Firefly (2002-2003)

Time to revisit Joss Whedon’s ill-fated science fiction 2002-2003 TV series Firefly. I disliked it at the time but perhaps I’ve mellowed since then. It is possible that at the time was suffering from Joss Whedon Fatigue.

At that stage Whedon’s fans thought he could walk on water and perhaps he was starting to believe that himself. He was apparently thinking in terms of a show running for seven seasons, which was certainly wildly optimistic. It was cancelled midway through the first season. It was his first taste of failure.

To be fair it was not entirely his fault. The network was unhappy with the series right from the start. They helped to ensure its failure, starting by screening the episodes out of order. Disastrously, they screened the first episode midway through the show’s run. That episode gives us crucial backstory on the main character and crucial background information. As a result viewers had no clue what was going on.

The basic premise is breathtakingly unoriginal - an ill-assorted band of misfits adventuring through outer space. This is the exact same premise as Blake’s 7, Farscape, Lexx, Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star. By 2002 it was the most over-used cliché in science fiction.

Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is the captain of the Serenity, a battered Firefly-class cargo spaceship. He and his crew are smugglers, thieves and all-round criminals and they’re notably unsuccessful. The crew also includes Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin), a high-priced whore. More on her later. They have taken on a few passengers. One of them is a preacher man. There’s also a young doctor and his insane sister River (Summer Glau). The Alliance government has done something nasty to her brain. 

The Alliance are the bad guys. Mal supported the Independents in their war against the Alliance. The Independents lost and this left Mal bitter and twisted.

We have nine ill-assorted people who don’t necessarily understand or trust each other and some of them are not what they appear to be. And romantic and sexual attractions start to happen. There’s potential for interesting character developments and relationships.

So what went wrong? The answer is, almost everything. The hints that there is going to be interesting character and relationship stuff and that there is something really bizarre about River don’t really kick in until we’re well into the series and by that time most viewers had switched off. Realistically you have to grab the audience in the first three episodes or so and Firefly fails to do this, for reasons I’m about to explain.

We expect the crew of the Serenity to encounter new and different strange worlds in each episode but every planet has normal Earth gravity and normal Earth atmosphere and normal Earth vegetation. In fact every planet looks just like California, in the days of the Old West. Every planet has a Wild West town. It’s too much of the same thing each week. Even when they visit a more urbanised world it looks like the 19th century. Firefly’s aesthetic is just awful. It’s boring.

Whedon was hoping that it would be original and exciting to make it a western set in space. The blending of space opera and Wild West elements is always very uneasy. How do we know this is a western? There are guys on horses, with six-guns. There are saloon brawls. There are cattle rustlers! The dining table in the mess hall is straight out of Little House on the Prairie. The captain of the ship looks like a poor but honest rancher in the Old West. His second-in-command looks like a lady gunslinger. The spaceship, the Serenity, is basically a stagecoach in space.

I can understand Whedon’s thinking. He wanted to avoid science fiction clichés. He wanted to avoid a futuristic aesthetic because such things always date very badly. He wanted it to look as unlike Star Trek as possible. He succeeded in this. This is the anti-Star Trek. This is Star Trek if the Federation were the bad guys. This is the anti-Star Trek. I’m OK with that as a concept but it just doesn’t come off. He needed to create an aesthetic that was different and exciting, but it’s dull.

And in an effort to avoid science fiction clichés he ended up with a series that lacks any real science fiction feel. Too many of the plotlines seem like they belong in 50s B-westerns, with B-western villains. Apart from the spaceships there is no cool technology at all.

These mistakes undoubtedly alienated the target audience - science fiction fans. 

Perhaps Whedon, whose previous TV successes Buffy and Angel had been aimed primarily at a female audience, failed to understand that a science fiction series was going to have to aim much more at a male audience. Offering hints of complex character and relationship stuff is all very well but a male sci-fi audience is going to want more actual actual sci-fi and more cool tech stuff.

A major problem is that Whedon wanted Mal Reynolds to be dark and brooding and cynical, a character we would slowly come to understand and admire. The network vetoed that. He had to be a conventional hero from the start so he is turned into a bleeding heart tough guy with a heart of gold and it makes him boring. Nathan Fillion is OK but the series needed more acting charisma and more colourful characters.

Inara is potentially interesting. She insists that she’s a Companion, not a mere whore. And in this future being a Companion is a respectable high-status profession. They have a union and everything. There’s also a suggestion that there’s a quasi-religious element - that it’s a bit like the temple prostitution or sacred prostitution that (possibly) existed in the ancient world. It’s an intriguing idea which presumably Whedon intended to develop but I’m inclined to agree with Mal Reynolds - he regards Inara as just a high-class hooker. But at the same time he’s very attracted to her.

Whedon learned some hard lessons from Firefly and in his next foray in TV sci-fi, Dollhouse, he did not make the same mistakes. Dollhouse has a much cooler premise which grabs our interest right from the start. It has a cooler and more consistent aesthetic. It feels like a genuine science fiction series. It has colourful but ambiguous characters. And in Eliza Dushku it has a very charismatic lead actress.

I’m afraid that on a rewatch Firefly still doesn’t grab me.

Black Lagoon (2006)

Black Lagoon is a 2006 action-adventure anime TV series. While it was made in 2006 the setting seems to be a bit earlier, maybe the early 1990s.

Rokuro Okajima is a young Japanese salaryman. At times he feels vaguely dissatisfied but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’ll rise slowly through the ranks and become a middle-aged salaryman, probably with a wife and kids. He’s resigned to living a boring life.

Until he gets captured by pirates.

He was on an assignment for his company. Very low-level courier stuff. A computer disk to be delivered to a client. He has no idea what is on the disk. He certainly didn’t expect an organised crime syndicate to hire pirates to steal the disk.

Now the pirates have the disk, and they have Rokuro. They figure on making some extra cash by holding him for ransom. That plan doesn’t work out and now the pirates have a whole army of mercenaries after them, and Rokuro is of no further use to them. The obvious step would be to kill him but they don’t do that for two reasons. Firstly, they’re pirates, not cold-blooded murderers. They’ll kill people in battle, but not a helpless unarmed civilian. The second reason is that killing Rokuro would be like killing a friendly well-meaning puppy. So they’re stuck with him.

The pirates are a black American ex-US Navy dude named Dutch, an American  computer guy named Benny, and Revy. Revy is young, female, crazy, wild and deadly. And sexy. She provides the combat arm of the team. 

And now Rokuro Okajima is part of the team, and he’s become known as Rock.

The pirates have a ex-US Navy PT boat called Black Lagoon. They are based in Roanapur, a fictional South-East Asian city which is a haven for gangsters, smugglers, thieves and pirates.

