The Movie:

Set a few years after the Forth World War in the Japan of the year 2030, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Individual Eleven takes place a half a year after the events in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex The Laughing Man. Japan is suffering from a labor shortage and the country has opened its borders to let in three million immigrants to help with that problem. This decision has split the country in two, with one side in favor of the change and the other, a more hard line right wing contingent, wanting to isolate Japan and shut down the borders. Things intensify when a terrorist group calling themselves The Individual Eleven carries out a suicide bomb attack, which puts Japan's anti-terrorist group, Section 9, on the hot seat.

Lead by Major Motoko Kusanagi, a woman with a cybernetic body, Section 9 sets out to find out who has been behind the Individual Eleven attacks and put a stop to it, unaware that a prominent member of the terrorist group named Hideo Kuze has joined the ranks of the immigrants and become a leader intent on rallying them against the status quo and the government in power - and on top of that he's got some pretty blatant ambitions as to obtaining plutonium for nefarious purposes. As Motoko and her associates start putting together the pieces of the puzzle, she starts to get a strange feeling that Kuze may not be exactly who he appears to be and feels he may be connected to her own past somehow.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Individual Eleven is, in a nutshell, an edited down version of the twenty-six episode Stand Alone Complex Second Gig series which ran for roughly seven hours in length. In this form, cut down to approximately three hours, we lose some of the subplots and depth for the story but the faster pacing will no doubt be appreciated by some. The standard Ghost In The Shell themes still apply here - there's an emphasis on hacking as the new way of waging war and the movie does the same good job of blending man and machine together that it has in previous incarnations, particularly when it comes to Motoko herself. Those accustomed to the series' smooth line work and slick, cool visuals will be pleased with the movie's style which perfectly blends a Blade Runner-esque futuristic style with a cold, cyberpunk aesthetic as it always has. Some interesting political themes are brought to the forefront, what with the immigrant refugees in the movie having less rights than their Japanese counterparts and being treated in many ways like second class citizens by those born in the country they're helping to rebuild.

As far as how effective this movie version is at condensing the serialized version of the story, it actually works quite well here. Obviously some subplots have got to be cut down and the storytelling itself has to happen at a faster pace. Both of those things have been done but we still get a lot of depth to the plot. A familiarity with the characters and the stories that came before this one will help you get your head around some of the complexities that the movie deals with, so this isn't a good starting place for those new to the world of Ghost In The Shell (you'd want to start with the original movie and move on from there) but attentive viewers should be able to pick things up fairly quickly without a P.H.D. in Motokology. The emphasis here is on the more emotional aspect of the story, and so we build very quickly from the opening sequences in which Section 9 fends off an incident at the Chinese Embassy to the core of the story where Motoko tries to sort out the Kuze issue. Those who have seen the series that this movie version is culled from will notice differences in the dialogue and the animation, wisely done to make everything flow better - these changes help the material work in feature length form. Purists will stick with the original series, hardcore fans will want both, but for those who want a quicker, easier way to get to the gist of it, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Individual Eleven works surprisingly well.

Video:

The AVC encoded 1.78.1 1080i high definition transfer for Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Individual Eleven looks pretty good on this BD50 disc. The transfer can only bring out the detail that is in the original animation and so this doesn't offer quite the same level as some more recent anime offerings but those who have seen the title before on DVD should be pleased with the improvement in picture quality here. Lines are well defined, there are no problems with anything but the slightest of shimmering while there are no issues at all with print damage, dirt or debris. Colors are bold and crisp while black levels remain fairly strong from start to finish. The 1080i factor will probably irritate some but there weren't any obvious interlacing issues noticed during playback.