Some people must work better under pressure because what they gave us is masterpiece level animation that burned itself into our memories. I think the only other anime at the time of Ghost in the Shell that did that was Macross Plus because of the cool dogfights and mecha action. (this was considered the ''Top Gun'' of anime at the time. A bit of trivia: The guy who plays Walter White from Breaking Bad voice acted Isamu Dyson the jock pilot in the english dub of the anime) GiTs and Macross Plus are two of my fave animes in the 1990s because they did try hard to push CG but not make it look ugly and out of place. The biggest hurdle is not to make us see that something is 3D objects but to make that 3D object blend in well with the handdrawn art so its barely noticable. Although they could have made the mecha in Macross Plus CG objects they made them hand drawn and limited the 3D so it still feels like fully handrawn animation. It saddens me that disney basically killed off 2d hand drawn animation in favour of just 3D animation only now. I still like the hand drawn stuff and we don't see that anymore except from japan anime scene. It is good to see these animators from japan see better job security with the partnership with netflix as it allows 2d animation to live on through japanese animators. I primarily feel science fiction anime is the best use of animators who like to craft worlds that would be too expensive if they had to be live action movies which is why they have such cool ideas due to how hand drawn worlds can basically allow them to make anything they want without worrying about ''how expensive the set would be'' or ''whether the weather allowed us to film this or that scene on location'' or the drama of actors on set not getting along with the directors. Anime gives us ability to still get things that might not be possible if you needed hundreds of people involved in project to make it happen but lacked funds. Ghost in the Shell obviously takes its inspiration from 1980s dystopian sci-fi movies like Blade Runner but would not be as expensive to create. However anime fans do not care because the world is just as rich as any live action hollywood movie with A list actors and infinite budgets. You don't have to worry about say a fight scene looking bad due to the actors age not allowing them to pull off a stunt or if the stunt double is good enough to do it. The animator can make that character be as cool as they want and be as expressive doing it as they can imagine. No roadblocks when its a fictional 2d character from your mind.

3 months for that much detail.. nowadays that would be impossible to find

Nah, SAC 1 and 2 are pretty good.

I like the 3D, Ghost in the Shell is one of the only anime series that can get away with this because it fits the cyberpunk aesthetic, even the manga uses CG. Not really a fan of the art direction of SAC_2045 but that's not the fault of CG, they could have gone with a different CG look.

@@goom-You're right, they look like life less mannequins and a cel shaded 2003 PS2 game. it's not even good 3D CGI. I have yet to see a Japanese anime do 3D CGI right, it looks either like a video game or too life less.