“He went too far down the rabbit hole and caught a glimpse of hell…”
I can’t be the only person slightly irked that the manga has been leaving out episodes of the anime. Book 005 gives us one of the missing ones (episode thirteen), but that means the two mediums are now presenting the same stories in a different order. Thankfully, the continuity is intact because a minor reference to a previous adventure that was in the anime has been removed from the manga.
A child that was abducted sixteen years previously by an extremist organisation is recently spotted on a surveillance camera, but she hasn't aged. Logic says that a replacement prosthetic body could explain that easily, but things aren't that simple. A mystery needs to be solved and Section 9 is called in to solve it.
The anime episode was split between exploration and dialogue in the first part and action in the second (of the gung-ho kind for some of the team!). Someone must have thought that needed redressed, so additional action scenes have been added in the first half and, not to be outdone, even more explosive moments squeezed into the already combat-packed finale. It's a little overwhelming.
3 flesh supremacists out of 5
Edit: It’s possible that Episode 005 is the final numbered GitS: SAC manga. The release date given by the press for the next volume has come and gone. I've had two separate orders accepted and subsequently cancelled by sellers. I've contacted a number of suppliers, including Kodansha in the US and the UK, but no one seems to know where the hell Episode 006 is or if it even exists. If anyone knows any different, please let me now. I’ll keep checking and will update if there’s any news. It’s also unknown at this stage whether or not we’ll be getting the Laughing Man mangas translated.
