#ghost in the shell standalone complex

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

Original title: Kôkaku Kidôtai: Stand Alone Complex | 攻殻機動隊 STAND ALONE COMPLEX.

[flojocabron]

04/28/25: Another online anime order received! Didn't check my mail until this morning, but it probably arrived on Saturday. For some years now, when I get my tax return; I order some anime. I got some in the other day too, and this completes my binge. These came from a company called Gruv. I also spent around $60 for everything. And I'm double dipping on GitS Stand Alone Complex. I have it on dvd already. But it's time for an upgrade. And the other series look nice too. I saw a few first season episodes of Castlevania a few years back, but now I got it more complete. And I'm a fan of Inuyasha. The last season in a dvd set is okay. I'll get it on bluray one day. I hope you have a great start to your week.

[namedr]

aeria gloris

[weakestcreature]

me pulling up to the function

[thepersonaofwill]

Artwork of The Major, Motoko Kusanagi the fierce purple hair babe

[s3znl-gr3znl]

Anime watchers be like "this is my favorite show!"

[cyberpunkplaylist]

Origa - Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex - Inner Universe

What we have here is the opening credits music for the first season of the the Shirow Masamune cyberpunk classic, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex.  Performed here by Origa in a combination of Russian and English, with a soprano boy doing the bits in Latin.  And honestly it’s just asskicking music with the Shirow feel of some utopian ideal sullied by cyber-enhanced violence.  With the kind of ironic “Watch in awe, watch in awe, heavenly glory, heavenly glory” as a repeated theme.  Worth your damn time as you storm an Arasaka facility with vengeance in mind.  You got this.

BONUS: THE OPENING CREDITS SEQUENCE

[mitigatedchaos]

Okay, I'm not generally one for dogwhistle-based thinking, but why is your favorite rap song by "a Dutch drum and bass group" called "Black Sun Empire"? On further Googling the official explanation is that it is a Star Wars reference, but this seems dubious to me at best

Dawn of a Dark Day feat. UK hip hop group Foreign Beggars is an excellent example of something that's quite rare: cyberpunk rap that's actually good.

descend to synapse chill factor sixty microverse entered so black, it's slipstream dip both the headlights melt into background

I've never found another track like it.

I'm going to assume that you're not a long-term reader, or it would be obvious why someone who posted fake discourse about parents cryogenically freezing their children would like this song.

Probably the best cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk anime is 2002's Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex. Some songs from that series have rap segments, but they don't really add to the music, such as with Origa feat. Heartsdales - Player.

Origa sounds amazing, but everyone who has ever heard one of the tracks featuring her already knows that.

The problem for Heartsdales is that it's usually much easier for a man to pose as tough and intimidating than it is for a woman, and even then, proper intimidation is subtle and depends on a connection to a background of power, or the ability to convincingly fake that connection.

What makes Dawn of a Dark Day so unique is that it's clearly from the perspective of a team of cyborg combat operatives, or following them very closely. It's also abstract enough that it doesn't fall into Ren Faire/Steampunk dorkiness. That's a fine line to tread, and it takes actual talent.

In real life, we don't sing songs about computer hacking, even though computer hacking is one of the most sci-fi elements of the current era.

Imagine a song about a combat cyborg team in the style of a whaling song, talking about cleaning ports and hacking mainframes. This would be much more understandable to contemporary outsider audiences than a line like, "cyberbrain circus - brace for the kickback."

In the cyberpunk world, the cyborg combat team would talk using the actual professional jargon from their field, which would be more specific to their time and place. For example, contemporary computer programmers would complain about Java, a specific programming language, about which they would have specific complaints (such as preferring dynamic typing, or Java being too verbose).

Thus, a whaling-style song, "dust the ports and hack the servers," which doesn't require knowing the specifics, would be something either written from an outsider's perspective, probably as a joke, or written from an insider's perspective, also probably as a joke.

To hit the right band, then, requires writing something from the perspective of an insider (even though insiders would not tend to write songs), that's intelligible to people from our world with some background knowledge of genre, that hits on the sci-fi elements related to the genre (rather than just being a generic love song), without making them overpowering, by baking them into the assumptions of the text.

To use a non-musical example, the original special collector's edition Mass Effect hoodie (left) is subtle and was popular for a while, while some subsequent designs by third parties (right) were much louder.

The design on the left is appropriate for a wide variety of social environments, while the design on the right would require a higher degree of social aptitude to get away with wearing wear in many social environments, and would be more suitable for a video game club or anime convention.

This is part of the general thing where being "cool" is about making things look effortless, and not looking like a tryhard.