The Black Lagoon pirates undertake jobs for various client, notably Balalaika. She’s a big-time Russian gangster. She’s head of the Hotel Moscow organised crime syndicate. As gangsters go she’s fairly honourable. That cannot be said of some of the pirates’ clients.

There are no yakuza in this saga but the Hotel Moscow group do resemble yakuza in some ways. Like yakuza they think of themselves as adhering to a warrior code, a code of honour. They’re all ex-military and Afghanistan War veterans. They’re adrift in the post-Soviet world. They’re a bit like yakuza in postwar Japan, clinging to a warrior code in order to give their lives meaning. Balalaika thinks of herself as a soldier. In her own way she is a woman of honour.

Black Lagoon also has links with the nuns of the Ripoff Church. They’re not your run-of-the-mill nuns, being essentially gun-toting gangsters. Sister Eda and Revy have always been rivals for the title of the most formidable dangerous psycho bitch in Roanapur.

By episode three we’re into the saga of the attempted salvage of a German U-boat wreck. There’s something valuable on board but it’s not gold. And others are interested in the wreck. Lots of mayhem ensues.

Later the pirates are taking a cargo to Roanapu, a kidnapped South American boy. The boy is confident that the family’s maid Roberta will rescue him. Roberta is a sweet lady who always carries an umbrella. She’s a bit like Mary Poppins, if you can imagine Mary Poppins as an unstoppable killing machine.

Later the Black Lagoon team encounters the twins. A cute brother and sister, from Transylvania. There are lots of horror references including some very obvious references to Kubrick’s The Shining.

Like most good anime TV series Black Lagoon gradually becomes more and more interesting and more and more morally complex. When it comes to loyalties and motivations there are wheels within wheels. There are many different criminal factions and many shifting alliances.

And there’s the question of belonging and of in-group loyalty. To what extent is Rock really part of the Black Lagoon group? Is he prepared to commit himself fully? 

The relationship between Revy and Rock is interesting because you expect some kind of romantic or sexual attraction to develop. That’s not quite the case but an odd kind of emotional bond does develop.

Black Lagoon is an action-packed, fast-moving exciting and stylish series. Highly recommended.

It's available on Blu-Ray.

Dollhouse season 2 (2009-2010)

Much to everyone’s surprise Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. You do need to watch season 1 first. I reviewed it here.

There were some changes in season two, some of which were forced upon Whedon but some reflected a slight change in his approach to the series. Whedon also wanted a different visual style - more shadows and a more atmospheric film noir-tinged look.

Whedon and his writers are as convinced as ever that women are physically much stronger than men. Apart from being silly this leads to some poor writing. Instead of finding ways in which Echo can use her brains and her female strengths to get out of trouble the writers are content to just have her effortlessly beat up big burly guys. The nonsensical GirlPower! stuff gets totally out of hand in the second season.

The character of Echo undergoes some changes but they make sense. Whedon always liked very long characters arcs. The Buffy of Buffy season 5 is a totally different person to the Buffy of season 1 but the changes are plausible and organic. She has grown up. She has also begun to understand the full implications of being a Slayer. Cordelia has a complex character arc in both Buffy and Angel, and again it makes sense. She has also gone from being a high school girl to being an adult woman.

Echo’s evolution has more to do with her attempts to become a real person rather than just a Doll but it’s presented in a plausible way. Echo starts to remember things that she’s not supposed to be able to remember. She starts to develop intellectually. She’s no longer a child-like zombie. She starts to have emotions. Sierra and Victor start to evolve as well. They develop emotions, and they develop sexual feelings towards each other and Dolls are not supposed to be capable of such things.

The imprinting process starts to develop glitches. At the end of each Engagement the imprinted personality is supposed to be wiped completely but that’s no longer happening reliably. The Dolls start to retain traces of imprinted personalities. Echo ends up with lots of different personalities imprinted simultaneously and it’s no longer possible to wipe these imprints.

By 2009 of course every TV series had to have character development and had to have extended story arcs. As a result Dollhouse has several story arcs and it has a long story arc extending over both seasons. This is why we get the Dolls starting to behave like real people.

Unfortunately this undermines the original concept and that original concept was the series’ biggest strength. The idea was that a person could start out as a young woman named Caroline, have that personality erased, have a new personality (Echo) that is child-like and innocent, then be given other totally different personalities and then have them wiped and Echo would then have no memory at all of anything these other personalities had done. It raised provocative moral questions. If she (in the guise of one of these imprinted personalities) kills someone in the course of an Engagement does Echo bear any responsibility for this? She has no idea that it happened.

Most of the Engagements are in effect high-class prostitution jobs. In the course of a year she might have a hundred different sexual partners, but since Echo has no memory of any of this and has no sexual urges and no knowledge of sex you could argue that Echo is in fact a virgin. And is Adelle DeWitt actually running a high-price call-girl operation if the girls have no knowledge of having had sex with clients? Are you a prostitute if you don’t know that you’ve done it? And if one of the Actives commits a crime on an Engagement is she guilty of a crime?

These fascinating moral dimensions are less evident in season two, which is a pity.

There are however plenty of good things about season two. As Echo develops self-awareness other questions are raised. Her body was originally inhabited by a young woman named Caroline. Does Caroline still exist? And is Echo a real person? Was she a real person when she was little more than a cheerful zombie? And now that she has self-awareness and emotions, has she become a real person? The series gets interesting when Echo learns about Caroline. Caroline was a psycho bitch terrorist who got people killed. She was a nasty fanatic. Echo isn’t keen on one day giving up her own existence so that that bitch Caroline can have her body back.

The downside to season two is that Echo ends up with forty simultaneous implanted personalities, all of them experts in some field such as firearms and unarmed combat. As a result she becomes more of a generic comic-book kickass action heroine with super-powers. The series becomes more of a routine sci-fi action story rather than the provocative slightly cerebral serious science fiction series of the first season. There’s too much blowing stuff up and endless endless fight scenes.

From comments made by Whedon in an interview it seems that he was under immense pressure from the network to dumb the show down as much as possible. He was also forced to reduce the amount of sexual subject matter - he had hoped to explore the emotional and sexual ramifications of the technology much more fully.

And then there’s the major story arc and I found it disappointingly obvious, too much like countless science fiction movies of the past half century. To be fair the series was made with the threat of cancellation always hanging over it so some of the ideas may have developed more satisfactorily had Whedon not been forced to hurry things along.

Both seasons of Dollhouse are visually impressive with a much more coherent aesthetic than Whedon’s earlier Firefly.

