Japanese Name – RD Senno Chosashitsu
Animation Production – Production I.G
Director – Kazuhiro Furuhashi
Original Creator – Masamune Shirow
Screenplay– Junichi Fujisaku
This anime is a collaboration of the big guns in the Japanese animation industry. It continues the team up of Production I.G. and Masamune Shirow with director Kazuhiro Furuhashi who has directed many popular works such as Rurouni Kenshin, Samurai X Trust and Betrayal, Getbackers and Le Chevalier D’Eon.
We are presented with a future (2061) where society is connected through a network, the Meta Real ( the Metal). “The Metal accommodated personal memory data within protected virtual stand-alone organic cyber enclaves called bubble shells and eventually pervaded the everyday lives of people.” Like Shirow’s previous works there is considerable depth in these concepts, in particular I enjoyed the exploration of cyber augmentations and androids.
We follow Minamo Aoi, a high school girl, who becomes a caretaker for Masamichi Haru. Haru has been in a coma for the past 50 years and continues his work as a cyber diver investigating problems that are increasingly occurring in the metal. The show deals with these problems concerning the Metal with individual cases along with an overriding plot-line. It is set on an island making it refreshing and colourful but not so much that is takes away from the realism of it’s characters and environment.
This is a recommended show to fans of Shirow’s other works but do not expect it to be close in quality to the Ghost in the Shell TV series.
Rating – B+
Genres – SF, Mystery Length – 26 episode series Year – 2008
Currently not licensed in the US. © Production I.G/Shirow Masamune
Manga has been adapted from it, currently ongoing in japan.
Links
Anime Reviewers Weekly 