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Ghost in the Shell

æ”»æź»(こうかく)機(き)拕隊(ă©ă†ăŸă„)(Armored Shell Riot Police/Ghost in the Shell)A) is a Japanese sci-fi franchise. In the West, the most well-known entry is the 1995 film, which also happens to be quite bad. In Japan, I’m guessing the most popular entry is Stand Alone Complex.B)

Notes

Terminology

  • External Memory
    • Refers to memory that is ‘external’ in relation to the brain. Any digital storage medium can technically count,C) but it seems to generally be used to supplement regular memory.
  • Ghost
    • Refers quite clearly to the soul. Some analog thing inside the brain that they don’t quite understand in their world. When reading it, it comes off as static.
    • I’m not sure why they call it a ‘ghost’ rather than a soul. It could be the case that, in universe, it is called a soul in English and this is some weird Japanese borrowing. In the primary world, this is probably because it sounds cool or the writer just didn’t realize that ‘soul’ and ‘ghost’ don’t have the same meaning.D)

Reviews

Manga

The Manga that started it all, written by Masamune Shirow. Now, I read this and
I wasn’t particularly impressed. ‘Masterpiece’ is waaaay too generous to describe this. It’s average at best. Note that I’m only covering the first manga and not that weird sequel, which I haven’t read yet.
Now, the manga’s main issue is its aversion to explaining anything. Reading through the manga is confusing
since:

  • Individual chapters are linked together very loosely. It’s extremely episodicE).
  • Characters are barely explained. If you thought Paz and Borma were not focused on in the later entries
oh boy. That isn’t even including all the characters that have a unique or eye-catching design who appear once and never again

  • Worldbuilding concepts (and concepts) in general are poorly explained.

I predict a counter-argument will be leveled against me: the author notes at the end. Masamune-sensei decided to explain several things at the end of the volume in footnotes. These footnotes are interesting to read
but they don’t actually change much. Since you’re supposed to explain things in and through the story
not at the end of it. Not all the notes explain stuff that is needed to understand what is going on, but the ones that do should have been in the story itself. I also personally don’t know how bad the explanations are in the manga
since I’ve already seen the film and all of SAC, meaning I’ve already got a good idea of what all the things are. Though one example I’m sure about is ghost dubbing which, as far as I remember, isn’t explained at all in the manga.
Besides that, I’ve found some plot points were contrived. Particularly the Major’s acceptance of the Puppet Master’s proposal. Within a few panels she goes from skeptical to fully acceptingF).
The manga also focuses on the philosophical themes too much
to the detriment of the story. The later SAC handles this far better. Something else I noticed is that the name ‘Ghost in the Shell’G) isn’t even thematically appropriate, since there’s no exploration of that as a theme.H)
I will note this: it’s pretty shocking going from the rest of the franchise to back here
since it’s radically different in places. The Major has a more playful and less stoic personality. She also goes on datesI). Besides that, the ésthetic is also different
way less grounded than the later SAC. I don’t personally think this works, since the world doesn’t feel ‘real’ in the way that SAC does.
What reading the manga told me is that, somewhat ironically, Ghost in the Shell did better outside of the hands of its original creator.
As far as I see it, the manga is an interesting footnote. It’s most relevant in regards to the film
which I previously thought deviated from the manga
but it turns out it didn’t. Well it did in the characterization of Kusanagi
it would honestly be interesting to see an adaptation that adapts her character properly, but that’s a whole different can of worms.
Would I recommend reading it? No, if you aren’t big on Ghost in the Shell
yes, if you are.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

This was the first part of the Ghost in the Shell franchise that I experienced
and I was deeply disappointed after I first saw it. You see, I had heard for years that it was a certified masterpiece
one of the best anime films ever made!
This turns out to be untrue and it only reaffirmed that the western anime community is the least reliable source for determining the quality of any piece of media.
Now, after having read the manga, I found that the film was more accurate than I initially thought. In fact, it’s probably one of the more accurate adaptations of a manga that I’ve seen. It does throw the manga’s ésthetic out the window for its own (Patlabor 2-like) and it makes the world more grim in general
but the plot regarding the puppet master is on-point. It actually improves upon the manga by hinting at the Major’s reasons for accepting his proposal early on.
Like the manga though, it focuses too much on its philosophical nonsense to the detriment of the story. It also has too many ‘static’ scenes: where we see some landscape image with music playing over it
while nothing actually happens. This is similar to Patlabor 2, but Patlabor 2 actually achieved something with itJ). And, just like the manga, it has an issue with explaining things.K)
There are positives here: like Blade Runner, the portrayal of the worldbuilding was masterclass but, unlike SAC and like Blade Runner, the world doesn’t come off as believable. The issue here is that Ghost in the Shell portrays a world so grim that it’s hard to believe it could be this grim.L) This is the only part of the franchise, as far as I currently know, that has this problem. Well
the manga technically counts, but for a different reason. What the worldbuilding gets across extremely well is just how cyberized the world is: everyone has cybernetics, there are androids all over the place and most people don’t double-take when they see some ridiculous enhancement. Even the military is heavily cyberized.