One of Whedon’s great strengths was his ability to create interesting female characters and then develop them in complex ways and Adelle DeWitt in Dollhouse is one of the best examples of this.

The first season of Dollhouse is excellent and while this second season doesn’t work quite as well it’s still superior science fiction television and it’s highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray release includes both seasons and looks lovely.

Dollhouse (2009) season 1

The cyberpunk TV series Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon, ran on the Fox Network in 2009 and 2010. Whedon’s career was up and down at the time. The Firefly TV series in 2002 was a disaster and was cancelled before the end of the first season although it later built a cult following. There was general surprise when Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. The ratings were mediocre but it did well with the demographics that advertisers cared about. To some extent that had been the case with Buffy as well.

The key concept behind Dollhouse, personality uploads and downloads, had been tinkered with by various science fiction writers, notably William Gibson. But as someone famous once said, if a story is good it probably isn’t new and if it’s new it probably isn’t good. That certainly applies to science fiction ideas. And Dollhouse is based on an idea that is definitely a good one.

Digital personality uploads are of course total scientific nonsense but Joss Whedon was the guy behind a long-running series about a high school girl who battles vampires so he clearly feels that the coolness of an idea is much more important than its plausibility. And he’s right. And in this case it’s an idea that has links to pop culture obsessions going back to the 1950s such as brainwashing.

It has affinities with movies like A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell which deal with questions such as artificial interference in the workings of the mind, the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy, the possibility of artificially created realities and what it means to be human. And what it means to have choices. And how choices are nowhere near as simple as they seem. In Dollhouse there are free choices and choices made under duress, or sometimes it’s just a choice between two bad options.

Echo (Eliza Dushku) has been created by the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse is run by Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) although it seems certain that there is someone (or some organisation) much more powerful behind her. We are given no idea at all who or what is behind the Dollhouse and what its true purpose is. Is it a private corporation? Is it run by organised crime? Is it a government covert operation? This series deals in multiple levels of ambiguity and paranoia. Maybe nothing is as it seems to be.

For each case a Dollhouse agent has a different personality uploaded, tailored to the mission. In between missions Echo has her Echo personality restored. That’s not her original personality. She had been a girl named Caroline who had landed herself in very serious legal trouble. There is a suggestion that her original Caroline personality has been permanently erased. Now she is merely Echo, who has no memory of any of the personalities that have been uploaded to her brain. She seems to have no memories of anything before she arrived at the Dollhouse.

When imprinted with a suitable personality the agents are referred to as Actives. Between missions they are Dolls. The Dolls are very child-like, very passive, with no emotions and no sex drive and no desires of any kind. They are very obedient.

One inherent weakness in this series, or at least one aspect that probably hurt its ratings, is that Eliza Dushku is effectively playing an entirely different character in each episode and between missions she’s playing Echo who has no actual personality. This means the audience has no actual heroine with whom to identify, or for whom to develop an affection. This would have alienated some viewers although it does of course provide Eliza Dushku with an exciting acting challenge and if you stick with it it makes this an extremely interesting series.

While the Actives are given various missions (including security jobs and even secret agent-type jobs) It becomes very obvious very early that on most of those missions they are acting as at best, courtesans and at worst, high-class call girls. Even worse, Adelle DeWitt knowingly sends girls like Echo out on prostitution jobs knowing that the jobs are very high-risk. Worst of all, DeWitt doesn’t even bother finding out the true nature of the risks. As long as the client pays it doesn’t matter. Even the Mob has higher ethical standards. While that is presumably not its true function in practice The Dollhouse is a whorehouse.

But the twist is that the Dolls do not know they have been used as prostitutes. In their hazy dream-state they don’t know about the missions and wouldn’t understand if they were told. Are you a prostitute if you don’t know about it? Is Miss DeWitt a madam if she sends the girls out on prostitution assignments but the girls will have no memory of it And if a mission requires engaging in criminal activities (and some do) are they criminals? Is it our memories that make us who we are (a question addressed memorably in Blade Runner)? If the Dolls have no memories are they human?

And it seems that if someone is deemed to be a risk then the Dollhouse will take precautions. Possibly very drastic precautions.

The Girlpower! thing does get overdone. Petite women easily beating up huge tough guys. It’s a problem because the silliness of this does at times undermine the serious tone.

This is a long way from the teen angst of Buffy and it’s clearly aimed at an older audience. This series gets into X-Files levels of paranoia and then pushes the paranoia even further. This is serious conspiracy theory stuff. And the cyberpunk elements become more and more apparent.

There are fascinating relationships between the characters. Does Miss DeWitt have maternal feelings towards Echo? Does Echo see her handler Boyd Langton as a father figure? Does he see himself this way? And there are explicitly romantic and sexual relationships involving several key characters but what happens if you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t actually exist?

Episode Guide

In the first episode Echo is uploaded with the personality of a top-flight hostage negotiator. This episode launches the series on its way very successfully. It also introduces a couple of what are obviously going to be extended story arcs. There’s an FBI agent named Ballard investigating the Dollhouse although he’s been told to drop the matter because the Dollhouse doesn’t exist.

In episode 2, Time Target, the main story in intercut with multiple flashbacks. Non-linear narratives will be a major feature of this series.

We get some slight backstory on Echo’s handler, Langton. We find out that something went very badly wrong three months earlier and that those events may be continuing to exert an influence. We get hints that the Dollhouse people make mistakes. And we start to get an edge of paranoia creeping in. We also find out that when a guy wants to take a girl on a camping trip she should always decline. It will end in tears. Good episode.

In episode 3, Stage Fright, Echo’s job is to act as a bodyguard to a pop singer. The problem is that the singer is not just a diva but a psycho bitch and to avoid arousing her wrath Echo has to be a bodyguard without being aware that she’s a bodyguard. Someone is trying to kill the singer but there are very twisted complications.

In episode 4, Gray Hour, the mission is an art heist and it’s an armed robbery. Eliza Dushku really shines this one, getting a chance to explore the Echo persona.

In episode 5, True Believer, Echo goes undercover for the Feds. Her cover will be perfect since with an implanted personality she will believe her own cover story completely. It’s an investigation of a religious cult with obvious parallels to the 1993 Waco disaster.

In episode 6, Man on the Street, Echo is again a whore, this time entertaining a tech tycoon. I love the way this doesn’t develop in anything like the direction you’re going to be expecting.

In episode 7, Echoes, an experimental drug has infected a college campus. And some of the Dolls have been exposed as well.

In episode 8, Needs, things start to go awry in the Dollhouse. The Dolls are doing things they shouldn’t do. But Miss DeWitt has no doubt that she will get things under control again.

