I didn't take into account the age of the show when I first reviewed it, so thanks for bringing that to my attention as relative to other anime of the time I would agree that it is one of the better ones. I've bumped up the score a bit, but I still don't consider GITS as something that holds up all that well with more modern anime, but that's not the problem I have with GITS, the problem is that it doesn't even compare to classics that are even older than GITS is. A lot of older pieces of media are considered "classics" due to how influential they are, and GITS is certainly one of them, but just because something is influential doesn't make it a masterpiece, and while GITS is a pioneer that shaped the anime industry, its legacy is ultimately dwarfed by the existence of older and more influential forms of literature. Philosophy is timeless, ideas and concepts are things that can be honed and perfected. Some classics are pioneers that introduce novel ideas that are then further improved upon by later works. GITS is an example of this. Other classics are timeless masterpieces that define entire genres as the gold standard. GITS fails to meet this standard. The overly simplistic philosophical narrative of GITS just doesn't hold up very well in modern times while other classical pieces have. Anime like Evangelion and Nausicca are as old as GITS is, yet I find these examples to still be unique and masterfully done even by modern standards. And to take this discussion outside of the vacuum of anime, books written by authors like Isaac Asimov, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell are still powerful pieces of literature to this day.
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