Particularly, for the hoodie on the right, there's a mismatch between style and substance, in which it is trying to "borrow" power from a fictional suit of armor from a video game. (This mismatch is the general reason that trying to lean too hard on fiction is cringe; there's not enough substance relative to what someone is trying to do with it.)

Some of you may remember an Indiegogo campaign for a samurai armor hoodie. I'm not saying that everything should be understated. Sometimes, artistically, you're better off committing to the bit.

Now, back to music.

The band Gunship are not a rap outfit, but seem to have been quite successful with a lot of their sci-fi-themed content, such as this video with 3.9 million views:

They do a good job at finding the balance.

Another musical act, Perturbator, got 5.4 million views with a music video about rogue sentient androids (Perturbator - Sentient, which contains nudity).

The successor series for Standalone Complex, SAC_2045, has the song Millennium Parade - Fly With Me, which is better as rap music than the rap segment of Origa - Player, but isn't cyberpunk-themed directly.

Cyberpunk 2077 has, for example, Konrad OldMoney feat. Taelor Yung - Day of Dead, which is great for an action scene, but also isn't directly cyberpunk:

No Save Point, also from 2077, has a great line, "When a fortune cookie tells me I'm fucked, I just shrug," and ain't that Night City for you? They put some work in on this one, but I don't vibe with it as much musically.

Anyhow, that's why Dawn of a Dark Day is my favorite.

If you'd like, I can explain some of the recent politics of dog-whistles tomorrow or the day after.

[breezybeej]

So I started watching Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex and the episode IDOLATOR is kind of insane. There was a hard cut at the end of the episode that made me GASP because it brought all the light and life and air back into the episode. I didn't even realize it had made me so STRESSED. This doesn't capture the music or the pacing or the action but just look at how gorgeous these matte paintings are.

Are you ready? Are you ready for that sudden rush of fresh air? After all of this oppressive green? THEY HARD CUT TO THIS FROM DARK MATRIX GREEN

[foolscapper]

Oh, you think you can handle picking one of my favorite albums??? BET! Hard mode I took off all MCR. Many movie soundtracks were left on the cutting room floor and it distresses me.

[robotrightsactivist]

What are your favourite movies/books/whatever (about you know what that we both share a sentiment for) that you can recommend?

Ohhhh there is so much robot media out there, personally I would recommend Ich Bin Dein Mensch to literally everyone because it gave me brain worms for two weeks, I would personally recommend every true robot fanatic to read The Gardener’s Year by Karel Capek with illustrations by his brother Josef who actually invented the term “robot” as it’s used today, I would highly highly recommend Rice Boy by Evan Dahm for one of my favorite character arcs of a character who happens to be a robot, I was an early enjoyer of BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei and Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, and I would also recommend Pluto by Naoki Urasawa which is a retelling of Astro Boy. Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life is a fun non-linear and philosophical romp, Defy the Stars is also fun if a bit leaning towards the romance heavy side. Oh and for novels and novellas I’d include Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang and Rupetta by Nike Sulway! That’s as much as I can think of that’s not commonly recommended! :)

[namedr]

the Major

[weakestcreature]

happy birthday Locky from GITS:SAC!

[thepersonaofwill]

The Lovely & Stunning Motoko Kusanagi 💜

A beautiful start to the New Year

By ILYA KUVSHINOV

[coquettedragoon]

What inspired Coquette Dragoon, outside of the obvious examples like Gundam? What are your thoughts on HWBM? Would you think about making something super robot inspired after this?

hwbm gave us halimede

my main inspos are like.. legend of the galactic heroes, catch 22, utena, hidamari sketch, verhoevens starship troopers, the sky crawlers, ghost in the shell standalone complex, heartcatch precure... and more recently the star pit, forever war, left hand of darkness, since i am reading books again...

i would like to take a stab at super robot one day, would love to see what the ivy ideon looks like.

i have a very vague plan but the thing id like to make after coquette would be a fma kind of magic 20th century setting and doing macross transforming mechs with propeller aircraft, ill see when i get there i guess

[theceolacanther]

my mums been cleaning out the garage and here are some of the highlights

weve got:

MLP movie (pirated)

ghost in the shell standalone complex volume 1

ninja scroll!

mega shark vs giant octopus (i loved this movie as a kid, me and my friends found its trailer on yt and then when blockbuster was closing down i found it and BEGGED my mum to buy it for me)

cowboy bebop movie

eva 222 and 333 (couldnt find 1:11 :( loved that movie as a kid)

school day of the dead

pokemon alpha sapphire

perfect blue!!!

sonatine

and finally the conrad show!

this is all very cool and sometimes i forget my dad is like a proper OG