Enter Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, a show that, in some of its scenes, looks like absolute amateur dogshit while in the others, looks honestly quite amazing. Production IG continues to push their 3D agenda with this fully 3D production and I have to say, they really have made quite great strides in their endeavors. It does take a good getting used to but their character models (especially the Major's and Batou's) look quite great in 3D. Some of the others...not so much but it can be forgiven due to how great the show's lighting and camera work is.
Where the visual style of the show really takes a hit in my opinion though is in some of the daytime scenes. This is sort of the blind-spot for most 3D animated work; daytime scenes are much, much harder to make it “look right”. The abundance of light really shows all the imperfections in humanoid models and your animation game has to be fucking on-point or you'll notice jankyness much easier. However, the night scenes in this anime, honestly quite stunning. I 100% dig this new style that the show is going in (which is a relief seeing how horrid Arise looked). I will say though, I still vastly prefer the visual style of the original SAC TV show; not because it was primarily 2D animated but because a lot of the scenes had more...”umph” to the animation and poses. Also the character design seemed much more adult and the world felt more “lived-in” in that previous series.
The show itself has...issues. The pacing feels way off. More than half of the season is used to set up the reforming of Section 9 which I feel like is a major misuse of screen time. They spend so much time setting it up that once you are back in Japan, you don't even get a complete arc finished. In fact, the cliffhanger that this season ends on came so out of left field and was so unsatisfying. On top of all of that, the “deepness” that is usually associated with Ghost in the Shell seems quite lacking in this season. It honestly feels like a in-between feeling between the OG SAC and Arise which is not the worst thing in the world, but I was hoping for something much, much, much, muchhhhh more like SAC. The only saving grace of the ending of the show is that we might have a new antagonist that has the smartness and interest of the Laughing Man. However, seeing how this antagonist is part of a group that was already so easily taken down in a previous episode of the series, my fears is that the next season will just continue as-is and will just waste the character's potential.
Sound is great, actually it's fantastic. I watched this on Netflix in Dolby Atmos. Very, very, very good sound mixing. The OP is fantastic and fitting given the theme of financial ruin throughout the series. The voice actors are great though this show has a bad case of showing you characters in the background but not letting them speak. Borma is an example of this; I had thought given how much they showed him and didn't let him talk that they did not have a VA for him. He did end up saying like. 4 lines of dialogue but not until around the second to last episode. Other characters that are a staple part of Section 9 literally do not talk nor do...well anything in the series. Seriously wasted potential.
Overall this is not a bad production. I enjoyed watching most of it. It does seem like they wasted some opportunities and I have a large fear that the next season will be as...meandering as this one, but it is a very clear improvement over Arise and that is, if anything, a good place to start rebuilding this brand.
Enjoyment: 6.5/10
Overall: 6.4/10
