The Ghost in the Shell Vol. 1 Kindle & comiXology

Alas, I've been eagerly awaiting this "definitive" version of Ghost in the Shell and it's a pretty big disappointment. The size is certainly not deluxe (it's no longer or wider than a normal trade paperback of an American comic; I've attached an image comparing it to a Doom Patrol TPB and a DC "Deluxe" collection), and somewhat amazingly, the contents are censored yet again despite an 18+ warning (I've attached an image showing how a rather famous scene is presented here). The quality of pages is fine, and it's cool to have the story presented in the Japanese right-to-left style with the original SFX, but this is a pretty major letdown given how the book was advertised.As for extras: I don't really know what's included beyond what would have been in the normal edition. There's a glossary for the newly restored Japanese sound effects, but good luck reading it -- it's in incredibly small white font against a black background, as you can see.Alas, swing and a miss for Kodansha. I got this for $14.99 and can live with it, but run the heck away from the MSRP of $29.99.

The Ghost in the Shell Vol. 1  The Kindle version is the first edition of the book which is censored. Whole scenes are removed. I would hold off on this until they release a Kindle version of the second edition of the book.

There are a lot of reviews panning this manga due to it censoring a certain scene. As much as I hate censorship, I can understand why the publisher chose to do so in this case. The last thing the publisher wants is to get put in the news for the content while the new GITS movie just came out. My personal opinion is they would actually be better off with some controversy since that brings more attention (and sales as a byproduct). Shirow himself stated he wanted the scene removed but I think that was just done to make the content more accessible and sell-able.Aside from the censorship, I have found numerous grammar errors throughout the manga. It's not like they're just spelling mistakes, some of them are bad enough to where you have to actually stop and try to decipher what they mean. These mistakes are very easy to see, so the publisher obviously didn't have someone do any proofreading. This cannot be explained in any way other than pure laziness on their part.The quality of the print is fine and I am sure most people would appreciate its presentation as a hard cover.

I think Shiro is an extremely intelligent and talented man who never learned how to properly write a story. Ghost in the Shell has so many excellent ideas for a cyberpunk story that with an editor I’m sure this would be considered just as classic as the film adaptation.Shiro constantly jumps from one new, barely explained technology and world building device every panel or so, which can be very hard to follow. While there were some notes from Shiro added in post to explain the unique aspects of his setting, they’re in extremely tiny font and take you right out of the story every time you have to read them. As a friend put it, “it’s like if a movie director paused the film you’re watching every 5 minutes to explain what’s going on.”Despite all of that, I definitely was entertained by the manga. The art and coloring was top notch, and I’d be hard pressed to find a better sci-fi artist than Shiro. So much detail packed into every panel, but this never takes away from the recognizable and beautiful mechanical and biological designs’ silhouettes. The political and cyberpunk thriller outlined in this book was definitely stripped to its bare necessities in the film adaptation, which is a shame because so many of the awesome designs and characters had to be cut.

You won't believe how big is the Ghost in the Shell universe until you take your time to read this story.It's divided in short stories from which the movies and animes took inspiration from. Each story tell us in vast detail what a cyberpunk world is like, going as far as using footnotes to not just describing things, but also providing insight to the scientific basis for most of the ideas in the stories. It makes it very convincing. It also helps explain a lot of plot holes in the original movie.Totally a good read, and an amazing piece for your collection.

There are a lot of other reviews griping about the lack of 'new' content (and the omission of some old), but right on the back of the book is a chart detailing exactly whats new in this edition. 22 new color pages. 53 new monochrome pages, and 16 pages that were upgraded from mono to color. It even has a chapter by chapter breakdown of this information that shows where the new material appears. Now in all fairness to other reviewers I haven't done a panel by panel comparison since I haven't read through this since about 2001 (when my OG Dark Horse edition was lent out and never returned), but at least Kodansha is making the claim that there is new stuff here. Maybe someone with both editions (or even an original Japanese edition) might be able to use the chart to compare between editions editions and verify the claims of 'new'. But I will leave that detailed analysis to someone else.I do have gripes with this edition though and they mainly have to do with the paper quality. Namely, the paper is very cheap. Definitely a step up from the pulp that manga is usually printed on, but has significant paper grain visible. Maybe I'm spoiled from the super glossy stock that Marvel and Image are printing on these days, but I feel like a Deluxe Edition of Ghost in the Shell deserves better.

I quite enjoyed the film and thought I'd like to read the original. I've never read a graphic novel before, and i admit i found this confusing and hard to follow.

I think the term is futuristic manga. I'm not sure. It's got strong mecha/cyber/tech themes, and it's a Japanese graphic novel.Anyway it's great. It's really good. It's just really complex too, and I confess I couldn't really follow the plot. To really digest the story, I'd have to read it a lot slower than I did. But I like going fast, cos the imagery and concept for this book are awesome.

As a kindle book this did not work well, the some of the images were not at a resolution that allowed the text to be read well, though I have the paper version of the book and that suffers from the same problem but I was hopeful that the kindle version would be better.

A great addition to my collection.

Classic