In episode 9, A Spy in the House of Love, the extended story arcs start to develop a lot more fully. As the title suggests the Dollhouse is under threat from within. And we see a very surprising side of Miss DeWitt.

In Episode 10, Haunted, the Dollhouse has a new client and she’s a bit unusual, given that she’s dead. And she thinks she was murdered.

Episodes 11 and 12, Briar Rose and Omega, make up a two-part story which explores interesting ramifications of the technology.

The season finale, Epitaph One, was made on the assumption that the series was not not going to be renewed for a second season and never went to air. Do not watch this episode until after watching season 2!

Final Thoughts

Dollhouse season one is moderately cerebral, provocative and willing to engage with slightly controversial subject matter. It’s a lot better than I expected and it’s highly recommended.

I've also reviewed Dollhouse season 2 and Whedon's earlier Firefly.

The Lost World (1999-2002)

The Lost World is an adventure TV series based (rather loosely) on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. It was a Canadian-US-New Zealand-Australian co-production and was shot in Australia (in Queensland). It ran for three seasons.

The two-hour pilot episode (which was later split in two to comprise the first two episodes of the first season) is more than enough to get me interested. The fact that it’s directed by Richard Franklin helps. He was not only experienced but had an impressive background in feature films and gives it a cinematic look and feel.

The time setting is the 1920s, a good choice. This is a story that would be just too wildly implausible in a later time period.

Professor Challenger has found a manuscript, apparently the record of a journey to a hitherto unknown plateau in the wilds of South America. Challenger is convinced that the evidence in the manuscript will cause all existing theories on human evolution to be tossed out the window. The dinosaurs were not creatures that existed millions of years before humans. They are our contemporaries! The scientific establishment mocks him. The mockery is led by Dr Arthur Summerlee (Michael Sinelnikoff). Challenger announces that he will lead an expedition to find hard evidence. Dr Summerlee can join the expedition if he dares. Dr Summerlee does dare.

Other volunteers include experienced hunter and explorer Lord John Roxton and American newspaperman Ned Malone (David Orth). Malone has experience with hydrogen balloons and there’s no other way to reach the plateau. But there’s no money to fund the expedition until wealthy heiress Marguerite Krux offers unlimited funds as long as she can go along.

All of the characters have their own quirks. Challenger was one of Conan Doyle’s great creations, a gloriously bad-tempered argumentative tempestuous scientific genius. Peter McCauley plays him as rude, arrogant and overbearing but clearly a man with vision and charisma. That’s close enough to Conan Doyle’s conception for me. William Snow as Lord John Roxton is extremely good - he’s cynical and abrasive but he has charisma.

The weak link is the cast Jennifer O’Dell as jungle girl Veronica - she’s not terrible but she doesn’t convince us that she is a young woman who has lived alone in the jungle for eleven years. She seems too modern, too citified. Her attitudes are stridently and irritatingly late 90s. She’s totally out of place in this series. I found myself disliking her quite a bit at first, even though I have a thing for cute scantily-clad blonde jungle girls. I did however gradually warm to her quite a bit.

The standout performer is Rachel Blakely as Marguerite Krux. From the start Marguerite is a Woman of Mystery. We soon suspect that she is a Sexy Bad Girl. And then we discover that she is a treacherous scheming bitch and she’s well-versed in the art of using sex as a weapon. Which just made me love her even more. Marguerite isn’t trustworthy but she isn’t evil. Rachel Blakely oozes delicious naughtiness. She’s a delight.

The best thing about this series is its old-fashioned feel. The writers are not constantly agonising over whether the scripts might be problematic. What matter is - would this be a cool story for the next episode? There’s a refreshing lack of ideological lecturing.

And the writers are not afraid to let their imaginations run a bit wild.

The CGI dinosaurs are really only there because they were a commercial necessity. They were a major selling point. They’re of no importance. The focus is invariably on the strange bizarre human societies that our explorers find. And they’re strange and bizarre in interesting ways. There are villains who are not necessarily villains, wise virtuous leaders who may be neither wise nor virtuous, evil queens who might me misguided rather than evil. The stories are impressively varied and are not always resolved by heroic deeds.

It must have become obvious early that six regular cast members would be unwieldy so in most episodes we get two storylines running in parallel, each featuring three of the regular characters.

The Episodes

The pilot episode gets our adventurers to the plateau. There are indeed dinosaurs. And hostile tribes. And ape-men. Professor Challenger can easily collect the hard evidence he needs. The one fly in the ointment is that there is no way off the plateau.

They meet a cute blonde jungle girl, Veronica. She has lived on the plateau for eleven years since her scientist parents disappeared. She doesn’t care about science but she is obsessed with the idea of finding her parents.

In the next episode, More Than Human, our explorers find a lost culture. It’s like ancient Rome but ruled by lizard-men with humans as their slaves. This episode borrows a little from Planet of the Apes and very heavily from countless gladiator movies. How many clichés can you pack into 45 minutes? A lot! It doesn’t matter. The action keeps racing along and it’s fun.

Nectar is great fun. Giant killer bees! A sinister bee-woman! And a hideous fate awaiting if your heroes cannot escape from the world’s largest bee-hive.

Cave of Fear gives us a deliciously evil villainess, Lady Cassandra Yorkton (Rebecca Gibney). And the various members of the party have to confront guilts and fears from their pasts.

In Salvation Summerlee saves a drowning child and is accused of witchcraft. The most interesting thing here is a tribe that follows a religion that is a blending of Aztec religion and Roman Catholicism. And we discover something odd about Marguerite. She can read ancient inscriptions in a language of which she knows nothing. She doesn’t know how, but somehow she just knows the meaning of the inscriptions.

There’s been plenty of fun so far but obviously the series needed vampires. So in Blood Lust we get vampires. We get a sexy lady vampire who lives in a gothic castle. Both she and the castle look like they’re straight out of Hammer gothic horror film. It’s all very silly but very enjoyable.

In Out of Time Marguerite may have discovered her destiny as a high priestess and Veronica may have discovered her destiny as a mother. Packed with too many ideas most of which are pretty cringe and coherence falls by the wayside but somehow it works. It works because this series has that pulp fiction/old-time adventure yarn/B-movie sensibility that just makes it so much fun.

Paradise Found turns out to be the most flawed paradise imaginable.

In The Beast Within Malone is killed, but maybe not permanently. Whether the sham who saved him intended to do him a favour or not remains to be seen.

In Creatures of the Dark Marguerite, Malone and Challenger are trapped in a cave-in, they find a lot of gold and a lost race. All very interesting but the fact that they’re all sitting on top of an active volcano is of more immediate concern.

