Unrelated, I'm known as a nutcase with regards to Mamoru Oshii's 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell, copies of which are scattered through my house in five different types of media. I listed them here a long time ago but that article is already hugely outdated.
So guess what the Plaion people decided to release as their next super special editions? Oh brother... it was Ghost in the Shell.
For a while I thought "enough is enough" but seriously, can I own more than ten copies of a film and not buy the one release which might be better than all of those? So yes, I fell for it, as it's a crossroads of two of my largest obsessions as a collector: extremely pretty packaging, and Ghost in the Shell!
And a word of warning for English-language collectors though: all the printed material is in German, and all discs feature Japanese dubs, German dubs and German subtitles. This release is NOT English-friendly. I'm just showing this on an English-language site to maybe, I don't know? Inspire English-language distributors to maybe try a similar thing?
Because hot damn... needless to say this is a looker so here is a gallery of shots. Click on the edge of the pictures to scroll through them, or at the center of each to see a bigger version.
And here it is: a very pretty package indeed. It's quite hefty too because of the books.
What you see here is actually not the box itself, but a translucent outer slipcase. Removing it peels off a layer of Major Kusanagi's face...
... as you can see here! Fantastic box art.
On Instagram you can see three clips of me well.... not unboxing it exactly, but I do show off the extremely pretty box art, with and without the translucent slipcase.
"What's in the boooooox?" I hear you ask in Brad Pitt's whiny voice. Well, you get a disc-holder with five discs in it, a graphic novel, two booklets and a poster. More on the next slide!
And here are all the contents, revealed. You get:
- The UHD disc of version 1.0
- The Blu-ray disc of version 1.0
- The Blu-ray disc of version 2.0 (Oshii's attempt to enhance the film by adding more CGI so it looked more similar to Ghost in the Shell: Innocence)
- A bonus Blu-ray with 90 minutes of extras
A CD of Kenji Kawai's brilliant soundtrack
The 384 page graphic novel
- A 32 page booklet about the film
- A folder about an exposition and poster art
- A fold-out poster of the original 1995 release
Nice... do note that everything is in Japanese and German, this is NOT an English-friendly release.
A closer look at the artwork on the disc-holder.
The folder showing an exhibition of Hiromasa Ogura's stunning background art.
The 32 page booklet of the film, with background information about Oshii, why he was interested in adapting the source material, and what technological advancements had to be made to create the film.
And the big whopper: the graphic novel. Uncensored (which is special for Germany) and with the original read-from-right-to-left layouts.
The inner box art.
The (back-)end.
What a fantastic, but most of all fantastic-LOOKING release. I'm very curious what Plaion will decide to give this treatment next...