In 1995, Mamoru Oshii upped the ante for anime (and helped inspire The Matrix) with his adaptation of Masamune Shirô’s prescient and somewhat impenetrable manga Ghost In The Shell, set in an all-too-credible future populated by enhanced humans, cyborgs and robots.
A decade on, feature animation takes another quantum leap forward in this loose sequel, in which cyborg cop Batô investigates a series of killings by sex robots. Mixing 2-D, 3-D, CG and numerous other kinds of animation, Innocence is a dazzling spectacle whose breathtaking visuals are sadly let down by the sheer verbosity of the dialogue — doubly distracting in subtitled form. Nevertheless, this is arguably an important film which not only shows the future of animation, but perhaps of humanity itself...