Ghost in the Shell

[Doctor M]

There is no grain, just a crop/zoom to remove the left/right borders.  It does not restore what has previously been lost by the original cropping.
Black levels, detail and colors look the same as the U.S. anniversary disc.  I can post more pictures if you want.
In fact, I'd almost swear the zooming softened the picture by a tiny bit (of course the U.S. disc could have light sharpening).
(Not all screenshots mine.)

U.S. 25th Anniversary, Bandai Visual Japan, Judgement:

[Beetwaaf]

Well, that's unfortunate, I'm currently doing some tests to make a merge of the PSNR/Judgement Sources and was hoping that the re-release might provide a 3rd source.

I saw that BronzeTitan mentioned that the grain in the HDTV was in fact noise? My current avisynth script gives a perfect sync for the the sources but I'm curious whether to weight the script even more towards the Judgement source for more grain or not. If it's noise however I'll have to apply a grainplate (thanks to spoRv for the excellent script snippet).

[CSchmidlapp]

Go with the US transfer (It's the same as the UK one with the border). They have removed the noise and as a cost some of the detail, but there is some grain left in there. (The balance between the noise present on the master and negative grain must be quite hard to separate.)
Crop out the border via up-scaling.
Color Correct to the French transfer or close. The 35mm print had more Teal, doing a white balance using the open credits gave me a excellent starting point. I did my project before the French disc existed.
Add subtle grain plate or something like Film-convert.

Then your going to get to the Audio Mixes and that is another head spinner.

[zoidberg]

Watermelon or no watermelon lol

[CSchmidlapp]

Watermelon or no watermelon lol

lol.

LFE track / No LFE track

[zoidberg]

It's never easy is it

[CSchmidlapp]

It's never easy is it

I ended up keeping the missing SFX errors!
Then for the surround mixes, using the 6 channels from the DTS-ES mix and the LFE from the Dolby Mix!

[Beetwaaf]

@CSchmidlapp
Currently working with the original JP BD since it has a slightly better bitrate than the US one, not sure that it makes a huge difference but every bit helps. I also have both the 2 channel LPCM track as well as the 5.1 DTS-ES track.

Is the french the release the best to color match towards? Currently I've been matching the JP BD towards the Judgement HDTV for colors.

[Doctor M]

Does anyone know if there are any screencaps out there of the Japanese 2017 re-release?

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01N12EY85/

Supposedly it's not pillarboxed like all previous blu-rays, the previous japanese release is even better than the french (the grain is still there etc.) but this seems like it quite possibly could solve the issues that have plagued previous releases.

Go with the US transfer (It's the same as the UK one with the border). They have removed the noise and as a cost some of the detail, but there is some grain left in there. (The balance between the noise present on the master and negative grain must be quite hard to separate.)
Crop out the border via up-scaling.
Color Correct to the French transfer or close. The 35mm print had more Teal, doing a white balance using the open credits gave me a excellent starting point. I did my project before the French disc existed.
Add subtle grain plate or something like Film-convert.

Then your going to get to the Audio Mixes and that is another head spinner.

I wouldn't crop the black borders and zoom in like the Bandai BD. If you are using the Judgement as a source it will provide additional image on 4 sides that you'd have to crop to match the BD releases.

[CSchmidlapp]

@CSchmidlapp
Currently working with the original JP BD since it has a slightly better bitrate than the US one, not sure that it makes a huge difference but every bit helps. I also have both the 2 channel LPCM track as well as the 5.1 DTS-ES track.

Is the french the release the best to color match towards? Currently I've been matching the JP BD towards the Judgement HDTV for colors.

Ive PM'ed you.
I have not actually seen the JP disc beyond screenshots. I didn't think it was better or worse than my UK release after a few alterations, so I just went with what I had. Stick with the JP Disc bud. Is it the 2017 version?

Id say the French release was closest available, to what I saw the 35mm showing.
The Judgement HDTV has far to much magenta, which was a problem of most early HD masters. Especially from Japan (There was a fairly lengthy thread on this somewhere. Ill try and remember where!).

What software are you using to create this beast?
If you use the open credits as your 'White Point' the rest of the image corrects itself pretty close.
As I mentioned neither the French or JP 2017 versions we're available when I was working on my project.

Here are some random shots from what i cobbled together.

I wouldn't crop the black borders and zoom in like the Bandai BD. If you are using the Judgement as a source it will provide additional image on 4 sides that you'd have to crop to match the BD releases.

I came to the conclusion the judgment source is not worth using, beyond the extra information on the 4 sides I thought it had more problems than benefits.

You may be able to do something extraordinary with it though. Ive seen magic happen here