second best anime film I have ever seen (considering the top one is Akira - the King of anime).
Ghost in the shell just kicks ass. The 2.5 minunte pause in the middle made me just sit in awe. Even if you only take into acount the fact that it INSPIRED THE MATRIX, it becomes one of the best films of all time.
Lines from Ghost in the Shell were used in Matrix Revolutions (and probably Reloaded aswell but not that I have seen), so that you dont have all themes of Matrix just contained within the three films. Ideas of finding your identity and becoming what you must eventually become, are not played up in Matrix, but all the writers needed to do was put one or two lines from Ghost in the Shell to pull it all together.
In a year when I have fogotten the plots to all four films (Ghost in the Shell, Matrix, Reloaded and Revolutions) I will watch them all in the same breath gasping day, and I could see all the links between Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix flms. And that day I will have touched the very essence of Genius.