Real Drive and Ghost Hound: Shirow Masamune double feature

[ZAKtheGeek]

Shirow Masamune made Ghost in the Shell. This resulted in Stand Alone Complex, which he also had a hand in. This meant to me that he was pretty awesome, so I wanted to see what other anime he made. Those would be Real Drive, which I thought was kinda like Ghost in the Shell, and Ghost Hound, which I thought was something else altogether.

Prejudice is stupid.

Real Drive takes place in the same world (probably more or less) as Stand Alone Complex. It's 30 years in the future. It's a slice-of-life about 15 year old girls. Fuck? Do you even? Because I certainly do not even. I just can't even begin to imagine how in the world this happened. Okay, yeah, there's some stuff going on in the "foreground" about this maturing digital society and also the ocean and nature and stupid shit like that. But seriously, that hardly plays a role. It's a bunch of one-offs about some girl, her panties which love the camera, her extracurricular activities, and her mildly quirky friends. Also there's an android.

Now, I'm not at all a fan of the genre, so maybe it's supposed to be this terrible, but man did that suck. Completely boring and uninspired, with what is sometimes honestly just plain lame writing. I expected much better. Even the parts which have as little to do with high school girls as possible are still subpar. It's all without appeal and barely makes sense, until the end, where it just says "fuck it" and has a bunch of nonsense happen. Hardly surprising for anime, but still. And in the middle, it apparently needed a break from its relentless pace of one-shots without any significant continuity to have a recap episode, followed by a song with shots of what appears to be real life! Did their budget run out? I dunno, but this was probably my favorite episode, because I guiltlessly skipped most of it.

Oh, and it has Death Note music in it. Yeah, randomly, in some parts, there's music which is also in Death Note. Now, it starts off with obscure, second-arc stuff that you might have to be some kind of geeky fanatic to pick out (^_^;;;) but then it goes to the vocals. You don't jack Death Note's signature ominous vocals and hope to get away with it. That's just stupid. So, if you liked Ghost in the Shell, then maybe you'll enjoy the creepy fun time adventures of an old-ass man and a young-ass girl who is half the age he was before he slipped into a 50-year coma.

I'm sorry this happened to me.

Now, Ghost Hound. It takes a totally different setting from Ghost in the Shell. I didn't really expect much from it, and after Real Drive, the best it could have been is so bad it's good.

It was actually pretty cool though. It's basically Ryukishi as done by Shirow. You've got your little Japanese town (with a dam THERE IS ALWAYS A DAM) (modern day though) with your little children and your little dark past and your little bit of murder and your little supernatural bent that WOW this thing's a grower huh? But it's also pretty unique. It's auditory unlike anything I've ever seen. It's got all these intellectual-like topics bouncing around, making you think that whatever's going on might actually make sense if you weren't so stupid. It's got a deliberate, psychological progression, an interesting story, and the world's youngest pedophile. But it's okay, she reminds him of his dead sister! ...yeah let's just move on.

Now, I can't tell you what happened in Ghost Hound. That's because I don't really know. In the end, it didn't exactly add up. At the same time, I pieced together a few things which were clearly meant to be pieced together and were never explicitly said. So, maybe this makes sense if you think hard enough at it while looking closely. I dunno. But it was a pretty fun ride, and I want to ride again, if only to figure out why I'm riding on a dragon ghost god biooid. Yes that is a symmetrical word.

You should probably check it out.

Anybody else seen these? No? Well, if you had to watch both, it might be for the best that you didn't.

[Grimpond]

Watched Ghose HOund, loved it, contemplated life and spirituality, cried myself to sleep at the revelations.