Quite possibly the second most over-hyped anime of all time (following the tracks of Akira), I finally had a chance to watch it all the way through. Yes, I had many chances to watch it through in the past, but I kept falling asleep midway! Now, at last, I've seen the ending to this. At last, I can review it.

The themes and story of Ghost in the Shell are probably some of its better points. Cyborgs questioning their purpose in life is a slightly cliché theme, but it's done surprisingly well in this movie. The story also contains a couple of twists, and at no point in the movie could I have said "I know what's going to happen". It was also very thought-provoking on my part because of how all of the information was handed to us. No clear definitions were given for things like the "ghosts", and I had to make my own conclusions on many things in order to really understand what was going on. The dark, futuristic background also helped set the mood for the story, though the lack of color and dull, boring environments didn't really spark much excitement from me.

The animation is also really good. When I watched this movie, I could hardly believe that it was made in 1995. Animation has gone a long way since then, but Ghost in the Shell is definitely still a competitor. Smooth movements, excellent computer animation, and pretty cool looking character designs are shown throughout the movie. However, the music was pretty lame and pretty much consisted of two songs. The song played in the opening credits is played not once, not twice, but thrice over the course of the movie, and there wasn't really any other music played during the movie. The ending credits had a song with a pretty awkward techno sound to it and I didn't like it at all.

Unfortunately, there's a reason why I always fell asleep while watching this movie: the voice acting and the dialogue stinks. In both the american and japanese versions, the voices are monotonous, unemotional, and ultimately boring to listen to. Long periods of time pass in between the action sequences that are over far too quickly and are completely one-sided. After said action sequences, we're treated to listening to the characters talking in their boring voices for another half hour. The pacing to this movie is also slow as molasses and only picks up in the last few minutes before slowing down to a snail's pace again.

The ending is anticlimactic and riddled with unanswered questions. Many, many things aren't resolved in it and its only purpose seems like it was made to open up another can of worms. Characters that are introduced throughout the movie also get no closure at all, and they all seem to disappear off the face of the Earth as soon as the 2/3 mark of the movie passes by. In the last couple of minutes of the movie, I finally managed to get a little excited and I couldn't wait to see how everything would turn out. Then it just ended so abruptly and in such a confusing manner too.