Coincidentally, there is a new Ghost in the Shell anime that's premiering now on Amazon Prime Video. It's animation style and mood are closely aligned with the original 1989 manga, which is to say it's more cartoonish and light-hearted. I prefer the more adult oriented content the franchise was putting out up until about 2006, but the new anime series gives me hope that we might eventually see a follow-up animation of Shirow Masamune's Man/Machine Interface - what was once considered to be Ghost in the Shell 2 before Mamuro Oshii created Innocence.
Fans of Shirow will probably lynch me, but I didn't like the manga all that much. Not even the art style, which the new animé seems to replicate.
To me, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 GitS is THE version, because I'm seldom in the mood for slapstick and I much prefer the introspective mood of the movie, and its cinematic visuals. And the music!
I haven't liked any other adaptations since. To me, the movie is almost perfect. I didn't like Innocence much though.
It might be skirting the edges of what is considered cyberpunk since it has Mecha elements but Patlabor is a fantastic manga/series that should have been included in this list [1]
This is a bit of an idiosyncratic list. Two of my favorite additions from my own youth: Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow and Batman: Digital Justice. The latter now reads like a bit of a corny cash grab for the early '90s cyber fad, but I still love the time capsule of some if its art.
The one I'd highlight from the list is Hiroki Endo's Eden: It's an Endless World, it's my favorite manga. It's beautifully drawn and incredibly grounded in tone and oddly relevant.
The overarching story is about a pandemic that starts as a backdrop and becomes more important and metaphysical and religious as the story goes on but the core of it revolves around crime bosses in Latin America, the lives of prostitutes, a Uyghur rebellion in Xinjiang, political conflict and organized crime all done in a very real way. It's completely devoid of any (manga) tropes or genre aesthetics.
also go read my comic about a robot lady with reality issues, http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/, it's got cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them.
Rich Veitch, he and Alan Moore. As Moore would later write:
"The One ... is a kind of landmark; a pulling together of obsessions and ingenious storytelling ideas into a coherent whole ... Its revisionist superheroics, while conceived at roughly the same time, predate Watchmen and Dark Knight in terms of publication, as does its packaging. Its political and humanist preoccupations were voiced before such sentiments became chic. Its deranged, culture-conscious humor offers an alternative and an antidote to today's rather gloomy trend of pessimistic, post-modern ultra-humans... Whatever it is that the comic books of the 1980s turn out to be remembered for, The One was right there in the thick of it, carving out a niche in the mainstream for dangerous ideas long before dangerous ideas became box-office certainties."
I did a pandemic project of reading Dredd from the start for as long as I could. I made it through about 25 case files volumes, which took me from 1977 to the late 90s (I think).
Is Judge Dredd cyberpunk? I don't care. It's an incredible run of comics, that touches on many of the same themes as cyberpunk.
There are many people involved in Dredd over the years, but I do think John Wagner has had the rare opportunity among work for hire creators to shepherd a fictional universe over decades of real and in universe time.
In Italy (and sometimes abroad, I recall dark horse translated it in English at some point) Nathan Never has been publishing as a monthly comic for a few decades.
So much of this space has been collapsed into homogenized entertainment. Nowadays, by the time a child is ten years old they have seen every form of the hero’s journey in the cartoons they watch, to the degree where there are tropes and nods to source material or even sometimes derivatives of source. Sci fi, fantasy and other genres are blended in as hooks because cartoons have to keep viewership and eye balls, so they throw everything they can find at it.
As a result, unfortunately, there is very little “new” material. The old material that took centuries to develop and longer has been flattened and duplicated, over and over again. I sound like a curmudgeon (I probably am), but I stopped watching movies entirely not too long ago because it became a farce of seeing cliche writing. Shows are even worse so as to not even warrant discussing.
Cyberpunk specifically has also been outdated fast by real world developments, and other genres emerging with similar topics, but different design(?)-language. The whole cyberspace-element for example kinda died (or evolved) with the rise of the real internet, the Matrix-Movies and recently with stuff like VRMMO-stories from asia.
The overall concepts and elements are still around in some way, but the specific combination and language that makes cyberpunk are gone. At the end I would say they were a result of their time, and time has changed, so not it's just nostalgia and retro.
I don’t watch many movies due to time but those I do watch tend to be odd, unusual, experimental, and sometimes polarizing.
A recent one I enjoyed was Rabbit Trap, a modern take on faerie lore. It was polarizing and got poor reviews.
Years ago I adored a two season series called Hellier. I have a hard time describing this. Ghost hunting show for thinking people? You have to suspend disbelief but it reminded me of Primer in terms of a lot achieved on little budget. If you want to see some hipsters try to use transcranial magnetic stimulation to talk to aliens this is for you.
I’ve enjoyed some horror for its tendency to subvert tropes: hero to villain, villain is really hero, everybody dies, etc.
But yeah. I can only watch blockbusters if I’m in a certain kind of mood where I want light entertainment with no thought.
I abandoned movies too, 5 years ago or so. There's little space for "art" (whatever that might be) when you need to invest giant sums and expect a return. There's still some good movies coming out, I'm sure. But I don't have the time or energy anymore to dig for it like I did in the past.
I think you are right for movies and TV shows, but not for "comics, manga and graphic novels" and I'll add books as well. Since those are much cheaper and easier to produce than TV shows and movies, they can be created independently, without the need to optimize for earning tons of money. Indie literature and comics are very diverse in the storytelling.
