/a/ - Animu & Mango

>>811634

Ghost in the Shell. I like both and of course Akira but GitS is closer to the or at least my definition of cyberpunk in every aspect. The story, the characters, the visuals and even the way the conflict get's resolved.

I'd say Akira is a more general dystopian scifi story to me.

>>811639

Sorry. I think I had a stroke while typing that.

GiTS is closer to the trend the genre has taken since then.

>>811641

Was pre-GitS cyberpunk closer to Akira? Most of the film after Tetsuo got his powers seem atypical for the genre. It seems too bombastic and large-scale.

GitS2 is my favourite GitS. I don't really care for the Major as a character.

>>811639

GitS is more cyber. Akira is more punk.

"Cyberpunk" hardly ever deals with actual punks outside of William Gibson novels though. "Cyberpunk" has become more shorthand for "looks like Blade Runner".

>>811651

Gibson defined cyberpunk as "high tech, low life", which would probably better fit Akira. Most of the people we encounter in GitS don't seem to be doing too badly for themselves. The world GitS takes place in actually seems quite nice for the most part.

>>811659

>Most of the people we encounter in GitS don't seem to be doing too badly for themselves.

Because everyone in GITS is a cop or a criminal. Reminder their cybernetics cost absurd amounts of money and the main cast is an elite unit whose bodies are paid for by the government. Criminals acquire parts on the black market and pay with money they got from crime. Normal people are shown to live in shitty apartments mostly.

>>811634

This little short music video Miyazaki made

>>811666

That was lovely.

>>811672

I'm almost tempted to say I'd like to see it as a real movie, but maybe the limited nature of being a music video helps to make it more striking.

>>811634

I'd say given how GiTS focuses on the enforcers system rather than the rebels, it's more of a post-Cyberpunk story.

Akira is a dystopian science fiction story and it lacks a lot of other things that would make it cyberpunk.

GiTS: Solid State Society is the most prescient.

>>811842

Wouldn't the GitS movie still count as actual cyberpunk? Since they rebel against the system once they see it's flaws.

>>811634

Never watched the Akira anime but I did read the manga. Found it to be nothing spectacular, except the whole time skip which was definitely audacious.

>>812168

You can make that argument. When I think of Cyberpunk I do stick to that tag of "High Tech, low life" and in that context cyberpunk stories deal with people who live outside the corporations/government as opposed to people who work within it.

So even though Section 9 has issues with the other agency, they aren't trying to overthrow the government or oppose it. It's basically just internal politics on who can keep the super secret AI and The Chief exacting some revenge for them busting up his facility.

Akira is extremely overrated.

>>812829

It's a big film.

>>811634

Dirty Pair. Philosophywankers can suck my Phillip K. Dick.

>>812829

It was grandiose and seminal for the time, but many of the elements have been done since then, and improved upon. It's like saying early JoJo is overrated; you have to remind yourself that it came before anything you've seen that's like it.

Personally, after having gone back and read the manga several times over, I'll never get over the fact that it's NEVER going to get a faithful adaptation. It's difficult to watch the movie now, knowing how much is skipped that will never be animated.

>>812858

I don't think early JoJo is overrated. Part 3 is overrated.

>>812925

Part 3 is only overrated in the west. For some reason the formulaic, linear plot, one-dimensional characters, and incredibly simplistic stand powers appeal to Americans; I can't imagine why.

>>813071

I dunno. The Japanese seem to like it too. If not more than we do. There's a reason it keeps getting more attention than any other part.

>>813190

I just finished it. It was amazing. Too bad it'll never get second season.

>best version

Really, I've loved every anime movie and series of GitS so far. I'd say I liked the second movie the least but it wasn't actually bad, that was just my personal taste.

Guess that is a direct contrast of my opinion on Appleseed. In that franchise's case I think everything except the manga and OVA is complete garbage.

>>813309

>You loved Arise?

Yeah. It had it's downsides and I can understand why people would dislike it. Even the character re-design alone might have been enough for some people. Me personally, I liked the new designs and the changes in the story. I've read and watched anything GitS so I'm glad it still managed to feel fresh.

I also liked that the in-universe tech was updated. This too might ruin it for some people, especially if you want to have more of a classic 70-90s cyberpunk feeling.

>Innocence

I know it's a stupid reason but it just didn't feel right to me. For example, I know they where going for a more film noire aesthetic but having everyone drive antique cars just seemed out of place. I was just expecting something closer to the original movie. SAC and Arise are their own alternative universes so I want them to feel different. Innocence was a sequel to the movie, yet it still felt like an alternative universe.

It also had too many computer animated scenes and backgrounds, some of which did nothing except looking pretty.