Things get seriously weird in Absolute Power. The explorers find an ancient ruin but there are some odd things about it. Such as the presence of a nuclear reactor. And then things get much stranger and maybe we’re dealing with two different realities at once. An ambitious episode but it’s pretty cool and it makes excellent use of the two storylines running in parallel technique.

Camelot is delightfully quirky. A distant descendant of King Arthur rules a tiny kingdom in which time has stood still. There are brave knights, dragons to slay (the dragons are of course dinosaur) and maidens to rescue. And of course, like King Arthur, this young king has a traitor in his midst. This episode is whimsical fun.

In Unnatural Selection Challenger meets an old scientific colleague who is conducting certain experiments. We quickly find out that he is a full-blown mad scientist. There are definite Island of Dr Moreau vibes here. And the secondary storyline involves a fairy princess!

Time After Time involves two time travellers with two very different agendas and Marguerite learns things about her destiny. There are also ninjas, but fortunately they’re remarkably incomp
etent ninjas.

In Prodigal Father Veronica finally finds her long-lost father but the reunion doesn’t turn out as she’d hoped. At this stage in the series you’re probably thinking that the one great disappointment is that we haven’t seen Marguerite and Veronica mud-wrestling. Well that omission is corrected in this episode.

Birthright begins with Marguerite, Ned and Roxton digging up the mummy of a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh. Only he’s not so dead. And he has a sister and our adventurers get mixed up in the family feud.

Resurrection starts with Roxton getting killed. Well, sort of. A strange disturbing child offers him a deal. He can live, but another man must die in his place. Roxton doesn’t like this idea but the kid adds that unless he accepts the deal Marguerite will die. Roxton will accept any conditions in order to save her. There’s also a magical sword involved.

In The Chosen One Roxton and Marguerite save a young man.

In Prophecy our explorer meet a larcenous gypsy fortune-teller, and there are disturbing signs that the raptors and capable of learning.

In Barbarians at the Gate one of those lizard-men makes a reappearance but maybe this time he will be an ally, albeit not a very reliable one. The episode ends with a fine old-fashioned cliffhanger.

Final Thoughts

Rip-roaring rollicking adventure just like in the good old days. Immensely entertaining and highly recommended.

Noir (2001 anime series)

Noir is a 2001 anime TV series.

I’m not going to give any plot details other than those pertaining to the first of the 26 episodes.

It opens with a cute blonde French girl (we later find out that her name is Mireille) in Paris. It looks like the opening for a fluffy romance story. Then the killings begin, and a dozen men are left dead.

Mireille really is a charming, pretty very feminine young lady. The only thing unusual about her is the way she earns her living. She is a hitwoman. A killer for hire. One of the best in the business.

But most of the killings were not done by Mireille. They were done by Kirika Yumura, a young very cute Japanese girl. Kirika knows nothing about herself. She doesn’t think Kirika Yumura is her real name. She has no idea how she came to know so much about guns, or became so good at killing.

It’s all a bit perplexing to Mireille. It’s obvious that some very determined very dangerous people are out to kill her. Teaming up with Kirika seems not only logical but necessary. After that she will have to kill Kirika. Mireille has survived in this business by never leaving loose ends behind, or living witnesses. She likes Kirika, but she will still have to kill her. She does think that it is only fair to let Kirika know about her intentions.

Mireille and Kirika work well together as a team but it’s increasingly clear that they have mysterious and powerful enemies out to get them. It may have something to do with Kirika’s past.

Maybe the Soldats have the answers, but the two girls know nothing about the Soldats other than the fact they exist.

This is not a straightforward Chicks With Guns crime story. There is as much cool Chicks With Guns action as you could possibly desire but there’s something deeper going on. That something deeper may have a rational explanation but in the world of anime you can never be sure. You can never be sure that you’re dealing with a single level of reality, or any level of reality at all. Early on the viewer has no idea what the central narrative will tun out to be.

Deadly lady assassins were nothing new in 2001 but Noir is a long way from the world of movies like La Femme Nikita.

The relationship between the two women is complex. They do not appear to be lovers but there’s an emotional bond, possibly a sisterly bond. These are two women who are both, for different reasons, cut off from all normal social interactions. It is highly likely that Mireille has never had a normal friendship with another woman. She believes herself to be totally self-reliant. She has never needed anybody. She knows that the sensible thing to do is simply to kill Kirika. Kirika is a threat. Kirika knows much too much about her and about her line of work.

But although Mireille thinks a lot about killing Kirika she seems unable to do so. She rationalises this. She needs to know Kirika’s secret. She does not want to admit that her reasons for not killing the girl might be emotional.

There is such a tangled web of female emotional relationships in this series. Female friendships, female loyalties and betrayals, female jealousies. And they’re all complex and ambiguous relationships. Mireille appears to develop some kind of maternal feeling toward Kirika. Or perhaps it’s a big sister-little sister thing. Mireille’s feelings towards Kirika evolve. Perhaps they are growing closer, or perhaps they are growing apart. Perhaps they are learning to trust each other, or perhaps in other ways Mireille is learning to trust Kirika less.

What’s nice is the “show, don’t tell” approach taken. Mireille never tells us how she feels about Kirika. We figure it out from her actions and from gestures and looks.

It is very important not to jump to conclusions when viewing this series, and not to interpret it in the light of 2020s ideological obsessions. Mireille and Kirika are not lesbians. The Japanese have fewer hangups about sex than Americans and this is very much an anime for grown-ups. Had the writers wanted to suggest that there was a lesbian component to the relationship they would certainly have done so. But they don’t. This is a series with philosophical, religious, moral and spiritual agendas. It is not about sexual identities or gender identities.

It is fairly obvious that Kirika and Mireille are both virgins. This seems to be part and parcel of their calling. For these two women killing is not a job, it really is a calling. It requires single-mindedness. There is no room for sexual involvements. As the series progresses it becomes more and more obvious that they really are in fact virgins. They are not like other women. They are more like virgin priestesses of death. We also might suspect that for these girls killing is a substitute for sex. As long as there’s killing to be done who needs sex?

We have to remember that these women are killers. It’s no good trying to tell ourselves that Mireille is really a nice girl and she only kills bad people. She’s a ruthless paid killer. She’ll kill anyone she’s paid to kill.

Early on you might assume this will be a Chicks With Guns crime thriller, or maybe spy thriller, a bit along the lines of La Femme Nikita. But as the series unfolds we discover that it’s something very very different. It’s a totally different sort of movie.

