Extrasolar Angel wrote:

Hmm, perhaps you do move faster, for me these scenes were quite ok, and certainly not slow.

I think the problem is that Shirow Masamune focused a bit less on the action and a bit more on the dialog and personalities of the characters. He openly admitted that a big reason for the creation of GitS was to explore futurist philosophy and moral issues (probably one of my favorite things about the guy, he's very honest; he also admitted that he made the Major largely into a lesbian for the manga because he didn't want to draw naked guys for sex scenes :D). This bleeds into the story very much, and the dialog overpowers episodes as the plot thickens. Watch from about halfway through the first season of Standalone Complex to about the three-quarter mark, and you'll see what I mean. I don't see this as a bad thing, however. It's wonderful when any form of entertainment challenges the audience to think, and Ghost in the Shell delivers in that regard so many ways. In fact, I'd be tempted to say that mindless action flicks only please me when I'm in the most bored of moods. However, this doesn't appeal to everyone, and I can see how much of it might not appeal to those who like a fast-paced series (season 1 episode 23 is the perfect example... an episode that is 99% dialog and background exposition).

You know what actually focuses a lot more on most of the concepts of EP than GitS? Kaiba: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiba (The "characters" section of that article kinda spoils the entire plot of the series by the way). It has this very odd, semi-biotech, clearly-not-the-real-world setting, but the entire series is just looking at the social implications of resleeving/memory editing and sales/bodysculpting, and it even has a massive repository of bodyless egos floating around in space. Just about the only thing it doesn't get into is the whole forking angle (at least not in the same fashion), because while memory transference is easy, duplication isn't on the table. Which of course leads to situations like in the 3rd episode, where members of an impoverished family are pawning off their only copies of pleasant/useful memories, and later bodies, hoping he rest of their family will be able to resleeve them later.

True, it seems the acting in most anime, that I have watched, is either dry and emotionless or over the top with exaggerated emotions. But I still find myself coming back for more. :) The themes that are explored in most anime are wide spreed and more creative than other story lines in modern media. Red

I can watch Eva and GitS (and have repeatedly), but I share a lot of the complaints regarding pacing and too much time spend watching talking heads with no actual [i]action[/i] going on. I'm always willing to bend some for artistic constraints, but... yeah. I'm not a fan of watching talking heads for a half-hour going on about philosophical concepts that I could be researching on my own time, if that was my inclination. More scenes of Motoko ripping the hatches off of tanks and firing anti-tank rifles at point-blank range with one arm, please. I do love Cowboy Bebop and F[b]LCL[/b] (tee-hee), but I only really liked Trigun the first time I watched. The second time around I grew to detest Vash, and I haven't been able to watch the series since.

Let me guess, none of you can stand watching 2001, right? Pacing is something that has changed immensely over the past few decades, and different cultures also handle it very differently. Today we are often subconsciously aware of the opportunity cost of watching something - we could be spending our time watching something more interesting, so why not zap? Makes it hard to appreciate certain works, though. Personally I find the scene in Evangelion where Shinji holds Kaworu in his mecha's hand - a single still frame about a minute long - to be sheer genius. There are some equally good uncomfortable silences during elevator rides in the series. None of these make sense if you fast forward them. But then again, I have defended the aesthetics of watching paint dry.

Lilith wrote:

And for the record, I rather liked 2001, thank you very much. Not to mention Citizen Kane and The Assassination of Jesse James both rank highly as some of my all-time favorite movies, and those both have the pacing of a dried-out snail riding a dead turtle.

Hmm, I thought Citizen Kane had a pretty fast pacing? But maybe I am misremembering it, it was a long time I saw it. No condescension here, rather this suspicion that we are drifting apart as a society media-wise. Which might not be a bad thing, but it makes communication a bit more awkward.

I am not one to mind a slow pace, I even enjoy it in many things and can even see the artistic use of it. I just don't like the dry manor in which the dialogue is given in many anime style films. Of course many are packed with emotion and seem to be quite the opposite. I am not saying that they are all dry. To me it seems like its usually one or the other and sometimes I find it hard to remain focused on it. GitS being one of the dryer ones, though I watch it because I love the genre. I feel that it is the dry deliverance of the dialog that detracts from the piece as a whole and when you have a slow paced sceene adding in dry diaologue is very hard to pull off without loosing the attention of the audiecene. Now I know that I am no expert when it comes to Japanese cultural and artistic media expressiveness, but I do believe that my enjoyment of the piece would be better served with a more emotionally driven dialog or no dialogue at all. Emotional expressiveness can be very powerful in slower scenes if done correctly. Unfortunately, I find dry dialogue to be primarily in the American voice acting rather than the Japanese. This could be because I am not used to hearing Japanese and therefor it draws my interest more. Just a question, Do you feel that dry dialogue equates with slow pace? To me they are very different and was just curious what your take on the matter was. Red

Put it this way: dry dialog certainly doesn't [i]help[/i] slow pacing.

Akira was redubbed for re-release a few years ago and it was very well done, also Studio Ghibli always has A-list talent for the English dubbing. Less well-known stuff seems to be confined to a cultural ghetto at the mercy of dubbing companies that employ people who apparently have never actually heard spoken English.

Lilith wrote:

[i]Bible Black[/i] comes to mind...

*to the googles!* ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU3Gg696yrM what is this i dont even