Not having the major just appear was fine by me. After what happened in the first movie, it would have been odd if she re-appeard as the same character just to please fans.

I'm currently re-/watching everythingexcept that one thing of course anyways so maybe I'll like it more now that I'm aware of those things beforehand.

I'll also watch GitS 2.0 for the first time, I wonder how it will compare to the original.

>>813309

I decided to rewatch GitS recently after not seeing it for some years. The problem with it is that an 80 minute run-time is such a paltry serving for a movie. It wouldn't be a problem if 80% of the run-time was blood pumping action, but there are so many scenes of just panning scenery to music. This isn't to say that the scenery isn't beautiful, but that the pacing is lacking. Meanwhile, all the action scenes are so fantastically animated, you can't help but feel starved for more. While the GitS universe is more aesthetically interesting, Akira manages to have much better pacing and overall content as a film (comparing films, not manga). The one I want more of is GitS, but the one that satisfied me was Akira.

>>811659

Akira isn't high tech. It's all punk and SF super powers. No cyber involved.

So no, it's not cyberpunk.

>>813190

God, I miss this show.

Is the original GiTS manga worth it?

Instead of this being about how shitty OP's taste is, can this be a SF thread?

Or should we make our own thread?

>>813446

Maybe that's the case. I thought we saw the cars like that the whole time, even when he wasn't on screen and that everything else besides the cars didn't look as old school but maybe I'm misremembering things.

>>813439

The elites are high tech. They just don't share their technology with the people in the slums.

>>813545

>The elites are high tech.

Perhaps but that's not really what we saw in the movie. It doesn't matter if it exists in the setting, it's important what the story focuses on.

Cyberpunk is a genre that tells the story of a human society that has nearly been overrun by their own advanced cybernetic or bionic technology As with GiTS you get to see a sort of macro/microcosm of this. Many humans now have some for of biotech installed in their heads or have replaced parts if not their entire standard bodies with a cybernetic shell. The question quickly becomes what is human and what is not human? If you still have a human brain in a cyborg body are you still human? Can you even be considered alive?

Cyberpunk has a tendency to run in six story formats: dystopian (Blade Runner), Utopian (Real Drive), Action (GiTS anime),and Philosophical (GiTS and Tank Police Manga), Pre-Apocalyptic (A.I.C.O.) and Post-Apocalyptic (Texhnolyze). Shirow Masamune has a tendency to run in the Philosophical vein when it comes to cyberpunk. The lesser know seventh format is known as Dramatic which generally runs with animes like Beatless and Violet Evergarden.

Overall cyberpunk has had a good run, but its main problem is that it often doesn't run far enough ahead into the future and time catches up with it. Like the many cyberpunk animes of the 80's and 90's that said by 2020 we'd have flying cars and cyborgs capable of destroying entire armies by themselves. This causes these animes to be less believable and thus less enjoyable to watch.

>>813552

That whole superhuman weapons program they had going was a pretty big deal.

>>813610

>This causes these animes to be less believable and thus less enjoyable to watch.

I don't have that problem. A sci-fi universe doesn't have to be a believable future scenario for me. It can just be it's own thing. Alternate timeline, alternate universe, whatever. The quaintness of some of the ways people used to envision the future can be fun in their own way too.

>>813640

Thats how i kind of look at it too. Like with Fist of the North Star. The great and terrible war was supposed to happen in the late 1990's. Its funny that its now 2018 and the world as we know it is still here.

>>813640

>A sci-fi universe doesn't have to be a believable future scenario for me. It can just be it's own thing.

This. I just finished reading The Martian Chronicles which is an older book which has people breathing on Mars without a suit etc and I don't care. I can watch Star Trek without wondering why I don't remember the Eugenics Wars. What happens or has happened in the real world is irrelevant to shows that aren't set in the modern world.

>>811634

>>813610

Missed predictions with sci-fi is often less about the level of progress and more about the direction. Nobody expected computers to become so ubiquitous for casual and entertainment use. That's why the biggest "hole" in sci-fi made before the 80's is often the fact that literally nobody has the internet or any equivalent. Nobody expected that flying cars (or ANY kind of speedy transport, eg: supersonic planes) would become unnecessary because people would begin to perform all meetings over the internet.

Something I've always noticed is that new technology doesn't usually remove old technology. We have microwaves, but we still also use toasters. We have TV and movies, but we still also have physical books. There's also never a quantum leap of technology that suddenly spreads across the world affecting everyone. There's billions in the world that don't have the internet; there's billions who don't have cars and still walk everywhere; Hell, there's millions that are still living as subsistence farmers, even some isolated tribes that are hunter/gatherers. Even if the Singularity happens, it won't affect everyone. Lots of people get that wrong.

