Warner Archive Blu-ray

Warner Archive Blu-ray 4K restoration from technicolor negatives

Bandai Japan 4K Blu-ray

All the Anime FRA 4K Blu-ray | Caps comparison: Ghost in the Shell (1995) | Slowpoke Pics

All the Anime FRA 4K Blu-ray

The All the Anime FRA and the Lionsgate USA run to the same frame and come from the same source, while the Bandai JPN is a separate assembly, and these three discs do not share a master and are graded differently. The French and the Japanese hold the same hue throughout; the Lionsgate is shifted, and by different amounts from scene to scene. The Lionsgate is the only Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL (when the All the Anime is Dolby Vision Profile 7 MEL and The Bandai  is only HDR10) and the extra coding precision is genuine, but it buys nothing here: the grain dithers the gradients on its own and none of the three discs bands.

What separates them is texture, and it is not close. The All the Anime FRA is very clearly superior to both others: far more fine detail, tighter edges with no sign of sharpening, and real gradation in the shadows where the other two simply go to black. It is a beautiful master, filmic and untouched. Both the US and the Japanese discs have had DNR applied: flat areas and edges are smoothed alike, so a great deal of the texture the French keeps is simply gone. The Lionsgate also falls apart on darker shots, and the Bandai is the softest of the three on top of a very conservative grade.
The French disc is the one to get, by a wide margin.
Caps comparison: Ghost in the Shell (1995) | Slowpoke Pics

Be warned that the All the Anime FRA is not English-friendly at all: it carries no English audio track and no English subtitles while being well served on the Japanese side, with the 6.1 mix from Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and the original 2.0 mix, both retaining the original 1995 end credits music, alongside the modern Dolby Atmos track.

Worth noting: the KSM GER release may carry the same master as the All the Anime FRA, but without a copy on hand I can neither confirm nor rule it out.

 Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray (damage removed, improved color/HDR, and best audio) or Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray (best compression but no damage removal and LaserDisc audio from Arrow)

Arrow UK 4K Blu-ray >
Capelight DE 4K Blu-ray  Kino Lorber US Blu-ray, see caps

Arrow has done additional cleanup work removing nearly all the damage in the transfer. They have massaged the color timing and HDR to try and improve what they could. The Capelight may have better encoding but it does not have these improvements. The Arrow encoding is solid and in motion there are no issues whatsoever. The Kino release has the damage and other issues plus frequent noise due to the lesser encoding.

Some scenes in the Arrow transfer are better, some better in the Capelight.

Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Arrow  4K Blu-ray or Image Entertainment LaserDisc
(Arrow is a port of the LD track, see spectrograms) This track has the best fidelity of any release but does have some channel bleeding baked in. The 2017 2.0 on the Arrow and Shout BDs was the Dolby Stereo original mix without channel bleeding but that had heavy noise reduction resulting in a very flat and underwhelming presentation. The surround winds up being lessened as well due to the processing. It's a tough choice between the two but the Image LD audio wins out because it hasn't been messed with and the impact is so unrestrained that no other version hits in the same way.

Capelight and old Arrow BD included the original stereo mix, but with excessive noise reduction rendering it much less detailed. Kino only included a painfully defective 2.0 track sourced from somewhere with limited fidelity, volume spikes and screechy high end which frequently ruins the music. The 5.1 remix on most modern release is a processed version that does not sound as good as it once did.

The best and most accurate of the 5.1 mixes is the original version from the 2003 Special Edition DVD in lossy AC3 form.

Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Kino Lorber Blu-ray

4K is defective with color space issues and poor encoding, disc replacement program for the 4K disc has been setup to correct the color space issue. The UHD has visible artifacts from the bad encoding. The HDR is overdone and the Paramount 4K master has grain management.
The new Kino Blu-ray has none of the UHD's problems and is superior to the UHD in every way though it still uses the same Paramount master.

DVD 5.1 or LaserDisc 5.1 AC3, LD PCM 2.0 for the matrix stereo version. The LD and DVD seem to be the theatrical audio mix untouched with plenty of low end. This low end like a number of 90's Paramount titles was mixed out or tamed on subsequent releases. 

The Lionsgate BD and Paramount BD share the same lackluster HD master with DNR and image distortion. The Lionsgate is much better encoded but has a 7.1 remix which messed up the original mix design by lessening all the great Foley work in favor of the score. The Paramount BD had a 5.1 lossless version of the original mix but it's a new version where the bass has been tamed so the track has lost its punch. The Kino Lorber UHD and Blu-ray recycle this same lesser 5.1 mastering. The original mix can still be heard on LD and DVD. The 2.0 stereo on the Kino is matrixed but also does not sound as good as the 2.0 matrix audio on DVD or LD.
Kino has announced a replacement program for the defective UHD but it is highly likely all the other problems will go unaddressed. The Billy Zane interview on the Kino BD has technical issues in the editing and clip quality used.