The Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network

The book contains four comics from different artists and writers. As far as I know, none of them were written or drawn by Shirow Masamune himself. I don't remember the order of appearance of each story, so Im just doing a basic review of each, as spoiler free as I can manage. One story is mundane and does nothing new, typical cloak and dagger spy stuff like half the movies already out there, except with the Major. The artwork is good, but a bit jarring for me, compared to other versions of the anime and comics.Another story seems to expand upon the greater world economics and situation surrounding the GitS world. With the release of GitS 2045 on netflix, it seems to be fairly accurate to the setting Production IG was going for. It does not focus at all on any existing GitS characters, but rather some strange plot for revenge that ends abruptly, as if he had a whole comic but the publisher cut it in half to fit the collection. It has a more average art style but is not bad, but again doesn't really push the scifi stuff.A third story really takes advantage of the Ghost In The Shell themes of memory alteration hacking, and enhancement. The environment feels like something from the cannon, and comes off as one of the better stories in the collection. The artwork is also the best by far, even if it's more on the cartoony side compared to the more realistic looking artwork of the previous two stories.As for the fourth story, it was as if Shirow Masamune himself wrote it and made the artwork. It strongly resembles the manga's earlier comics and plot, with a good bit of humor. It also features more of the section 9 cast, particularly Botou and Togusa, and not just the Major. If you slipped it into one off Shirow Masamune's own books, I would believe it was authentic.So, two of the stories I could have done without, but I did find the other two to be very good.

I was eagerly expecting for its arrival given the fact that I am a massive GiTS fan. So whenever there is a new book that expands on the mythology of Shirow Masamune's legendary manga, I am always down.Not: The actual content of the book is amazing. All the stories are incredible and well written and drawn, 5 out of 5 Stars. My main beef is with the way the book is presented.It just feels so bare-bone, usually, you would expect some kind of an introduction by either the creator of the franchise or some leading authority in the genre or maybe one of the writers of the book but nothing. The description says the book comes with the "PinUp Illustration" by Becky Cloonan, which did for Mondo Boutique for a very limited run but it does not. The whole "Pinup" is just a page with half of it covered with credits. Almost like an after thought. There are no biographies of the writers and artists, no extra artwork that usually accompanies such kind of anthologies, nothing. No afterword also.I know a lot of it seems like nit picking but when you're hiring people like, Genevive Valentine, Alex de Campi, Dustin Nguyen, David Lopez etc at least make it worth a while? It almost feels like a cash grab attempt by Kodansha. Lesser publishers have produced better and more expansive and expensive looking books than this. Its only saving grace is that its a Hardcover.So, 5 Stars for the actual content, 2 stars for the presentation. Buy it if you can find it under $15.

When artists and writers pay homage to a body of work they can combine the best of their skills with those parts of the original work that can best take advantage of their talent. Four stories that explore the world of Section 9 --- carrying them farther afield than usual, and going deeper into the implications of technology and hacked brains than even Shirow does in his comics. This is done without the walls of info-dump --- the writers trust that their audience can keep up, and we've had 25 years for culture to catch up to Shirow's vision.The art is very good, showing a mixture of styles, with some interesting homage paid to Shirow's original style.The volume is a little slim, but that just left me hoping for more. I hope this is the start of a series. Ghost in the Shell creates a world with lots of room for interpretation, both artistic and literary.

Definitely more of an American comic book than a Japanese manga, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The writing for most of the stories is tight, and the art is always fantastic. Out of the four short stories, I would say two are fantastic, one is good, and one is okay. Still, this is a great addition to the Ghost in the Shell franchise, and I highly recommend for anyone who is a fan of the series or movies!

GitS is one of my all time favorite series and this was an awesome addition to my collection. I love seeing mashups when different artists and writers work on other peoples series.The hardcover is nice and the paper and print is great quality as well.

A wonderful collection of GITS stories. Beautiful art and the same level of philosophical pondering and badass sci-fi that you can expect with Ghost In The Shell.

I got this as a gift for my husband & he absolutely loved it. Unique gift for fans =)

Good fun reading!

This is a nice collection of artwork and stories. I found the first two in the book to be the stronger ones. The third had significant potential as it looks at a part of other GiTS universe that we don't see very often, this happens to a lesser extent in the second story but it just seemed a bit muddled. The last story I felt had a lot to say and had some good nods to the different art styles the series has seen over the years, but the final blow was either lost on me or too soft to register.Fans will enjoy the book nonetheless.

Good artwork and the new writers handled the world and characters competently, but there was little overall substance to any of the stories. It was like watching a bunch of 5 minute shorts released to tie into a movie that don't really get time to explore the ideas they try to present. Rather than a short compilation, each of these stories should have been released as their own graphic novel so they didn't all feel so "rushed". I am a lifelong ghost in the shell fan, and while I liked this for what it was, it is still nowhere near the story quality of the original Shirow mangas.

Really good for fans of the whole series, but not for unfamiliar people. I liked the sifferent takes with the universe and stories of ghost in the shells. There is different style of drawing and it show how it can changed as well. However, maybe due to how short the stories should be, they dont seem fully developped. But the ideas are good.

I am new at Manga, but this was good. If you like the side story stuff.The OG books are still best, but a good addition for a fan.Buy it if you liked the expanded GITS universe, pass if you don't like to have fun.

I"m a long time fan of Ghost in the Shell in its various forms, so I was looking forward to reading this. However, it wasn't as good as I anticipated. The artwork was all reasonable enough but none of it was startling, no fantastic new take on cyber-punk imagery. As for the writing, three of the stories were reasonably entertaining but again, nothing that I could really describe as memorable. There was also one story, not involving Major Motoko Kusanagi, that I thought was quite poor. The manga, the anime, the films have all had original elements to make you think, but I didn't really get much out of this. It's a competent enough comic but not much more than that.