i do hope.. (Score 5, Interesting)

I do hope they include or make references to the Fuchikoma's (robotic support vehicles similar in appearence to spiders with a semi-collective AI for those who havent read the manga) in this sequel, as for someone who has read the manga cover to cover, GITS was, although extremely impressive in a technical sence, a slight let down that certain key features of the original storyline had been cut / significantly altered for the anime. I have not read any of GITS 2 - Man Machine Interface, so this may be incorrect (ie. fuchikomas not featuring in it atall) but even if it is just a small reference, it would add a certain character that the first GITS anime significantly lacked.

For me, the only characters with even the slightest hint of depth were kusanagi and Batou. The other characters just seemed fairly hollow, which was unfortunate. Personally i would have loved to have seen the original manga turned into a series (even if it had to be as short as Macross Plus 1-3) first as apposed to a fairly mixed up film. As /. reported quite a while back, GITS is being made into a series by the same production house as this release.

Heres hoping its worth it!