About three-quarters of the way through we get a huge plot twist. Followed by an even bigger twist. Followed in quick succession by two more. Everything we thought we knew will have to be rethought. It’s not just plot twists. At various stages we have to rethink our assumptions about key characters, and key character relationships. It’s not that we’ve been misled or that the characterisations are inconsistent - it’s more that we keep on discovering new layers. The picture we had in our mind wasn’t wrong because we were being lied to but because that picture was so very incomplete.

Kirika and Mireille do not understand themselves. Kirika doesn’t know how she came to be such an efficient killing machine, and she doesn’t know why she doesn’t feel sad when she kills people. Mireille’s memories of her own past are incomplete and are false in the sense that she was too young to understands what was happening. Kirika and Mireille will learn a lot about themselves. Some of it they won’t like.

This is the kind of series that makes me love anime TV series so much. It’s not afraid to confound expectations. Very highly recommended.

Lexx season 3 (2000)

The third season of Lexx went to air in early 2000. This third season does not just have a season-long story arc. Lexx had done extended story arcs before. The second season had had the multi-episode Mantrid story arc. But the third season is one continuous narrative.

Season 3 assumes that the viewer is familiar with the Lexx universe. There are vital things about the characters and the relationships between them that are not explained but you absolutely have to know these things to really understand the story. If you have watched the first two seasons then you do know these things and you will get much much more enjoyment out of the third season.

You have to know that Kai is dead, and why he is dead, and why he is still functional. You have to know why he is such an efficient killer. It helps if you know that he is the last of the Brunnen-G and why that matters to him. You have to know why Xev loves him. You have to know that Xev is part cluster lizard - if you don’t know that you will be puzzled and astonished when she displays the special abilities she possesses as a result. You have to know that she is a Love Slave. And that she is part cluster lizard.

The fourth regular member of the crew, the robot head 790, plays a more minor part in season 3. 790 is very much a comic character. The third season is much more serious and much more relentlessly dark in tone than the previous season. 790 is a bit out of place.

You have to know about the special bond between the members of the crew of the Lexx. They have an extraordinarily extreme Us and Them attitude. They will risk their lives for each other but they are entirely indifferent to the fates and the sufferings of outsiders. In the second season they were totally unbothered by the fact that the carnivorous plant-girl Lyekka was hunting down and killing and then eating the entire crew of a spaceship who were guests aboard the Lexx. The Lexx crew members were not bothered because they liked Lyekka and she was hungry. And she had become an honorary member of the crew. Stan, Xev, Kai and 790 didn’t know those other astronauts. They were strangers. If Lyekka wanted to eat them that was her business.

In the third season the Lexx crew members witness a brutal murder. The victim was a nice person who did not deserve such a fate. Stan and Xev are devastated. It takes them at least 30 seconds to get over it. Then they move on. There’s no point letting something like that spoil your whole afternoon.

As the season opens the Lexx is drifting aimlessly and has been drifting for millennia. The crew members have all been in suspended animation for 4,000 years. Lexx is helpless because he needs to eat but he’s too weak to find food. And then the Lexx is boarded by a group of ruffians. The leader is a menacing but charismatic man known as Prince. He’s a scary bad guy. Or is he? Maybe it’s more complicated. The story is continued in the second episode, May.

There are twin planets, Fire and Water. They have been at war for as long as anyone can remember. Prince is the charismatic leader of the planet Fire. He would like to use the Lexx to destroy the planet Water. The crew of the Lexx also encounter May. She is the charismatic leader of the planet Water. She hopes to use the Lexx to destroy the planet Fire.

Because this is Lexx one should not assume that this is a simple good guys vs bad buys story. Xev trusts Prince. That might be a mistake. She falls in love with him. That might be an even bigger mistake. Stanley trusts May. Which might be a mistake. He falls in love with her. Which could be a very big mistake. Perhaps Xev and Stanley are both wrong, or perhaps they’re both right, at least partially. What is sure is that both Stanley and Xev are not capable of being rational about such matters.

The cities on Water are all floating cities. They’re mostly given over to pleasure of one sort or another. The cities on Fire are at the tops of huge towers. They’re dangerous nasty places.

There’s something very very strange about both planets. The first clue is the complete absence of children. I won’t spoil things by hinting at just how strange life on these planets is.

Prince is very dangerous and he has a very odd ability but I’m also not going to spoil things by saying any more.

Several foes and friends from the past make appearances in this third season. Their reappearances are quite impossible but how they happen to turn up now is always connected with the oddness of these planets. It’s fun to see Lyekka again!

The most sensible thing to do would be to get as far away as possible from these twin planets but Lexx cannot take them anywhere until he eats. And finding food for him is a problem. Lexx is a spaceship but he is also a giant insect. He has a very healthy appetite.

Stan, Xev and Kai get drawn into the never-ending war between Water and Fire. They also get inextricably mixed up in Prince’s scheming. The problem is that they cannot figure out what Prince is actually aiming to achieve. They are not even entirely certain it is evil, although that seems likely.

There are very subtle changes in the regular characters. The changes make sense. They have been through a lot together. They understand each other a bit more. Stan is still desperate to get into Xev’s pants but he has started to think of her as more than just a luscious body. Kai has come to understand that although Xev’s desire for him is inconvenient it is not her fault. Xev has become just a little bit more tolerant of Stan’s foibles.

And Xev has grown up just a little. She’s a bit older and a bit wiser.

The narrative is concluded fairly satisfactorily by the season finale, and in a very Lexx sort of way. Lexx is not a warm cuddly science fiction series. But it is one of the all-time great science fiction TV series. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first season and the second season.

Ergo Proxy (2006)

Ergo Proxy is a 2006 Japanese cyberpunk anime TV series. The setting is a vast high-tech future city known as Romdo, a paradise on an Earth that is otherwise inhospitable and almost uninhabitable.

There are citizens and non-citizens in Romdo but non-citizens can become citizens. This is a society based on conspicuous consumption. Shopping is practically a duty. Life is easy thanks to the ubiquitous AutoReivs, advanced androids that do most of the real work. AutoReivs also function as personal servants and companions, in which capacities they are known as Entourages.

Romdo is certainly not a dystopia. It’s a pretty pleasant place overall. It’s more of a flawed utopia (sadly all utopias are inherently flawed).

Unfortunately many of the AutoReivs are becoming infected with the cogito virus. This allows them to achieve self-consciousness, which means they no longer automatically obey orders. This is seen as being a very bad thing. Romdo is a society based on willing obedience.

There is a possibility that an AutoReiv infected with the cogito virus may develop a soul. My assumption is that the word “soul” is being used here in the same sense that the word “ghost” is used in the Ghost in the Shell animes and mangas - not necessarily something spiritual but more a sense of selfhood, the vital spark that distinguishes a human from a machine.

