Masamune Shirow

I found the techy/politics bits were a lot less of a problem in GitS than they were in Appleseed.

I picked up GITS 1.5 and 2 this weekend. 1.5 was actually really enjoyable, fairly straightforward cops vs bad guys short stories with the bonus of being almost totally comprehensible (plus the vast difference between the way shirow writes tough-guy diction for his male characters and the procedural, overpolite nonsense his heroines spout). 2, so far, is barely readable. Every time I read one of his goddamn footnotes I want to slap him in the back of the head.

I'm with Dr. Science on this one.

Orion and Black Magic are fun! The ubergeekiness comes across as much more tongue-in-cheek than the gun-nut + cyberbrain wtfness in GITS.

I'm also not sure what dr. science is getting at, I don't think.

major kusanagi lesbo action, omitted from the international version

I both love and hate the fact that while half the stuff he does is this crazy intellectual action/sci-fi, the other half of his work nowadays is just straight up, super detailed porn. Hunt down that racist G.I. gangbang orgy set -- if you dare!

Okay maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but damn, he does do a lot of porn.

<i>I'm also not sure what dr. science is getting at, I don't think.</i>

Don't order sushi and then complain that it's undercooked.

"don't read sci-fi comic books and expect them to have a plot?"

I thought I was part of nerd entertainment culture.

Also, in light of crescent moon's post, I've never felt so cheated in my life, and I'm a Boris/AMT fan lol!!

Oh, and for the sake of full disclosure, what Nhex is referring to NSFW!!!!

"Don't read popular manga and expect it not to conform to some of the rigorously traditional and distinctly Nipponese cliches."

yeah that's not what I'm talking about at all, unless all the other manga I've ever read were crazy departures for an industry that is completely obsessed with gratuitous upskirts and insipid technobabble at the expense of any cohesion at all, much less narrative.

I had to force myself to finish GITS 2. Genuinely one of the worst things I've read in years and years (there was some airport bestseller paperback I picked up months ago where I skipped to then end and threw it in the trash but that doesn't count). I am absolutely positive there was no point whatsoever to anything that went on in those pages, there was no excitement, no titillation, and really not even any art or design work I would consider particularly impressive since 90% of it is all CG wank.

Whatever cool ideas and sense of fun this guy once had, and he appears to have had them in spades, they're long gone, or were at least put on hold for this trash.

Fair enough. I know Shirow from the first Ghost, Appleseed, Black Magic and Dominion; it would not surprise me if you ran into a bad piece of work there, but based on the aforementioned body of work I tend to find him rewarding, if generally confusingly translated. I haven't seen any of his racier stuff.