This takes place 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. I can't imagine Harrison Ford would be in it... at least I hope not.
It's comments like this that keep me posting! Thank you!
I totally agree. It's more action/comedy than I expect from GitS but it's also more accurate to the manga so I can't really be mad about that.
First episode of the new Ghost in the Shell anime now streaming on Prime Video!
(www.primevideo.com)
Sorry, I wasn't referring to cyberpunk anime. There's a short-lived sub-genre of live action movies that are called Japanese Cyberpunk. It's basically movies made by Sogo ishii and his friends. So Burst City, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, 964 Pinocchio, Electric Dragon 80.000 V. They're all crazy movies. This video does a good job of explaining them.
Thank you! I definitely won't be wasting my time with it then.
Thrill Switch is a murder mystery set in a cyberpunk world. In it, the majority of people spend all their time jacked into cyberspace but if you die in cyberspace you don't die in the real world. At least, that's the plan. The story is about someone who figured out how to kill people in cyberspace and went on a killing spree. That person was captured and sent to prison.
The book takes place seven years later, when someone seems to have figured out the serial killer's trick as copycat killings start happening in cyberspace. That's the "Silence of the Lambs" part of the book. The detective main character spends time interviewing the original killer for clues on how to capture this copycat (without falling for the killer's mind games).
Overall, I think it's a pretty good book, but there was one plot point that bugged me (non-spoiler). In this version of cyberspace, people can look like whatever they want (similar to Snow Crash or Ready Player One). And yet, real physics exist there. So gravity exists and you can bump into people (and get stuck in traffic). So in that sense, it's more like The Thirteenth Floor. But the part that bugs me is pain exists too. It can't be turned off. And I just can't accept a world where the majority of people live their entire lies online yet they feel physical pain if their avatars are harmed. Also, while not being able to die in cyberspace is a main plot point in the book, an avatar dying in cyberspace is so painful that it sends people to the (real world) hospital. If that was actually how things worked, anyone with a weak heart or other infirmary would absolutely die if their avatar was killed. People would definitely be dying in cyberspace.
However, while I think it's a terrible idea to experience pain in cyberspace with no "off" switch or pain dial, this wasn't an oversight on the author's part. There's a lot of discussion in the book about whether dying in cyberspace should kill the person, just to provide some consequences for their actions. The argument one character makes is that if there are no consequences for people's actions in cyberspace then they'll start feeding their darkest desires just feel something after becoming so jaded.
Since pain and death (and murder) are such major themes in this book, there are multiple scenes of torture. Fortunately, most (if not all) torture is done with knives. Considering how gruesome torture scenes can get, I think this book keeps it relatively tame. Also, while there are some references to sexual violence in a character's past, there are no scenes of sexual violence in the book. Again, given the subject material, I'm glad the author showed some restraint. It could've been a lot worse.
I read a lot of random indie cyberpunk novels and most of them aren't worth discussing. But I had a lot of thoughts about this one and I wanted to talk through them. I don't know how strong of a recommendation I would give it for others to read, but the author definitely had more to say than most cyberpunk novels these days.
Here's the kindle book, although I listened to the audiobook on Hoopla.
Netflix published information about the four new Night City names across social media and in collaboration with various content creators. Weak Kingsley is described as a veteran Edgerunner who "now lives in the shadow of his former glory." D is a Snack Nation Netrunner looking for revenge as he "hunts the killer who wiped out his clan."
Roman Carax is the youngest of the group and is described as a "cinephile in search of real stories in a city that abandoned cinema for braindances." Finally, there's Talia Yang, an individual with corpo and Maelstrom ties whose "heart belongs to chrome and violence."
I didn't realize they released a poster for Edgerunners 2 so I wanted to make this a separate post.
Rather than answer your question, I'm going to tell a story that's almost relevant (as is tradition on the internet).
The Syndicate series of games started in 1993. They were squad-based, isometric, real-time strategy games. And then EA released this game in 2012 and called it "Syndicate" since they owned the rights to that franchise. But this new game was a FPS and had nothing to do with anyone previously associated with the series.
The lead developer of the Syndicate series was so annoyed by this game that he ran a kickstarter to make his own spiritual successor to Syndicate (since he didn't own the rights). That game is called Satellite Reign and it's fantastic.
Again, this has almost nothing to do with the game you're looking for. I just always like it when someone continues their work out of sheer spite.
I know psycho-pass and cyberpunk 2077, but what's Dark Rain?
Ha, I'm actually the one who recommended it to them on their discord. I just didn't want to post here until I heard their thoughts. I'm glad you listen to that podcast too!
This is an awesome list and I just want to add a couple more. The SNES and Genesis each had a Shadowrun game but they're totally unrelated. I think the Genesis version is better. Same with Pirates of Dark Water (I loved this show). The SNES and Genesis versions are completely different and I prefer the Genesis game.
Other than that, I really like Elemental Master. It's a vertical shoot 'em up but you play as a mage, always walking up. So it's kinda like the NES game Gun.Smoke if that means anything to you.
This is exactly why I struggled with the show. Maybe it's the Japanese way of storytelling or maybe it's my own inability to follow the subtlety, but I didn't like how the story was revealed to the viewer. In the very first episode they show the system is flawed (someone in shock or having a trauma response is ordered to be executed) but then the rest of the show just continues on anyway. So in the very first episode we're shown that the crime coefficient can't be trusted and yet we spend the rest of the show continuing to trust the crime coefficient.
I guess I didn't get the sense that people were trying to fix a broken system; I got the sense that the main character had some initial doubts but didn't do anything about them until the end of the season. In most episodes, the main cast are doing everything they can within that system and continuing to trust the system. It's not like they were loose cannons solving crimes their own way, they were very much still following the system. Well, I guess the latent criminals were sometimes loose cannons but I though that was treated more as characterizations of them being "latent criminals" rather than a critique of the broken system.
Again, this might just be the Japanese way of going about it. If this were an American show, they'd probably start with a "true believer" who gradually learns to distrust more and more of the system as they get more of an inside view into how it works. Maybe the Japanese way is to immediately learn how things are broken but be forced to continue acting like nothing is wrong.
Anyway, I like your interpretation of the show and I agree it's probably what the showrunners were going for. It's just not what I got while watching the show. I felt like most episodes showed the system working as intended, not a broken system.
Now that you've got me thinking about it, I'd compare it to hard-boiled detective novels. In hard-boiled detective novels, the police force is also a broken system. They're incompetent and can't be trusted. As you said, the system is broke and will always be broke. So the hard-boiled detective works outside the bounds of the police force to get things done. I'd argue the hard-boiled detective isn't trying to fix anything, but I wonder if that's the difference between the American approach and the Japanese approach. One attempts to work within the system while the other will ignore the system to do it their own way.
Sorry for this long rambling comment but your comment got me thinking and I just kept running with it...
I'm the same way and that's part of why I'm struggling with coming up with posts for this community. I've been trying to help kickstart things here but I assumed most steampunk fans were into the lighter and fantasy aesthetic of it, which I don't personally care for. It's fine for those who like it but I struggle to create posts for that audience because it feels inauthentic for me to do it.
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