Like most folks, I never watched the original Ghost in the Shell film when it was released in theaters.  And like most folks, when I first watched it on VHS from my local video store, I foamed at the mouth and couldn't get enough.  Written in part by Masamune Shirow (who also created Appleseed) and directed by Mamoru Oshii (who did Patlabor, Jin Roh and Stray Dog), Ghost in the Shell became the anime film for the mass audience and a heroine in "The Major" Motoko Kusanagi unlike any other anime released yet.  Akira can be argued as the greatest anime ever made, but it was made for a very specific audience.  Whereas, Ghost in the Shell was something that most folks could enjoy without getting into too much philosophical arguments.  Let's see, there's a super bad-arse female cyborg cop who beats criminals down in her panties.  There's her more-muscle-with-equal-brains partner who's just as cool as she is, and then there are the villains.  The integral part of what makes Ghost in the Shell work so well is the fact that the villains that Motoko and her Section 9 crew face seems to get more worse as they appear.

As fans of the series know, it took a really, really, really long time after the first film was released before Mamoru Oshii and his production company began to remotely revive the series.  And obviously, when he did, the World was waiting with all eyes and ears - waiting for the return of The Major.  Oshii gave us Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a completely brand new TV series that had no beginning or ending and no connection with any of the films or the comics.  Each episode started as a segment in the lives of the members of Section 9, their battles and investigations, etc. and when the episode ended, that was it.  Then the next episode would start up anew.  Many folks will tell you that the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the most ingenious animes ever made.  You didn't have to get caught in the middle of an episode and you didn't have to follow last week's episode to know what's going on.  Although a few of the episodes did get linked and continued to one another.

The Takara released Ghost in the Shell Motoko Kusanagi figure is great.  While the clothing wasn't tailored perfectly, overall it was a great figure.  The headsculpt on Motoko was perfect as well as her weapons.  It drove me crazy the first time seeing how her outfit was displaced and certain areas were too baggy.  I started to do up patterns immediately for her outfit from the Stand Alone Complex series.  But it took me many attempts and many tries to get it perfect.  Motoko's Stand Alone Complex posed many tough design issues.  First, there are a lot of double stitch work.  Second, her outfit was very fantasized and it had a belt where one was never required.  The belt seemed to start nowhere and ended nowhere.  I had to guess a lot of the functionality of everything.  Her boots were also an extremely tough and challenging pattern.  The pictures I looked at from the show never really give you anything.  Again, with the fantasy stuff and it looks like there were no shoelaces or zippers.  I had to implement my own brand of how things should work on her boots and shin guard as well.  After going back and forth several times, I decided to do the shin guards in fabric because it was small enough to be unnoticed but it also keep the color scheme of the outfit really well also.