Where can I begin with this one...well, let's just start by saying this is the most amazing Shirow collection I've ever had the luxury to feast my eyes on, and I thought the Solid Box was really impressive. This is easily my biggest anime-related bargain ever, getting it for a mere $25 from animecastle.com (sorry everyone, they're out now, I seem to have gotten the last one), which is pretty good considering that it is at least 6 years old and retailed for Y9000(about $85-90US). This is supposed to be a 10,000-print run, but my number seems to be higher than that, unless they decided to throw on some extra 0s to flesh out the card, and given the nature of the set, I highly doubt it's a pirate edition. But enough about good deals, let me lay out the goods for you...
The package came in a fairly plain cardboard box with Cyberdelics and some kanji/katakana printed on the bottom, and more characters on what must be the face of the box. Opening this reveals the true box, which begins the colorful metallic reflections found throughout the collection, shrinkwrapped in plastic with an Obi-strip describing the contents of the package. After removing the shrink-wrap and easing the box open, one is presented with the backside of the posters which have been curled in half, rather than making any ugly creases or folds in the material. Lifting these up, we see a booklet that seems tobe covered in a pixellated version of the neural net on the opening pages of Ghost in the Shell. Beneath the booklet is the puzzle that comes with the set, and while I initially thought this was gonna be a tiny, throwaway puzzle, let me tell you that I was very wrong, it's a full-sized puzzle. And now that those are out of the box, you're free to pull out the stack of posters and start drooling over them.
The main portion of the set here, and certainly some of the best looking Shirow stuff I've ever seen, even compared to his more recent works. Almost every one of the 10 prints has metallic elements to it, and one of the illustrations is even printed on a thin sheet of metal(silver mylar according to Puto's site). While all of the posters are excellent, a few really stand out for me. The first is of course the metal-sheet illustration, which is an absolutely gorgeous mix of rich colors. Then there's the 'giant faerie Motoko,' relaxing on a throne carved from the cityscape, with glittery accents along her wings. There are a couple other images in here I'd been wanting prints/scrolls of forever, but the one that really takes the cake is the last poster, which is basically a giant hologram, with a beautiful etching of the Major as she originally appeared in GitS:MMI(aka GitS 1.5). Also sitting with the posters are a pair of thick sheets of paper with a cutout fuchikoma model on each of them, but I'm hesitant to cut either of them out, as I really don't want to harm any part of this collection.
I suppose Booklet is something of a misnomer, as it is more of a little 8x11 folder with a few goodies inside. In the left pocket rests a 20-page booklet with commentary on the various illustrations on the posters, a brief overview of the coloring process, and instructions for the Paper Fuchikoma sheets. Looking in the righ half of the folder, one first sees the credit-card-sized "Certificate of Limited Member" framed on a folded sheet of paper. On the reverse side are two scraps of paper, one with some sort of redemption offer for what I think is a phone card, and the other contains a little scratch game that gave you the chance to win a t-shirt with a pile of multi-colored Fuchikomas on it. I'd love to try for these, but it was open to Japanese residents only, and the offer expired at the end of September 1997. The other items in the folder are a pair of sticker sheets, with one set featuring the assorted fuchikomas on the t-shirt, and the other contains four variations each of four of the posters.
As I said before, I wasn't expecting anywhere near the quality that was delivered on this puzzle, and for that I'm glad. Featuring the fairly well known 'Made in Japan' girl, this is a full 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, and should prove an enjoyable challenge to assemble sometime. They've even gone so far as to include some sort of glue with the puzzle so that you can spread it over the back(front?) of the puzzle and keep it in one piece once you're done assembling it. For my part, I'm still hesitating about opening bag with the puzzle pieces in it, and it doesn't help that there isn't a ready place to assemble the puzzle in the apartment.
