Mamoru Oshii can be fairly described as a cold director overall. He isn't so much interested in characters or human warmth as he is in philosophical themes and brooding atmosphere. That's apparent even in his earlier works such as Twilight Q, but becomes ever more apparent the further in his career you get, especially after he abandons Kazunori Ito (or Ito abandoned him for .hack?) to write his own screenplays for films such as Innocence.
Yeah for sure. At the same this seemed even more pronounced here, maybe because it's much more of an ensemble cast, with the resulting smaller amount of time for each character and nothing like Major's connection to the movie's themes in the first GitS. (If I'm remembering that right, it's been years.)
lol is Innocence just pure unfiltered Oshii then?
Angel's Egg should surely be in the running too.