Ghost is meant to be your soul. That unquantifiable part of you that makes you human. The shell is just meant to be a cybernetic body.

So a Ghost in the Shell is a person’s soul/spirit inside of a robot.

I liked this episode. Reminds me of TNG’s Disaster, obviously because they both meant to be disaster movies.

I liked that we had a lot of plots requiring everyone to work together to solve the problem of the week. Felt better then the last few episodes.

I’m also starting to feel like Roddenberry’s decree that there shouldn’t be any interpersonal conflict really does sell the competence porn aspect of Star Trek that I love. So because of Chapel’s and M’Benga’s fighting, it did take me out a bit. Also…I do find it slightly hard to believe that they don’t have dermal generators to heal a crushed pelvis. This conceptually, seems survivable to me. But then again, I guess there was a time Worf was going to be paralyzed but then Klingon anatomy saved the day, so I guess medical tech can fail if the plot needs it to.

Yeah, since it’s a dream, I really wish they had gone all in on the cartoon gags. That’s my only complaint.

I can excuse the premise and even the cop out, it’s all a dream, but they really need to just go all in on the concept. Like maybe some Kermit tilting his head back while his arms flail around or crumple his face with the puppeteer’s fist like when he’s mad. Like literally the lowest hanging fruit is using puppet hair whip to the face. Or maybe some cecoling, fourth wall breaking, a Pigs in Space reference which is a parody of Star Trek. Like, just go ape shit with the concept.

I feel really conflicted about this season. I like they’re experimenting and trying new stuff, but like, i don’t know if it’s landing.

However, I do believe in like 10 years I’m going to look back and think, this is good Star Trek. But similar to…honestly all Star Trek, I find it hard to really enjoy it in the moment for some reason.

I guess Star Trek is a fine wine. You got to let it age a bit first.

On retrospective, I really like the development of Ortega. We’ve seen her rebuild a motorcycle in her quarters. We’ve seen her jury rig a universal translator in Terrarium. So her revealing she’s mad that she didn’t become an engineer makes a lot of sense, and taking it out on Scotty.

That’s solid character development that has been building over multiple episodes. I appreciate the slow burn and foreshadowing.

We got horror last week, now we got stoner comedy this week. And kicked us off with a Jurassic Park episode. They really are running the gambit with film genres.

I love that they’re experimenting, but I also would really appreciate some traditional Star Trek of seeing professionals being professional. I just want some of that Andy Weir style competence porn!

After reading some of the comments, I’m now going to watch the Hangover. As I had compared this episode to Dude, Where’s my Car, but that movie jumps the shark and goes in to absurdity. Which, to be fair, is very appropriate for the genre. They didn’t get that extreme with this episode, but I also wouldn’t have been surprised if they did.

I don’t know if I liked this episode, which makes me believe I’ll like it a lot more later after I let it sink in a bit and think about what they were trying to do.

Ironically this is very much how the manga was. There were a lot of cliff notes in the margins to explain things, or a few times to explain what Shirow intended but was too lazy to draw.

It was good horror, but I don’t think I liked this episode very much.

I feel my biggest problem is the lack of resolution. I know that’s kind of the hallmark of horror, the “The End…?” but I actually kind of like the technobabble explanations.

I don’t want them to not take risks with Star Trek, so I welcome experimental episodes, but I still feel a bit let down.

I think this is suppose to reset Spock back to status quo for when the series ends next season. I don’t think we’re suppose to see him align his human/vulcan self.

I love me a good causality loop, but I don’t feel like this was good example of one.

The diplomacy stuff on the Enterprise was fun. But oddly the dinosaur planet plot actually didn’t feel as impactful.

Like it honestly feels like not a lot happened on planet. Which is a shame, because there were dinosaurs!

I feel like more of the dinosaurs should have had feathers, to keep up with contemporary understanding of dinosaurs. But I understand the pop culture short hand to help establish the cliche and not confuse the audience.

I also recommend checking out other works by Takeshi Koike. Sadly, Redline was such a financial failure it almost bankrupted Madhouse and ruined Koike’s reputation. Despite that he’s a god damn master of animation and movement.

He did the opening to a little film called Party 7 which is a weird film about Yakuza and a peeping tom motel owner. But the amazing animation of the opening is well worth it. The film itself is…kind of off putting, but still moderately interesting.

Trava: Fist Planet this is pretty classic Koike. In fact the two main characters also appear in Redline.

World Record in the Animatrix. Stylish and a simple (by Matrix standards) story.

He’s also done a lot of recent Lupin the Third films, which I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. I’ve heard they’re not well recieved, but I literally can’t imagine they’re bad, because he’s made like 3 of them.

I was disappointed that the dub did not get the English voice actors to sing the finale. I know that it is extremely difficult to translate music lyrics and make it match the music. But even a terrible effort would have been appreciated, by me at least. I know many people would feel the opposite.

I think I can agree. I won’t go so far as to say that I didn’t like it, and I’m not sure what I wanted out of it, but I do feel like it was lacking that je ne sais quoi that would make it exceptional.

It did have a few standout episodes, but for some reason I didn’t feel as invested in all the many narratives that were going on. Maybe it really was just that too much was going on at once. Like so many times I didn’t understand the relationships between the characters.

The animation was top notch though. Kyoto Animation really knocked it out of the park there at least.

I didn’t see Akira mentioned, so I’ll name drop it. The amount of movement, even for the lip syncing which is honestly kind of unheard of for anime, and the dynamic flowing camera all without the use of CGI. It’s really bonkers how good it is.

The link to the stream is broken. It should point to Gigguk’s channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-P3HWXGYm4

Interesting short film. It moved at a quick pace so that I didn’t get bored, and was slow enough to let scenes breath and let you think about what’s happening.

Also, I’ve never heard of Gigguk before this point. But apparently he’s a anime fan/influencer, and once upon a time worked for the BBC. I hope this ends up being profitable. I really enjoy indy anime. It can just do a lot more experimental stuff.

What a wild ride. This show was so hilarious, charming, and beautiful. The artistry in the CGI work and I’m just blown away with the dubs. They dubbed it in so many languages and it’s really good!

I remember there was a Simpson’s joke where Chief Wiggums said something like, “You called the wrong number, this is 912.” But most people outside of America probably won’t know that 911 is the emergency hotline in the USA.

Some of the deaths in Orb just leave you with…well now what? Everyone is dead, how can the plot possibly continue? And then it does… So I think this is exactly what OP is looking for.

I really love the english dub. I feel like the 2 robot bro’s voices fit their character better then their Japanese VA’s.

This show is so wholesome and peak.

Kyoto Animation is doing such an amazing job at animating this series.

Also, who is that girl that rigged the race for Matsuri and Eri? I don’t remember seeing her before this episode, but there are so many characters it’s easy to have missed her.