The heroine is Re-l Mayer. She’s a fairly hardboiled Intelligence Bureau agent. She’s a bit of a natural trouble-maker. She’s inclined to interpret direct orders as vague guidelines. Since she happens to be the granddaughter of the Regent (the ruler of Romdo) and therefore an important and powerful woman she has plenty of opportunities to be a trouble-maker. She is however very good at her job. Re-I is not one of your cute big-eyed anime girls. She looks more like a cyberpunk goth girl.

Re-l thinks that a young man named Vincent Law is important although she’s not sure why. He’s a nobody. He’s not even a citizen. He’s an outsider, from another city named Mosk.

There are other things going on. Top-secret research with unknown objectives. 

That top-secret research concerns the proxy. Or possibly proxies. What are the proxies? Were they created by humans? Did they evolve? Are they machines or are they biological or perhaps both or perhaps something else entirely. They appear to possess powers that are almost supernatural but are probably just unimaginably advanced technology. Are they benevolent or malevolent?

All of the characters are ambiguous to some degree. Romdo is ruled by the Regent. He’s a wise and just ruler. Probably. There’s the security chief Raul Creed. He has an agenda, which may not be the same as the Regent’s agenda. Raul might be a good guy or a bad guy. Or a good guy being manipulated for evil purposes. There’s Dr Daedalus, the impossibly young genius doctor-scientist with a mysterious connection to Re-l. Dr Daedalus has an agenda, the nature of which is unknown.

There’s obviously some secret associated with Vincent Law. He probably doesn’t know himself what it is. 

Vincent and Re-l will undertake a journey together although neither knows the purpose of this journey.

There are indeed several proxies. They don’t all have the same agendas. Re-l would very much like to know what Ergo Proxy’s agenda is. She’d like to know why Ergo Proxy is so important.

There’s Re-l’s Entourage, Iggy. Like many of the city’s AutoReivs he is infected with the cogito virus. He is fanatically loyal to Re-l. Possibly.

There’s Pino, a cute little girl who tags along with Re-l and Vincent on their journey. Pino isn’t really a cute little girl, she’s an AutoReiv, a companion android, and she’s infected with the cogito virus. She’s adorable and harmless. Possibly.

Re-l herself is a little ambiguous. She’s the heroine, we assume she’s on the side of the good guys, if anybody knew which were the good guys and the bad guys. She is being manipulated. She is aware of this, but perhaps not aware of the extent of the manipulation.

Apart from all the other things going on in this anime this is also a kind of coming-of-age story. Re-l is an adult who is still to some extent emotionally a teenage rebel. She is having trouble handling the transition to womanhood. She is a woman, but she’s not sure how to deal with that. She’s also not sure how to deal with the terrifying possibility that she may have fallen in love with a man.

There are characters whose personalities are fragmenting and others whose personalities may be merging. Personality in this anime is very uncertain.

Right from the start there are questions which demand answers. But every answer leads to a new set of questions. To find the right answers Re-l has to discover the right questions.

This series is constantly undermining what we think we know.

To fully appreciate Ergo Proxy you have to put it in a pop culture history context. There’s a very obvious cyberpunk influence. But by 2006 Japan had a 50-year tradition of monster movies. The monstrousness of the proxies may well be a deliberate homage to this tradition. And by 2006 anime had its own tradition, and I suspect that this series is at times homaging classic 80s anime such as Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Wicked City. This is cyberpunk with lots of other flavourings and influences. 

This is a complex intelligent puzzling fascinating grown-up anime. Very highly recommended.

Ergo Proxy has been released on Blu-Ray. Happily both the English-dubbed soundtrack and the original Japanese-language soundtrack (with English subtitles) are provided. I have no idea why anyone would want to watch an English-dubbed version of an anime but apparently some people do. 

Blood-C (2011 anime TV series)

Blood-C is a 2011 anime TV series with interesting origins. In 2000 Production I.G. made a short feature film called Blood: The Last Vampire about a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. It was an absolutely brilliant movie which has never received the acclaim it deserves. There does seem to have been some thought of turning it into a TV series. That finally finally happened in 2011 with Blood-C, but it’s not as simple as that. This series is more of a radical reboot than a follow-up to the movie.

There are plenty of superficial similarities. The TV series also features a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. She also uses a katana (a samurai sword). There are however major differences. Blood: The Last Vampire was set in the 1960s; Blood-C has a contemporary setting. The Saya of the movie worked for some kind of shadowy probably governmental agency. The Saya of the TV series is a kind of girl priestess belonging to a religious sect dedicated to battling supernatural evil.

And this Saya is a very different girl. The Saya of Blood: The Last Vampire is an attractive young woman but there’s something very dark, ruthless, dangerous and chilling about her. She’s one of the good guys but she’s a stone-cold killer. The Saya of Blood-C is a cute bubbly high school girl. The only real similarity between the two girls is that they are both named Saya.

One of the best things about Blood: The Last Vampire is its minimalism. It tells us only what we absolutely need to know, when we need to know it. We get no backstory at all on Saya, apart from one moment at the end which revels her true nature. But it leaves many many unanswered questions.

The TV series is clearly determined to give us a very detailed backstory on this new version of Saya. There’s nothing wrong with that. TV is a totally different medium. In TV you expect detailed backstories.

It may not be evident at first but you really do need to watch Blood: The Last Vampire before watching the series.

You have to be a bit patient with Blood-C early on. I can understand what the series is trying to do. Saya has a double life. She has been chosen to fulfil an exacting and dangerous duty battling supernatural monsters but she’s also a high school girl. She is trying to balance the two sides of her life. She accepts her duty without question and she is a brave and dedicated warrior maiden prepared to sacrifice her life if necessary.

But she also wants to be a normal teenage girl. She wants to have some fun. She wants the other girls at school to like her. She especially wants boys to like her. She has her eye on one particular boy. She has the perfectly normal feelings of any teenage girl.

I think this approach taken by the series is perfectly valid, but the high school stuff is very very cutesy. If you bought this series for the mayhem and monster-slaying you might find this cutesiness a bit over-the-top.

Even in the early episodes however her sacred mission is not forgotten and she does have some epic battles with monsters. These monsters are known as the Elder Bairns.

The series does quickly become a lot darker. The supernatural threats to the idyllic village in which Saya lives become more frequent and more extreme. Saya has promised to keep everyone safe but she starts to wonder if that’s possible.

She also has reason to think that there are many things she has always taken for granted that may not be as simple and straightforward as she’d thought. She had not realised that the Elder Bairns could communicate with humans. They tell her things that disturb her. 

