You've reached Artistic Genius, a shrine of sorts to the art of my favorite artist, Masamune Shirow. What I'm working at with this site is to sample out as much of Shirow's various works as I can so that you can get a good feel for his work. While he is probably most famous for creating Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell, Shirow has done much more than just creating those two worlds. From writing manga, to working on video games and anime, he's even gone so far as designing computer hardware. In addition to doing so many different things, he continually evolves his style, experimenting with various processes and learning the latest technology, Shirow definitely doesn't sit back and settle on a final creative style.
Readily apparent in Shirow's works are a number of elements - distinctive mecha that often look similar to insects, high-tech gadgets, cyborgs, robots, police, an insane amount of detail, and many, many sexy women. Of course, his girls(some more than others) have gotten him marked as a hentai/ecchi artist, but there's a lot more to his stuff than eye candy. Just take a look at Ghost in the Shell, Shirow's created a whole world in this futuristic cyberpunk tale, with an incredible level of information density helping to bring it all to life. That being said, don't come whining to me if his ladies offend your sensibilites, you have the option of leaving any time you feel like it.
» Phil
Okay, not quite a same-day update, dead tired when I got home last night. Anyhow, we now have New Dominion Tank Police, I finally got around to watching it last weekend and wrote up some info as well. I got some screencapping done, but then left my DVD at the parent's house over the holiday weekend. Additionally I left my Intron Depot discs up there as well, so I'm feeling pretty dumb about that. I'm gonna hold off on the featured scans for a little bit too, my roommate just got a bigass scanner so I'm going to have him try and scan the Megatech Body Co soundtrack inserts, these things look rather sweet.
Update should be coming tonight, keep watching
Ack... below this update is the update I intended for the start of last month, never uploaded because I was too distracted to take the time to find and upload the two scans I was going to post, my bad. As I don't quite have the bandwidth for 3 big scans at once, it'll be the two I intended from last month for this month, and then two again next month.
Let's see, what else has happened in this timeframe... November 23 was Shirow's birthday, once again I forget about it :/ The 2nd Volume of GitS SAC 2nd GIG released on US DVD on/about that day too, though I managed to snag mine the Friday before at Best Buy, always finding stuff early there :D Still no word on the new Posterbook collection things, that's Shirow's trademark delays for you. I don't much mind though, the more time Shirow has to tinker with something, the better the end product turns out, right? Appleseed Online has apparently launched, of course, being Japanese-only, I haven't even figured out how to download the client, let alone register to play. Offhand, I can't think of anything else that was particularly noteworthy in the November to December portion of things.
Not much for site updates either... Made some small tweaks to the GitS SAC OST listings, someone was kind enough to point out some errors/inconsistencies on it that I've gone and corrected here. I've also updated the SAC 2nd GIG Episode list with episode titles for the remaining episodes, may update them again once the official DVDs finish coming out, for now I'm just using the translations found on the fansubs. Beyond that, haven't really done anything with the site either, though I've been meaning to...
Specifically, I picked up a laptop a few weeks ago with the intent of getting site work done on the way to and from work, as I have a 40min bus ride each way, every day, only I've been using that time primarily for keeping up with the fansubs I'm currently following. This update is actually being written on the laptop(named Poseidon, Megatech being the desktop, GitS fans should get it ^_^) on my way home from work here on Friday night, and I'm going to try and make myself do at least one update per week now that I have this, we'll see how it goes. This may also consist of a new layout reworking how I structure things here, though that will be Jan 1st at the earliest.
Bleh, two months without an update, 11 hour workdays are rough :( Only a small bit of new in the Shirow world in that time it seems, Shirow is going character and mecha design, for another MMO, RF Online this time, in addition to his prior contributions to Asura Fantasy Online. This, of course, comes from sTwo and Lucas, both of whom have found new homes for their sites in the last few days, check it out and update those bookmarks. Work is also in progress on an Appleseed MMO, though I haven't seen any new Shirow illustrations to go with it. Unfortunately there is no Japanese Shirow calendar again this year(confirmed by the folks at J-List, and yes, please click that ad and buy some stuff from them so they can keep on sending me checks, honest, they don't bite and have cool little Shirow action figures that I can't ever afford[let alone try to keep up with the variations]), but there is one here in the US and I've already picked it up. sTwo also brings word that it looks like the new run of Galgrease, in whatever form it will be, has been pushed back by at least a month, so we're all still holding there. No word on Tank SWAT or other artbooks for a while now, still just more wait and see on those as usual.
Whether or not there will be a 3rd season of SAC is still up in the air, though the series director Kenji Kamiyama has hinted at it. At the moment though, Production-IG is currently busy with a number of other projects, so nothing coming soon and I don't particularly mind the break, let 'em think up a great new story for the crew to deal with. This is also a good place to point out that sometime in the last few weeks(to coincide with the launch of 2nd GIG I imagine), Bandai/Manga completely redid ghostintheshell.tv, the official US site, and not only does it not suck anymore, but it also contains episode summaries not only for all of season 1, but also episodes 1-24 of 2nd GIG, so go look there for your basic episode info :O The GitS PSP game recently came out, unfortunately I don't have a PSP(or even know someone with one) to even consider getting it.
Long workdays aside, working does have its benefits, thanks also to a recent Rightstuf sale, I picked up SAC DVDs #1-7 and 2nd GIG #1 a couple weeks back, and spent 3 hours watching the interviews on Sunday, yes, 3 hours, quite the bit of talking. I also snagged Appleseed(old one), New Dominion, and Black Magic M-66, leaving just a couple holes in my Shirow DVD collection - Innocence, new Appleseed, and the supplemental bit(SAC Official Log, Innocence Music video thingy). Of course, I'm still behind on the print materials, but I'm looking to take care of that in the next few months(unless of course Christmas proves to be brutal to me), with ID4, Togihime, the new collected printings of GitS and MMI, and the Innocence novel in particular, I think I'll be skipping the Cine-mangas for Appleseed and Innocence as I find those to be generally silly at best.
To make up for 2 months of one scan, I'm going to be offering up 2 scans for 1 month here, can't wait to see how this hits the bandwidth, but I'm doing it for you all, enjoy this before and after Shirow illustration off the Intron Depot 2 CD.
Ehh, a few days late, but there's a new featured scan, coming from Gun Dancing, which I will try to have more of a writeup on sometime this weekend, as it is a short one shot, approx 30 pages in length that Shirow did a number of years ago. For the moment though, I must get ready for work
