I ran across this article today and I highly suggest everyone give it a read. It's a really impressively written article. To quote my favorite that the article speaks of "Ghost in the Shell":

Typically, television series based off of movies aren't all that good, and when the original movie literally put this reviewer to sleep, it's got very little going on in the way of expectations. Luckily, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex manages to so completely trump the original movie that it's no wonder it eventually got a movie in its own universe. The first season's split between "Stand Alone" (episodes in which the story begins and ends in one episode) and "Complex" (dealing with the Laughing Man storyline) allows a great number of stories to be told, almost all of them succeeding. The Laughing Man plot starts out excellent and becomes more and more compelling near the end, especially as non-cyborg member Togusa grows bolder and bolder and as Section 9 is hunted down one-by-one. What's even more amazing is that the "Stand Alone" episodes are just as good. Some of the plots are a little confusing, and some episodes seem to exist just to up the action quotient. However, most of these episodes work just as well, allowing us to see more of the characters' personalities and quirks, as evidenced when they tried to turn the series into a compilation movie and failed horribly.

Now, the first season was all kinds of awesome and would have gone down as a very high quality anime series, but then the staff just had to go and make 2nd GIG, which so completely blows the first season out of the water it makes the original 26 episodes look mundane in comparison. The Gohda and Individual Eleven storylines are much more gripping with many twists and turns along the way, while the Stand Alone episodes this time around feature the secondary cast a bit more and offer interesting and compelling stories from their past. Plus, we get more emphasis on and better use of the think-tank Tachikomas, who are so endearing and cute that many people don't consider an episode good unless it has a Tachikoma scene somewhere within. It also helps that the animation got a huge upgrade, going from a well-animated series to some of the best television animation ever seen. That's not even counting the Yoko Kanno background music, the opening theme that almost topped "Cruel Angel's Thesis" from Neon Genesis Evangelion as this reviewer's favorite anime opening ever, or the dub so masterful and excellent that I'd even put it above Cowboy Bebop's.

Source

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!