TITLE...........: Ghost in the Shell (1995)
STARS...........: Atsuko Tanaka, Akio Otsuka, Iemasa Kayumi
DIRECTOR........: Mamoru Oshii
WRITERS.........: Shirow Masamune, Kazunori Ito
GENRE...........: Action, Animation, Science Fiction
METACRITIC......: 76/86
TOMATOMETER.....: 95/89
IMDB SCORE......: 7.9
IMDB............: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568
RUNTIME.........: 1h 22mn
SIZE............: 5.68 GB
VIDEO CODEC.....: HEVC (Main10@L4)
BITRATE.........: 7000 Kbps (CRF)
RESOLUTION......: 1920x1040
ASPECT RATIO....: 1.85:1
FRAMERATE.......: 23.976 fps
AUDIO1..........: Japanese Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 768kbps
AUDIO2..........: Japanese FLAC 2.0
AUDIO3..........: English Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 640kbps
AUDIO4..........: English FLAC 2.0
AUDIO5..........: Commentary with Mary Claypool, Eric Calderon, Richard Epcar & Charles Solomon
SUBTITLES.......: ENG
SOURCE..........: GITS HDTV project by Judgment
SOURCE INFO.....: https://www.judging.it/ghost-in-the-shell-grain-re-construction/
ENCODE DATE.....: 2025-01-19
CHECKSUM........: 227AA7545336785C462D9302AAAC17E7


Touted as the most expensive Japanese anime thriller ever created, this futuristic extravaganza features vibrant computer generated graphics, special effects and vividly drawn comic-book style characters give the film a surreal look. The story is set in the early 21st century. Tokyo has become a megalopolis and a computer network has created a world without borders. The yakuza run rampant and to stop them, the government has devised special cyborg agents out of pieces of human brains, and electronic parts. These machines can then download information at any point in the city. Beautiful Major Kusangi is one such agent. Though built like a beauty queen, inside she is all machine, but for a few hunks of organic brain matter. Still those biological parts are enough to start an identity crisis within. Still she has a job to do and that is to locate Project 2501, a powerful but formless virtual reality creature designed to access any system. The Project, code named "Puppet Master" has become independently intelligent and decides that it is a self-determined life form, beholden to no one. As he goes off in search of a suitable host body, Kusangi pursues him.

The included commentary is with animation Writer and English language scriptwriter of Ghost in the Shell, Mary Claypool, animation producer and Writer Eric Calderon, voice of "Batou" in Ghost in the Shell franchise Richard Epcar and animation historian and critic Charles Solomon


ORIGINAL RELEASE NOTES:

It has been like 7 years since the last release and ~5 years since i started the grain re-construction work on this. this release has all the filtering from the previous v2 (sans the ones that aren’t necessary anymore) + some improvements:
– Use of a proper TV stream instead of a re-encode of the pre-encoded source
– Re-constructed grain
– Improved stabilisation especially the extreme cases on/around scene changes
– Rework of colour and range correction
– Properly removed logo
– Inclusion of the original stereo mixes as new default (there are some issues with mixing on the surround tracks, like missing sound effects)
– Japanese 5.1 track from a new TrueHD source, some fixed/added missing sound sound effects
– Inclusion of english commentary
– Some minor sub fixes

Though this isn’t the ‘holy grail’ of GitS releases. The new source is overall cleaner, i could properly IVTC it, it has a lot less severe problems, the high motion/action scenes are especially better, but it does lose some minor dark details in a few specific scenes. Re-constructing the grain did bring a a few problems itself, eg the grain can obfuscate some details since they appear less pronounced. Not everything could properly be re-constructed so i had to add some grain in specific scenes or on specific level ranges, to make everything blend properly and to have a somewhat consistent look. On the bright side, this is most likely a lot closer to the original intend than before.

Also thanks to all the contributors and supporters, sadly i lost my list with all the names.

anyway, there will most likely a v4 someday (maybe in a decade lol) with:
– new subtitles (i have a new completely reworked translation but it needs heavy editing, anyone interested?)
– re-create the look of the BD/DVD (eg colours/proper colour grading)

the changes from the previous release mostly still apply