Stand Alone Complex first impressions! (Spoilers)

So, I watched 16 from the 26 episodes of the first season of Ghost in The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I watched it in 2017 but never went through episode 11, so here's some of my impressions about it as a first time watcher:

• God I LOVE the vibes of this show. You know, that "vibe" that only an 2000's anime have? Those pale colors from the he beginning of the digital colorization, love it. Not to mention the darker yet optimistic tone of the series.

• I found the dialogues way easier to follow than the 2026 anime. Although I love GiTS 2026, it's undeniable it's fidelity to the original, even in the dialogues, can take some people away from the show. I personally believe that SAC aimed to a more general public instead, meanwhile the 2026 adaptation chose to keep the heavy technical dialogues from the original manga. No one is better than the other, they are just different approaches.

• The characters are a good mix between 1995 and the manga. You can see traces of manga Batou and Togusa in SAC, but they are more serious here. The Tachikoma fullfil the role of the Fuchikoma pretty well (and also, can we talk how funny and scary they just decided to gain individuality and suddenly have a lot of philosophical discussions???)

• My second favorite version of Motoko is from SAC and now I can confirm this, God I LOVE Motoko here. She's badass, she's sexy, she is emphatic (Missing Hearts shows a very rare side of her and I love it), she is serious and less gremlin then Shirou's Motoko, but Motoko still has a personality. Her dialogue in Android and I saying she thinks making a robot your girlfriend is highly sexist is one of my favorite moments of her

• The Stand Alone episodes are actually pretty good. They are not "filler", they serve for two purposes: world building and character moments. Missing Hearts is focused in Motoko, Jungle Cruise is about Batou, etc. Not to mention most of the cases have a plot twist very well placed, some of them are pretty dark. And of course the Tachikoma episode (Escape From, Ep 12) took me off guard with the Lucky plot twist. Poor Miki :(

Overall, cannot wait to finish the first season, this anime is really, really good.