Back in February, we got a very quick look at the four-part Ghost in the Shell prequel series, Arise. Now the first eight minutes of Arise are online, and the show's looking far better than the opening titles would suggest.
Hit the closed captions button to see the English subtitles. Funimation will be releasing the four 50-minute episodes of Arise on Blu-ray, and is also planning a limited theatrical run of the first two episodes. Here is the synopsis from Anime News Network:
The anime's story is set in 2027, one year after the end of the fourth non-nuclear war. Newport City is still reeling from the war's aftermath when it suffers a bombing caused by a self-propelled mine. Then, a military officer implicated in arms-dealing bribes is gunned down.
During the investigation, Public Security Section 9's Daisuke Aramaki encounters Motoko Kusanagi, the cyborg wizard-level hacker assigned to the military's Secret Unit 501. Batou, a man with the "eye that does not sleep," suspects that Kusanagi is the one behind the bombing. The Niihama Prefectural Police detective Togusa is pursuing his own dual cases of the shooting death and a prostitute's murder. Motoko herself is being watched by Secret Unit 501's head Kurutsu and cyborg agents.
[via Japanator]