The one thing that stands out from this series is the colour palette, which seems to abandon the typical dystopian setting of colours for a more bright and airy Naruto feel, which is certainly not the way forward for GiTS given the strength of animation and palette in the movie. In fact, calling this GiTS is quite a large feat as the philosophising element is practically abandoned completely in this entire series, something I was disappointed about.

The method of storytelling is the real downside here, mainly because the Laughing Man tale is (above all else) incredibly good and interesting throughout. Unfortunately this is dispersed by many a hit-and-miss Stand Alone episodes, many of which start out poor and eventually turn decent, or many which wouldn't go amiss in Naruto filler, especially the diatribe seen in Volume 5. The issue here is that they all seem rushed, and if fleshed out more could be decent, but it's full of too much cliche, the story of the defiant child… more »

The one thing that stands out from this series is the colour palette, which seems to abandon the typical dystopian setting of colours for a more bright and airy Naruto feel, which is certainly not the way forward for GiTS given the strength of animation and palette in the movie. In fact, calling this GiTS is quite a large feat as the philosophising element is practically abandoned completely in this entire series, something I was disappointed about.

The method of storytelling is the real downside here, mainly because the Laughing Man tale is (above all else) incredibly good and interesting throughout. Unfortunately this is dispersed by many a hit-and-miss Stand Alone episodes, many of which start out poor and eventually turn decent, or many which wouldn't go amiss in Naruto filler, especially the diatribe seen in Volume 5. The issue here is that they all seem rushed, and if fleshed out more could be decent, but it's full of too much cliche, the story of the defiant child wishing to take revenge against his parents, the tale of hostages helping criminals to take down the middle agents is all too predictable, and something I wish GiTS was above of. That being said, there is a small Tachikoma arc about AI in Volumes 3-4 which I find both amusing and well directed, which was impressive, and Batou and Togusa remain consistently strong characters throughout, it's a shame others aren't as fleshed out.

SAC is a very pretty high budget TV show that seems to have lost sight of what made the movie so great. On the cheap it's a half decent purchase but the series lacks considerable flow in it's method of storytelling, and with many individual episodes being lacklustre at best, it's hard to call this as groundbreaking as the movie. Subs are a tad hit and miss but on the whole acceptable fare throughout.