There’s also a dog, a cute little dog she has befriended. He talks to her as well. Whatever he is, he’s not just a cute little dog.

The battle against the Elder Bairns intensifies but the series gradually becomes more interesting in other ways. Both Saya and the viewer are offered tantalising hints that there is something much more complex going on than the threat represented by the monsters. 

There is much that Saya does not yet understand and that she needs to understand but perhaps she is not yet ready for such knowledge.

Saya also has to deal with something else that is new and disturbing - the possibility that love might be blossoming for her for the first time. This is something that scares her a lot more than monsters.

The one minor weakness of this series is that although the monsters are very imaginative they are at times in danger of becoming just a little goofy. The monsters perhaps needed to be a bit creepier and a bit less over-the-top. The problem was that there was a obvious desire to make each new monster more spectacular than the preceding one. The gushing blood effects are also a bit iffy.

The action scenes are certainly lively.

There is some unexpected nudity in episode 8. It’s very tasteful and given the level of violence this is a series that is most definitely not intended for the kiddies.

Blood-C is an odd mix of cuteness, mayhem and weirdness. It’s a mixture I like very much. Highly recommended.

Seeing Blood: The Last Vampire first will add enormously to your enjoyment and it is in any case a must-see anime movie.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig

The Ghost in the Shell franchise began with Masamune Shirow’s original manga in 1989. There were two follow-up volumes. The Ghost in the Shell movie was released in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence followed in 2004. Both were directed by Mamoru Oshii.

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series first aired in 2002. The second season (or 2nd Gig) began its run in 2004. The film Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society served as a finale for the TV series in 2006. There have since been other entries in this spectacularly successful franchise.

What’s interesting is that Masamune Shirow’s manga series, the Mamoru Oshii feature films and the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series are all slightly different takes on the same basic premise. The TV series does not take place in exactly the same timeline as the manga or the two feature films. It takes place in the same fictional universe, almost. It’s like three variations on the same basic theme, and each variation has its own appeal. In their own ways they’re all equally worthwhile.

All the different variations deal with Public Security Section 9, a shadowy fictional counter-intelligence, counter-terrorist cybersecurity agency run by the eccentric but brilliant maverick Aramaki. The commander of the field operations task force is Major Motoki Kusanagi. She is a cyborg. Her body is wholly synthetic (although it’s very female and she is in practice a perfectly functional woman) but she still has a human brain and human emotions and she still has her human memories. She was once a fully human little girl.

In this second season Section 9 will be up against a mysterious group known as the Individual Eleven.

The main cast members are substantially unchanged in the 2nd Gig. Aramaki still pulls the strings. Major Motoki Kusanagi is still the field commander. Batou is still her second-in-command and the one person in the world she really trusts. 

And happily the tachikomas, the combat robots used by Section 9, return to the series after a brief absence. The tachikomas are controlled by AI but whether it’s a collective AI or whether each tachikoma has some degree of individuality is uncertain. As is the question of just how far they are capable of operating autonomously. The tachikomas provide comic relief in what is other a very serious very dark series but it works - the writers rather cleverly use the tachikomas to reflect in a humorous way one of the main themes of the second season, the conflict between individuality and collectivity.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex deals inevitably with political conflicts. The series is more interested in the nature of ideological conflicts than with pushing a particular ideology. It’s not really interested in taking sides politically. And it accurately reflects the confused and contradictory nature of 21st century ideological conflicts. The Individual Eleven see themselves as radical individualists but they behave like a kind of hive mind. They also appear to believe in revolution for its own sake. Their goals seem somewhat mystical.

The series also deals with political infighting in government and law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Political leaders are mere puppets. Powerful shadowy forces are pulling the strings. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency is obsessed with ensuring its own survival. They don’t trust each other, for good reason. Aramaki is a clever operator but even he finds himself being manipulated by forces he doesn’t entirely understand.

There’s an ongoing story arc here, as there was in the first season. What’s interesting is that what appears to be happening on the surface is not what’s going on at all. The story arc deals with unrest in a refugee community in Japan, with tensions between the locals and the refugees which could lead to civil war, and government efforts to resolve the crisis. What is really happening is that a series of complex interlocking power games are being played out and none of the players have any interest in the refugee crisis. And I don’t think series director and chief writer Kenji Kamiyama is all that interested in that particular political issue. He’s more interested in the way political power games are played.

There are also ideological drivers but my impression is that Kamiyama is not interested in particular ideologies but rather in the way that political ideologies work. And, more to the point, the way ideologies are likely to work in an information age of total interconnectedness. They may work like viruses.

There are multiple players in the power game - several different intelligence agencies (including Section 9), the military, the bureaucracy, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, mega-corporations, the media and shadowy informal networks. They all have their own agendas. They are all concerned with protecting their own interests. They will all cheerfully sell each other out. They all manipulate each other. None of them care about Japan or about ordinary people. None of them has any genuine commitment to any principles. Winning is all that matters because that means power.

They all see themselves as puppet masters but often they are merely puppets. Mostly they have no idea who is really pulling the strings. The Prime Minister for example has no idea that she is a mere figurehead, a puppet who will be discarded when she is no longer useful.

Aramaki has more insight and he’s a wily old bird but even he finds himself manipulated. He does at least have the advantage of being a skilful player. Motoko is learning to be a skilful player. She’s learning to analyse problems on multiple levels.

The refugees are simply pawns who are being used by several different groups with contradictory agendas.

There are bad guys but some of the good guys might turn out to be bad guys and some of the bad guys might not be straightforward villains.

Other TV series have tried to engage with such issues but this is the first series to do so in a sophisticated and complex way in the context of the age of digital information sharing. And it’s hard to think of another TV series (or movie) that has taken such a brutally cynical approach.

The cynicism level rises as the series progresses. Most of Section 9’s assignments are not what they seem to be.

Mention has to be made of Yoko Kanno’s superb music. It’s very pop but very cyberpunk.

There’s both a DVD and a Blu-Ray boxed set containing both seasons of this series. Thankfully it includes the original Japanese language version with English subtitles as well as the English dub. I have a particular aversion to English dubbed versions of anime. Hearing the characters speaking with American accents just feels totally wrong. I like anime because it’s Japanese. I also really like Atsuko Tanaka’s voice acting as Motoko - her voice just sounds right. And Akio Ôtsuka sounds like Batou.

This is very much cyberpunk but with even more paranoia than usual. Science fiction TV doesn’t get much better than Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the original manga, the TV series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, 1st Gig and the first movie, Ghost in the Shell (1995).