But I acknowledged (and dread a bit) that the audiovisual storytelling is such a strong force that any discussion about storytelling, even when specifically talking about literature/comics storytelling, is dominated by audiovisual references. Any creative writing workshop/course that include sci fi and fantasy genres will inevitably mention Star Wars as example for whichever technique. The more literary ones will mention some Oscar winning movie, etc.
I've noticed this as well and I'm rather concerned about it. Those cheap rip offs will ruin countless classics for her and it's really sad. I'm looking for the most boring stuff for her to watch just so she doesn't become fully jaded by age 18.
Side note: if you need new stories, I've found a lot of weird and fun stuff to read on Royal Road.
Popular culture fiction is usually more like Pixar's
"Structure stories with: Once upon a time… Every day… One day… Because of that… Until finally…". Real biographies are almost never like that.
But almost the entire Marvel/Pixar/Lucasfilm output is about the Chosen One.
None of the main characters work their way up.
A recent (2023) finding: from Guillaume Singelin, Frontier [0]. Fitting it into "cyberpunk" may need a bit of a push, but since the limits are kind of blurry I don't really care. The narrative is not perfect perhaps falling into wanting to say a lot more than the page limit allows, but all in all it's a good enough read.
as someone who loves Astro Boy (and everything else Tezuka made): Atom The Beginning was a disappointment. But I also believe that Pluto sucks too (some smaller stories, like the pianist, were great).
The Ghost In The Shell: Global Neural Network features one story by LRNZ. His work Geist Maschine (in italian only) is amazing.
Among the Cyberpunk 2077 comics, Big City Dreams is also very good.
I've honestly not ever considered Ghost in the shell to be under the cyberpunk genre. It's too clean and the characters too ingrained in the working of the system. And the system "works", it's not a sanitised depiction, gits society feels much like our own with a detailed techno-realism it's a society still at the transitional point to something more radical; exemplified by humans still doing very manual things - take for example that classic scene from the 1995 film, where the man uses multiple fingers to extremely fast into a terminal, this would seem impressive but pales in comparison to a direct cyberbrain connection, they still have terminals because this is a world still in transition. Another of my favourite but less known scenes is this scene from gitsac: https://paul.kishimoto.name/2017/01/barcodes/
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] threadTo me, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 GitS is THE version, because I'm seldom in the mood for slapstick and I much prefer the introspective mood of the movie, and its cinematic visuals. And the music!
I haven't liked any other adaptations since. To me, the movie is almost perfect. I didn't like Innocence much though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie
The overarching story is about a pandemic that starts as a backdrop and becomes more important and metaphysical and religious as the story goes on but the core of it revolves around crime bosses in Latin America, the lives of prostitutes, a Uyghur rebellion in Xinjiang, political conflict and organized crime all done in a very real way. It's completely devoid of any (manga) tropes or genre aesthetics.
also go read my comic about a robot lady with reality issues, http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/, it's got cover quotes from three people with seven Hugos between them.
Anime counterpart to this article: https://shellzine.net/cyberpunk-anime/
Is Judge Dredd cyberpunk? I don't care. It's an incredible run of comics, that touches on many of the same themes as cyberpunk.
There are many people involved in Dredd over the years, but I do think John Wagner has had the rare opportunity among work for hire creators to shepherd a fictional universe over decades of real and in universe time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Never
Not all stories are cyberpunk, but many are.
Some are great.
As a result, unfortunately, there is very little “new” material. The old material that took centuries to develop and longer has been flattened and duplicated, over and over again. I sound like a curmudgeon (I probably am), but I stopped watching movies entirely not too long ago because it became a farce of seeing cliche writing. Shows are even worse so as to not even warrant discussing.
The overall concepts and elements are still around in some way, but the specific combination and language that makes cyberpunk are gone. At the end I would say they were a result of their time, and time has changed, so not it's just nostalgia and retro.
A recent one I enjoyed was Rabbit Trap, a modern take on faerie lore. It was polarizing and got poor reviews.
Years ago I adored a two season series called Hellier. I have a hard time describing this. Ghost hunting show for thinking people? You have to suspend disbelief but it reminded me of Primer in terms of a lot achieved on little budget. If you want to see some hipsters try to use transcranial magnetic stimulation to talk to aliens this is for you.
I’ve enjoyed some horror for its tendency to subvert tropes: hero to villain, villain is really hero, everybody dies, etc.
But yeah. I can only watch blockbusters if I’m in a certain kind of mood where I want light entertainment with no thought.
But I acknowledged (and dread a bit) that the audiovisual storytelling is such a strong force that any discussion about storytelling, even when specifically talking about literature/comics storytelling, is dominated by audiovisual references. Any creative writing workshop/course that include sci fi and fantasy genres will inevitably mention Star Wars as example for whichever technique. The more literary ones will mention some Oscar winning movie, etc.
Side note: if you need new stories, I've found a lot of weird and fun stuff to read on Royal Road.
Popular culture fiction is usually more like Pixar's "Structure stories with: Once upon a time… Every day… One day… Because of that… Until finally…". Real biographies are almost never like that. But almost the entire Marvel/Pixar/Lucasfilm output is about the Chosen One. None of the main characters work their way up.
In particular: is anyone personally using a color eink device that's as practical for .cbr files as kindle is for regular ebooks?
[0] https://www.magnetic-press.com/frontier/
The Ghost In The Shell: Global Neural Network features one story by LRNZ. His work Geist Maschine (in italian only) is amazing.
Among the Cyberpunk 2077 comics, Big City Dreams is also very good.
It is by the same illustrator as Thorgal, Grzegorz Rosiński.
(PS. in Rosiński's home land, Poland, those comics have been know under the name "Yans" because Hans was too German for that time)