Days episodes return. Yay. We get a double dose that makes up for their absence last time.

3 ghostless dolls out of 5

Edit: Fixed an error (see comments).  Thanks, Borderline.

2 comments:

Borderline said...

There is plenty of sexual gratuitousness in SM's original GitS manga and even more in Man-Machine Interface (a lot more).

Dr Faustus said...

You’re right; I should have said SAC not GitS. My bad.

I have the 3 Shirow books. I’ve not read them in a long time.

There was a few pages cut from the first UK edition because of the sexual content but they eventually got reinstated in later editions.