5/5 What you would expect!
  by Tom E. Thompson (California)
This is what you would expect from the team that makes this awsome film and series! Visuals are as always, Top notch in the anime world, with thought provoking story lines, that make it so you can't wait to watch the next episode in the series. If you like you anime like i do with realistic looking charaters, and just alaround good damn movie. you have to have this in your collection, along with the whole series!

4/5 A Review of the Special Edition
  by David Stilley (Santa Cruz CA USA)
would rate the show as 5 stars, this is a review of the extras and features of the Special Edition issue.
I recently bought all the Special Edition releases of "Stand Alone Complex" after trying to research what I was going to get as extras not included in the regular edition. I found the listings on Amazon's product details to be a little confusing and incomplete on some of the volumes so I decided to write this guide for others trying to decide. I'm not going to review the "Ghost in the Shell" episodes or the series in general because there are so many excellent reviews already on this site, and most of you probably know about this great anime TV series already. There are various other reviews that say that some of the DVD's and CD's have errors on them and Bandai will replace them with corrected discs if you send them in for exchange. I have not ran into problems yet, although I haven't gone through the whole series either. And I will also state that I love the TV series as well as both movies, but I would recommend the Imported Region 2 version of GITS2:Innocence if you have a region free DVD player. Dreamworks really messed up that release omiting the English dub and putting Hard of Hearing subtitles instead of regular ones on the early issues of that movie. Most people find them very distracting and annoying.

First off the discs themselves, you get two DVD discs in each volume with the same episodes on both discs. Volumes 1-5 have 4 episodes each, 6 and 7 have 3 episodes each making 26 episodes total in the series. Both discs are Anamorphic wide screen encoded directly from the High-Definition Masters. Both Discs also have English subtitles. Each set also has two interviews with voice cast or someone associated with the production of the anime, and a printed DVD insert pamphlet or booklet with different interviews and such for each volume. All discs are Region 1.

Disc one has Dolby Digital 5.1 in Japanese and English, and Dolby Digital 2.0 in English and Japanese.

Disc two has DTS 5.1 in English and Japanese and a Dolby Digital 2.0 English track.

Volumes 1 and 2 include soundtrack CD's of the music of Yoko Kanno, the most excellent and versatile composer of the music in the TV series. Anime lovers know her work from the many fine soundtracks that she's done for countless other anime movies and TV series.

Volume 3 has a Black XL Fruit of the Loom Tee-Shirt with the section 9 logo on the front and a Major Kusanagi graphic on the back. Nice shirt!

Volumes 4 and 5 have a collectable I.D. cards for a section 9 member.

Volume 6 has a Black XL Fruit of the Loom Tee-Shirt with the section 9 logo on the front and a Batou graphic on the back, and another I.D. card. Nice shirt again!

Volume 7 has another Tee-Shirt! This time it's a White XL with the section 9 logo on the front, and the Laughing Man logo on the back! Once again nice shirt! It also comes with a tin box that's supposed to hold all 7 volumes of the DVD set. I was excited about getting the box but when it arrived I was disappointed with the design. It's kind of like the rectangular lunch box that you used to take to school as a kid, without the handle and latch. Its also of a thinner metal that dents easily. It has marketing type of printing on the backside that pertains to vol. 7 only, and the DVD cases stack inside one on top of the other. The spines of the cases are not visible when you open the box, only the front of the last case you put in. So you have to take all the cases out of the tin to get to a specific volume. There's also not room for the cardboard sleves that the DVD's were in when you got the individual volumes, and no room for the soundtrack CD's either. All said, I was disappointed with the box. Because of it's odd dimensions it doesn't stack in well with my DVD library. I would have much preferred the normal five sided box that usually comes with DVD sets.

Overall I'd say it's worth it to buy volumes 3, 6 and 7 new to get the shirts if they interest you and pick up the others used if you can to save some money on the series. That is if you're interested in the DTS soundtrack options. I much prefer the DTS mixes to Dolby Digital and wanted the soundtrack CD's as well. Also the cardboard boxes that come with volumes 3 and 6 are better than the tin box to store your set in when you complete the series, if you stack them on shelves one row of DVD's on top of another row, and you can fit the movies into those boxes as well to fill them the rest of the way.

5/5 Where the line between humans and machines is blurred
  by Mark Schaefer (Brockport, NY USA)

I'll admit to you that I love to watch Adult Swim, and I'll also admit that I like certain types of anime. No, I'm not one of those nerdy card-trading Poke'mon lovers, I'm a young adult who likes to use my imagination in my down time. I like anime that's made for adults like: Big O!, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Outlaw Star, Tenchi and Ghost in the shell.

I was watching either watching Family Guy or Aqua Teen Hunger Force when I saw previews for this show start to air on Adult Swim, I thought thought it looked cool, it featured what looked to me like a cool futuristic take on robots and the humans that are seamlessly integrated with cybornetics to make them almost immortal, But I didn't know the half of it.

What I got was a cyber-punk version of the old black-and-white film noir mysteries. The series receives its subtitle from a theoretical mental complex attributed to the adaptation of cybernetics into the mass public. In the story, 'stand alone complex' is said to describe copies with no original and is portrayed by copycat crimes with no original criminal, or in other words, an imaginary criminal. It also refers to the structure of each episode: Each episode can be viewed independently of each other, and there is little catch-up (if at all) given in each episode to keep the viewer up to date.

