If Kindred: The Embraced is the Storyteller universe transferred to television, Underworld is the Storyteller universe transferred to the big screen with the serial numbers filed off. Vampires and werewolves at war with a extra helping of melodrama, all taking place under the veneer of the modern world. Unfortunately, taking that universe to the silver screen didn’t work out much better than the small screen.

This movie was portrayed as an action-adventure with “romance” as the plot motivator. It has enough action to qualify without a doubt, but it’s relatively uninspired action. The romance angle is so thin as to be meaningless; the characters supposedly “in love” are willing to buck their entire supernatural society after spending little more than a few hours together. Watching it, I struggled to retain my suspension of disbelief and ultimately failed.

Ghost in the Shell is an anime that has already attained classic status. It merges the potential for beautiful visualization with a powerful storyline exploring philosophical questions. The resulting mix is a very impressive experience, and undoubtedly one of the best examples of the anime art form.

The original dialog is, of course, in Japanese. The translation has some awkardness and occasionally renders the details of the plot hard to follow, but not in a manner that detracts from the really interesting element: exploring the idea of the soul in a world where humans are gradually replacing more and more of their bodies with machines, and even brains can be hacked and reprogrammed.