First off I must stress, The Laughing man is NOT a new movie, it is a re-telling of the 1st SAC series.

Now initially I was dissapointed, there's no new footage in the DVD, its all cut and pasted from the first series, so any fans of the 1st series should avoid right? No.

The way it does it is masterful, coming in at roughly 3 hours it tells the story of the Laughing Man perfect, though I already know the story off by heart I was totally drawn in again, by eliminating the stand alone episodes it concentrates solely on the main plot and it becomes a lot more intense because of it.

A word to those complaining about the English dubs, if you were a real fan, you'd watch it in Japanese voices (which are the original cast) and English subs, n00bs

A solid 4 stars, no new content, but a great way to re-live a great series

I am a MASSIVE fan of the GITS series and films so got this on pre-order before i could read a review. I can't believe that they have not only badly re-dubbed the same footage from the series but they have cut it out of order and added parts from the series that were not relevant to the laughing man complex. Don't waste your money, get the series!

I'm a huge Ghost in the Shell fan, and I love the SAC series'. So it's not surprising that I brought this DVD the second I heard about it. What is surprising, however, is the English audio on this DVD. For some reason it seems to have been re-recorded with a different voice cast. I watched the first half an hour, and had to stop- it's just not the same, and it brings down the experience harshly. Aramaki sounds like a Cowboy for crying out loud!

Save your money and buy the full series (which you can get for a decent price from Play). This is a bad representation of a usually fantastically voiced series. A real shame.