Taking place in a fictional city of Japan called "Niihama-shi" (New Port City) in the year 2030, Stand Alone Complex tells the story of a special operations task-force called Public Security Section 9, or simply "Section 9". The series follows the exploits of Section 9's agents who range from ex-military to ex-police as they address each case and how it affects them on a personal level, eventually leading to the mysterious figure dubbed by the media as "The Laughing Man".

Public Security Section 9 is an elite domestic anti-crime unit tasked with the charge of preemptive prevention of technology-related acts of terrorism and crime. Their duties include response to serious cyber crimes (i.e. Cyberbrain hacking, cyber-terrorism), investigation of unlawful acts of those in public office and of high profile murder cases. From time-to-time they also serve as protection to foreign VIPs.

If you have seen the movie then you know that the TV series differs from the cinema adaptation in its focus upon issues created by the advance of technology. Instead of the intensely focused and personal examination of technology, presented is a look at society and technology as a larger whole. The series of 26 half-hour TV episodes has a larger budget of time to explore the concepts and ideas found in the original manga. In comparison to the film version, the series is considered by many to be easier to understand. Also, in comparison, the series can be found to be closer to the manga; due to the presence of some humor, the usage of the Tachikomas (Fuchikomas in the manga, and referred to simply as "tanks" in the one scene a derivant version makes an appearance in), the design of the characters, and also, the usage of the characters Paz, Bouma and Saito. Stand Alone Complex exhibits the accumulated experience and expertise of Production I.G. in their application of computer generated imagery. This is evident in their digital color grading, environmental effects, and cell-shaded computer models. Their work has been highly praised for its subtle contribution to a scene, which adds greatly to the atmosphere.

I think a lot of people will try to compare this to Cowboy Bebop as with so many other anime and mangas, but that's foolish. Stand Alone Complex is no better or worse than Cowboy Bebop, it's just a different story, different style, different sets of charactors and there places.

if you like anime or manga you'll definitely like this show. It's complex, has views on modern terrorism and how to deal with it, and not to mention the technology! Even if you don't watch anime just give a chance and take it for what it is.


4/5 Superb series, so-so American DVDs
  by Baka-chan (Middlebury, VT USA)
I've heard a lot of complaints about the storyline, and a lot of complaints about how the DVDs are sold and the number of episodes...

The story is very complex, it is. There's no getting around it. Even the Japanese feel that it's complex, and have you had a good look at their written language lately? I for one love the series, and I'm a big fan of Production IG's work, and Masamune Shirow-sensei's work, especially his more well-known works; Koukaku Kidoutai (Ghost in The Shell), and Appleseed.

As for the price of the DVDs and the number of episodes, I'm a fan of DVDs having fewer episodes, or atleast using as much of the disc as possible. I compared my Japanese DVDs with my American ones and found something startling; The Japanese DVDs, which have just 2 episodes, and cost roughly $60 US, utilize more than 7gb of the disc. The American DVD which has 4 episodes, English audio, and sells for $20-45 (Depending on edition) uses a hair over 6gb. Are you being ripped off? Yes. Is it because of the number of episodes? No.

A 26 episode series has to be something like 5-5-5-5-3-3, or 5-5-4-4-4-4, or in this case 4-4-4-4-4-3-3, otherwise the last volume would have a very small number of episodes. And THAT they cannot sell. Personally, I wish they'd just put all the extras on the last disc, because then the DTS disc would be irrelevant, the normal disc could have DTS. But I'm willing to bet the average American consumer would still pitch a fit over a DVD with just 1-2 episodes and a bunch of interviews.

If you want to feel ripped off, don't do it because of the way the episodes are distributed, feel ripped off because they're putting 4 episodes on the DVD and still fail to use more disc space than the Japanese 2-episode DVDs. Which is a ridiculous thing, since once you break the 4.5gb mark, whether you use 4.51gb or 8.5gb it still costs the same amount to manufacture, so why didn't they fill the disc? This, while not a 'lack' of bandwidth, still leads to lowered visual quality in comparison to the original Japanese DVDs.

Oh, and if you still want to complain about the price, note the fact that the Japanese DVDs are around $60 and only have 2 episodes. Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it? (Yes, that means that this series is 13 volumes in Japan...26 if you count the second season.)

4/5 Top Notch Anime, Over the Top Prices
  by B. Bailey (Colorado Springs, CO United States)
This is definitely the best new anime series on the shelves. The storyline is great, but this should have been the last DVD. Things are getting noticeably dragged out at this point and what really steams me is getting only 3 episodes on this disc after paying over $20. That's bogus. DVDs can fit way more episodes on a single disc, and it's a rip off the way anime is being marketed lately. The Cowboy Bebop series had 5 episodes per disc at the start, then dropped down to 4. Now it's just getting worse. At this point I'm starting to regret buying the Stand Alone Complex series instead of renting it. I am going to buy volume 7 to see how things turn out, though. Throughout the series I think disc 4 was my favorite.