✪ Genre: action (gunfights), detective, mecha (power suit, robot), science fiction (artificial intelligence, cyberpunk, cyborgs/human enhancement) seinen, along with some other themes: law and order (cyberterrorism, police, special squads), nudity, political corruption, virtual world
✔Positive Aspects✔
◧ Soundtrack: It's very unusual for an anime series to have a soundtrack that is as varied as that of S.A.C.'s. It's is comprised of pieces from various genres, such as ambient with and without vocals, trip-hop, instrumental rock, piano ballads with vocals, slow tempo guitar pieces, some goofy tunes akin to cartoon themes, salsa, funky hip hop, orchestral music (usually with violins, violas, piano, etc.), smooth jazz (non-R&B based), and some solo piano work.
◧ Concept: the series is set in a futuristic, cyberpunk Japanese society where a clandestine law-enforcement/intelligence-gathering/anti-terrorism unit comprised of elite cyborgs is trying to untangle a very unusual set of events stretching 6 years back which seem to involve principled cyberterrorists, leaders of multinational corporations and high-profile political leaders.
✘Negative Aspects✘
◧ Animation: this series is based on a combination of colors of moderate to low saturation/moderate illumination. The primary and secondary characters were adequately distinct from one another, but I can't say this was the case for the rest of them. There's a glaring lack of detail when it comes to facial characteristics and body shape.
◧ Plot: even though the anime series is based on an underlying plot, and an incredibly interesting at that, it does not do a good enough job in articulating it in an even, consistent manner. The majority of the episodes are functionally stand-alone pieces of detective fiction, besides the first 6 and the last 6 episodes, which are disentangling a genuinely intriguing, yet very familiar, tale of widespread corporate fraud abetted by opportunistic political figures.
◧ Action sequences: mostly third-person perspectives, escalating/deescalating fairly quickly, with a noticeable "lag" just before the impact of blows during hand-to-hand combat along with the same Hollywoodian gunfights where the villains are shooting from the hip and the heroes are shooting them down on full auto.
Finally, let's not forget about the unreal power suits sported by some of the villains throughout, which were able to withstand shots, and some times consecutive, by .50BMG sniper rifles, 20mm sniper rifles, and 40mm grenade launchers. Get the fuck outta here.
◧ Character development: even though the series built the protagonist and a couple of characters from her unit to an extent, this is not adequate by any means, especially given the amount of airtime used on stand-alone episodes. This elite unit has achieved a level of cohesiveness and complementarity which is not only quite unusual, even by anime standards, but also quite implausible simply in terms of working together for a long period of time. The characters' relationships with one another appear to be incredibly intimate cognitively and physically, but they nonetheless feel completely impoverished, affectively speaking. There are certainly examples of positive emotional expressions by some of the members towards some of their colleagues, but they do not suffice in substantiating their level of cohesion and solidarity.
Overall: This series is surely better than the initial film (I've started with the 2.0 version) in more aspects, yet it does a spectacularly bad job in using its airtime productively.
❗ Ranking: 6,6/10 ❗