Also, we DO have robot drones that can destroy entire (third world) armies. They aren't independent because nobody wants to let that happen, but it's close enough for government work.

Akira is older, so it wins. GiTS is okay, but it's basically just Blade Runner. Blade Runner is the most definitive cyperpunk archetype of all though.

>>813929

Were you trying to miss the point on purpose?

>>813916

I had to have a laugh to myself reading a Philip K Dick novel a little while ago. He described a machine that "prints the morning newspaper at your breakfast table". Yeah, not quite.

>>813929

Blade Runner hardly gets into transhumanism at all though.

>>813916

>Something I've always noticed is that new technology doesn't usually remove old technology.

That may be technically true but you could say that relegating the old technology to something only the poor and underdeveloped still use is removing it in a sense. Sure people still use animal transportation in some places and for some specific purposes, but compared to how ubiquitous motor vehicles have become you can't say they happily co-exist.

>>814073

>relegating the old technology to something only the poor and underdeveloped still use is removing it in a sense

Except it's not always true. People don't have to be poor to want to ride a bike to work. Nearly everyone still uses a stovetop to prepare the majority of their meals rather than a microwave. This is especially telling because the prevailing notion when it was invented was that the microwave was going to be some glorious future cooking tech that would replace every other need. It was part of the general 50's idea that soon every household would be run entirely using "atomic" machines.

Ironically, in the case of food in general, technology-dependent processed foods are now largely consumed by the poor, while fresh and unprocessed foods are so expensive that only the middle-class and higher can afford it. We now associate huge factories and mass-production with cheap and unreliable products, while "hand-made" products are of better quality and vastly more expensive. This flies in the face of conventional sci-fi wisdom, where technology makes everything better. Reminds me of a discussion I had regarding Star Trek, saying that their replicators probably produce food that tastes like garbage, but everyone puts up with it because they can't cook and don't know any better. Yet even there, they still have the rare case of people who can prepare food traditionally. Humans have been cooking with fire for millions of years. Why would it change in the next couple centuries?

Our ideals of what activities poor and rich people will do often flip-flop unpredictably. Aluminum used to be more valuable than gold (the Washington Monument is capped with what was the largest single aluminum cast at the time, and emperors served their best guests on aluminum dishes) and now you can buy a roll of foil for 99 cents to wrap up your leftover pizza. Lobster used to be food for the dirt poor. Being tan used to be a sign of being a poor laborer, while being pale a sign of wealth as they never had to go outside; now it's the opposite because rich people spend days out on the beach while poor people are stuck inside in a cubicle.

I try to pay attention to global trends. I'm waiting for chocolate to become as expensive as the best caviar or vintage red wine once the fact that it's mass-produced using literal slave-labor (often children) in impoverished African countries runs its course. By then, it will have run full-circle. Started off as a drink for the gods, became a delicacy for the European elite, became a simple indulgence for the masses, became so ubiquitous you can buy it by the pound for pennies, and then went right back to being only for the rich again.

>>813397

>>813309

It's been a while since I've seen it, but the problem for me with Innocence is that a lot of the dialogue came off as really pretentious in a way that the original movie didn't. Innocence had some great sequences but every time they talk it just sounds like they're having a contest to see who can quote the most philosophers in one minute.

>>814761

An explanation I heard for that is that the characters have all of that information uploaded to their brains to call on like Google searches. Not sure that's what they were going for but it's an interesting thought. Instant accibility of information does alter the way people communicate. How many discussions have most of us had that eventually just progress into the swapping of Wikipedia links and infographics.

>>814673

I would.

The Author of BLAME! makes very interesting content but he couldn't create a good ending even if he was offered the chance to be a gundam pilot.

>>814950

I'm not sure what you'd classify Blame! as. Post-post-post-cyberpunk?

>>814984

It's more into drama.

>>814984

It`s pretty dated to be honest

>>814979

Blame! is set thousands of years in the future. It's probably post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-cyberpunk

>>813443

It's better than the original GiTS movie to be honest.

On a side note, did anyone think the movie to be untasteful?

>>817852

sorry for not clarifying, I'm referring to the live action GiTS movie.

>>817854

Please tell me more about it. I, like most of the guys here, have chosen just to ignore the live action movie.

>>817852

Its existence is distasteful.

>>811634

Cyber City Oedo 808

>>818240

I have a contraption in Minecraft that literally does that. So it's kinda correct.

Oedo 808 is my personal favorite cyb film.

>>811634

They're both different aspects of the shadowrun RPG.

One is the magic, the other the tech.

>>811641

Good.

