It's honestly the same feelings I had with all the “Arise” stuff; not particularly amazing but was willing to see what direction the show(s)/film(s) would go in because it was an entirely new thing. To me, my experiences with the SAC entries is that it is distinct from the main-line films, it is distinct from Arise. This new anime feels pretty close, in my opinion, to the core values and “feel” of Arise. Sure there are some instances that make me feel like it could be a SAC themed entry, but overall the aesthetic, pacing, and how the majority of the shots are composed really make me feel like I'm watching something more akin to the “feeling” of Arise rather than SAC. That's my main complaint; I really feel like calling this a SAC entry really does the anime a serious disservice.
To get the easy point out of the way, I honestly am mostly in favor with the new look of the show. In nighttime/dark scenes, the CG looks quite good. However in more sunny-lit scenes, it can range from good to amateurish. This seems to be indicative of CG in-general though many Western studios such as Disney and Pixar have seem to have nailed how to make super lit scenes look really well done. The art style looks great, the action scenes are super fluid, and in general, the characters don't really do anything to stand out in a negative way. There are for sure some moments that look worse than they should, but they are outliers. I am 100% ok with this new direction though of course as many others will agree, I do miss the more traditional looking animation (I think SAC was mostly 2D hand drawn but I know in that era of animation for Japan digital animation was starting to be tinkered with).
The plot of the show is not necessarily bad; it's the pacing that really brings it down. I really feel like the first season meandered way too much then all of the sudden at the end, realized they needed to bring the important elements forward so that season 2 could finish things off. It felt honestly like a separate film separated from the second season which was more concise but messy with so many different ideas going on. I wouldn't be surprised if the show wasn't fully written and realized when they actually started making season 2. This show could have benefited, given if season 1 wasn't altered at all, a good 3 or more episodes to really flesh out the plot of the show. And that plot...in a lot of ways it feels like a re-hash of the “antagonist's” ideals from season 2 of SAC though with a couple important differences. Those differences though...don't matter much in the grand scheme of things; the thing that matters the most is that the overall pacing and order of key moments feels quite similar to the ending episodes of that second SAC season. Because of that, I felt a little apprehensive when watching the ending of this show. It just felt like a rehashing of so many previous ideas which really conflicts with the rest of the vibe of the show (whole new art style, animation, musical cues, ext). The ending itself is, for the most part, pretty open-ended to interpretation...but in my opinion not in a good way. It's open-ended because the show didn't do a great job setting up this ending. It's fine to let the audience interpret what they think happened but you need to not leave out so many important details in doing so. Films like “Inception” give you clues throughout the film that go hand-in-hand with an open-ended ending; giving much more context to it. This new SAC anime doesn't really give you any of these ideas leading into the ending; the ending just ends in such a way that you HAVE to decide on you own what happened. It just feels a little fragmented and not well handled.
My overall opinion of this new GitS anime is quite conflicted. If I just try to take a step back and have a more general overview of it, I do like it. There is a lot here to like. However, and again I apologize if this feels pedantic, but because this was touted as a “SAC” entry, I cannot help but feel disappointed. It doesn't at all in any way come close to the overall quality of the two SAC seasons or even the mixed reception of the SAC:SSS OVA film. This new SAC anime is worth watching, it's just severely lacking that “special sauce” that the previous SAC properties had.
Enjoyment: 6.6/10
Overall: 6.7/10
