Innocence

I enjoy anime. I'm not really "into" it, and really I haven't seen that much of it. I know that I don't usually like the fantasy-themed anime, but I definitely dig the science fiction. One of my favorites was Ghost in the Shell, and now Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is set to come out in theatres this month, so I'm pretty excited about that. What I find interesting (and not unusual in anime, if I understand things correctly) is the relationship between the movies, the Stand Alone Complex series (which will be airing on Cartoon Network), and the manga (comic books). There are two manga series, one a sequel to the first. The first anime film is a partial adaption of the first manga, but the second film has nothing to do with the second manga. Meanwhile, Stand Alone Complex is basically another sequel to the events of the first manga/anime, but assumes that the actual main plot never happened, so as to leave the characters as they were when the whole thing started. So there are three different versions of what happens to everyone.



On second thought, I guess it's really not that different from adaptions of American comic books. For example, there have been a handful of animated Batman series, the Adam West live-action series, the Burton movies, the Schumacher movies, and now the Nolan movie, none of which really fit together.