>>818533

There's still some odd things in there. Like a lot of people from the 90's, he failed to realize that pagers would become totally passe in less than five years (only sort of because of texting), and that analog radio would get supplanted almost entirely into irrelevance. Although, I'd LOVE for him to explain how the hell he expected to fit a fucking FM radio antenna into his deck-of-cards-sized device! I guess I can forgive him because he's a programmer not a physicist, aka more conceptual rather than real.

Like almost EVERYONE, he also overpredicts the power of AI. He almost seems to expect it to have reached the level of a secretary, able to make hotel reservations and the like. Although the functionality of a website such as Trivago comes close, it misses the point; you still have to do that shit on your own, even if it's only clicking a few buttons. Nobody has AI personal assistants, because it's cheaper to hire a minority to do it.

Also, the whole thing still reads like "professional" or "business" functionality, not "timewasting" functionality. That was my point. The whole thing where you can look up during a bus ride and see literally everyone playing mobile games or texting on their phones. When I was a kid, bus rides to and from school were a non-stop deafening cacophony of yelling and screaming from the crowd, but now I'd imagine they're all completely silent. No noise except the sound of the engine and the occasional ping or beep. It's slightly terrifying.

Does Armitage III count as cyberpunk anime?

>>826968

>When I was a kid, bus rides to and from school were a non-stop deafening cacophony of yelling and screaming from the crowd

And singing Smashmouth.

>>827123

Nobody cared who they were until they put on the Shrek.

>>827043

>Armitage III

It does. Thank you for reminding me to finally watch the real version.

>>827043

Wouldn't that be sci-fi? I mean they've colonized Mars. That being said the twist in that is great and shockingly relevant these days.

Do yourself a favor, don't watch Akira

As for films with such high pedigrees, this is one of the worst. Katsuhiro Otomo is basically an amateur pretending to be an auteur. Congratulations, Katsu you've essentially paved the way for Tatsuya Ishihara and pseudo cinema. Wondering why actual directors are getting work and wondering why people remember Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhito Akiyama, Mamoru Hosoda, Morio Asaka, Keiichi Hara, Hiroaki Sakurai, Masaaki Yuasa. There are no rivals to Katsuhiro Otomo in terms of pretension in the sci-fi genre, only a shameless commercial fantasist like Hayao Miyazaki could begin to come close. Even Satoshi Kon, a self-admitted hack, has more humanity and closure to his filmmaking than the Kodansha bitch boy known as Katsuhiro Otomo.

>>827228

Well what the fuck.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/smallest-radio/

>>827251

Did you totally miss that phase from like 2005-2007 where a TON of flip phones had FM radio tuners in them?

>>827174

>I mean they've colonized Mars.

It's more about how the story uses it than the setting itself, though sci-fi and cyberpunk are pretty related in the first place.

Space travel is often a thing in cyberpunk, it's just not the stories focus.

>>827206

Is that a copypasta?

>>826968

>He almost seems to expect it to have reached the level of a secretary, able to make hotel reservations and the like.

Hem, he was right...

>>827336

No, you utter and irredeemable plebeian.

>>827206

I didn't know it was possible to hipster this hard.

>>827363

A single clickbait tech demo is not a working system. Fooling one person at a haircut salon isn't impressive; there's a hundred people who have done similar using [insert fictional character here] soundboards. It's still only programmed with a very narrow and limited set of responses, and I guarantee will easily get tripped up if things don't go according to plan. True AI is likely a century or more away.

Also, I work at a restaurant, and literally everywhere has online booking nowadays. No need to make a phone call.

>>827412

It seriously reads like pasta, I'm genuinely surprised I couldn't find it cut from elsewhere.

>>827486

/a/ hates Akira because it brought anime to more people outside Japan.

I love both but personally, I have more fun watching Akira. GitS is good but kind of depressing to me in a way, and while Akira is in some ways darker, there seems to be more hope and likable characters in it to help balance out all the dark shit. I could really watch Akira whenever I want but I have to actually be in the mood to watch GitS in order to fully enjoy it.

>>827555

A lot of things brought anime to people in the west. Dragonball did, and tons of people here jerk nostalgia over it, especially in the context of comparing it to Z or GT or Super which are in descending order of quality.

This means that if there had ever been a sequel to Akira (or, God fucking forbid: a full anime series faithful to the manga) they would probably say it was crap and the original was great.

>>827922

Akira will inevitably get a live-action adaptation at some point but hey, at least that nigger Jordan Peele isn't directing it

Lain

>>827962

>Akira will inevitably get a live-action adaptation at some point

I seriously doubt it. It's just been too long. The genre isn't even that popular anymore.

>>828453

Holywood is creatively bankrupt which is why you've been seeing more anime adaptations lately, they just made Gits not long ago so I sincerely doubt an Akira film is out of the question