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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The laughing Man (2005)

Score: 9/10

Director: Kenji Kamiyama

Stars: Alison Matthews, Russell Roberts, David Kaye

Ghost in the Shell

The laughing Man

Synopsis: A Greyhat hacker by the name of ‘The Laughing Man’ seeks to take down a corrupt organization by putting an end to their crimes. This is a compilation movie of the story arc of the Laughing Man from the TV series.

Review: This is a long movie. About two hours and a halve. There is a lot of story here and I mean a lot! So the story goes like this, a while back there was some kind of brain sclerosis that hardens the brain tissue around the cyborg cerebral implants that causes people to die when they use cyber enhancements. There was a liquid vaccine that was effective but the high up bigwigs in the nanotech industry found a way to discredit the vaccine and offered a nano-machine solution instead. The problem was that it did not work. People paid their treatment fees thinking that they were getting better, all the while they were still dieing because the nano-machine treatment was a fraud. This caused a lot of people to die but no one knew this illegal corruption was happening. That brings us the Greyhat hacker ‘The Laughing Man’, who is doxxing the corrupt business men who made this whole situation happen. Revealing their nefarious actions causes the bad business men’s plan to fall apart, or will they?

The Major

Motoko Kusanagi

Major is great as always. Stories such as these show us why the character Major Motoko Kusanagi is awesome and why she is the best female cyborg in media today. The Major uses misdirection and deception when ever she can to keep her adversaries confused, surprised, and off balance. Section 9 is always ten steps ahead of their adversaries. Its very refreshing that they are on top of the situations they are put in. Basically this team is savage as hell, lol. They are not the kind of people you want to mess with.

Section 9

The Team

Tugosa plays a very important role in this movie for his non-augmented appearance and his investigation skills. His ability to lie and social engineer allows him to gain the trust of informants, leading him to very critical information necessary for Section 9 to take down the bad guys. The Tachikoma AI spider tanks have their own agenda as well, operating from behind the scenes. They are the most caring and self sacrificing robots out there. Every characters in Section 9 has their particular strength and the great thing is that we get to really see this unlike the live action Scarlett Johansson film that hyper focuses on only one character leaving the other characters in the room underdeveloped. Yes, take notes because this is how you do Ghost in the Shell right!

The laughing Man

Strikes again!

The main villain is a Greyhat hacker who uses technology against the powerful bigwigs who has some control of the system. He is very successful at what he does ’Mind Hacking’. he uses disguise and social engineering to get what he wants. He is almost unstoppable. In fact, no one would suspect him. He is the ever present silent observer who strikes from the shadows. It surprised me how so many people could not do anything to this guy because he never really puts himself in danger, which is the advantage of using a cyber attack. Every one is panicking not knowing what to, which is all apart of his grand design. ‘I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes’ - The Laughing Man.

Mech Suit

vs. Cyborg

Its simple, Ghost in the Shell has some of the best stories around. This was absolutely excellent. There are some really cool cyborg mech-suit boss fights in this film, really good stuff. The pacing of the movie is also very good. There isn’t too much talk for too long that would make this movie boring. There is also not too much action, that would smother all of the story leaving us with basically nothing but a video walkthrough. We get a heavily layered story with philosophical concepts such as individually, justice, and humanism. Some of the characters voices have been changed from the original cut of the TV series. Luckily The character Major Motoko Kusanagi’s voice has not been changed from Alison Matthews superb voice acting. The cinematography is great as always. This is one of those really good anime movies. It gets one of my highest ratings.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The laughing Man (2005)

Ghost in the Shell

The Major

Section 9

The laughing Man

Mech Suit

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