Stand Alone Complex

One day we will find something that is the best of the franchise that isn’t simultaneously my favorite.
Stand Alone Complex is unquestionably the highest-quality thing to come out of Ghost in the Shell. The only thing that comes close to the first season is the second season.
S.A.C. is interesting regarding adaptations, as it could be argued it’s not a good adaptation. However, S.A.C. is not an adaptation
it’s a spin-off that’s heavily inspired by Ghost in the Shell. It’s even in the name itself ‘Stand Alone Complex’. The subtitle, which is carried by all of its derivative works (unless I’m missing something) also indicates to the audience that it is not related to the rest of Ghost in the Shell. And for those who like comparing adaptations/spin-offs/whatever, it’s interesting just how the various things in the Manga were adapted into S.A.C. The Puppet Master’s adaptation was particularly
intriguing.
Both seasons (and the film) are also dripping with the 2000s, which I very much like. Just like Kidƍ Kēsatsu Patlabor. There are optical(?) discs in caddies, there are barcodes everywhere
for some reason
? The film has a rap by Heartsdales. It’s freaking great.
Before I move on to the individual entries, I think I should mention something I found interesting. One thing that I’m quite sure about is that I saw the Laughing Man logo years before I even knew about Ghost in the Shell. That either speaks to S.A.C.'s influence, or to how damn good of a design that logo is. The Laughing Man may also be the reason S.A.C.'s first season is so iconic and why 2nd Gig might not be remembered as wellM) since it doesn’t feature anything like it.
Further, it’s difficult to find official merchandise with it.

S.A.C.

This is the first season, with all the Laughing Man shenanigans.
I think that S.A.C. takes the basic ideas that Ghost in the Shell presented, in the Manga and the film
and elevated them to something that is almost a masterpiece. Although I don’t think S.A.C. is perfect, I think that it is near-perfect.
The series is episodic, but it does have an over-arching plot that it does go into (and quite fast too, by episode 4 we’re already on the Laughing Man track).
Besides the Laughing Man thing, this is probably the first GitS property that actually explores the ‘Ghost in the Shell’ theme, mainly in Episode 3 ささやかăȘ揍äč± / ANDROID AND I and with the Tachikomas. But I think Episode 3 is more subtle about it. I remember being super excited after that episode, for that reason.N)
I’d just recommend watching it, don’t bother listening to me (except for the ‘watch it’ part).

2nd Gig

The second season of S.A.C. and
I don’t think it’s worse than S.A.C., it just lacks the Laughing Man. That’s about the main downside. It’s also a bit confusing as to what the antagonist wants (he’s also super obvious about being the bad guy).
Maybe a re-watch will make it clearer to me.
I’d still recommend watching this, particularly if you want more S.A.C., since it’s very comparable quality-wise. There’s another brief ‘Ghost in the Shell’ thing in here and not just from the Tachikomas, so yay!

Solid State Society

There’s a 2-year time skip between SSS and 2nd Gig, during which a few interesting things happen. Kusanagi has left Section 9 for some reason, I guess she wanted more freedom. Section 9 has been expanded and Bato is like a Maverick now. A grumbling old man, I guess.
Something mysterious and kinda spooky is going on involving children being
kidnapped? Kidnapped by old people, no less, who are connected to the internet via care pods. It’s pretty spooky. There’s a particularly tense moment involving Togusa, our guy.
Anyway, other changes include the fact Togusa apparently told his family he works for Section 9 instead of a security company. Togusa is also more cyberized than before and he’s stopped being sentimental about what weapons he carries. Less naïve, more badass.
In the end, it’s revealed that the antagonist is just some guy? Yeah, some bureaucrat who developed a conscience. Except no! Plot twist! The guy was actually a ‘shard’ of Kusanagi, who developed self-awareness, took control of this bureaucrat’s body (who had died from mysterious circumstances, my favorite) to start delivering what he/she viewed as justice. That seriously spooked the Major, who decided to go back to Section 9(?). The implications of that alone are worth analyzing or exploring in future installments.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

SAC_2045

Since I decided to move most of my criticism to a dedicated section where I criticize SAC_2045, I’ll focus on just the review portion here. Or, rather, I had a dedicated section, but I decided to refine that first before releasing it.
I was initially hesitant when I first heard about this for several reasons. Netflix, 3D and aesthetic differences. As I watched it, though, I did get into it. Unfortunately, once it ended I was left dumbfounded.
Is SAC_2045 good? No. No it is not. Would I recommend watching it anyway? Probably not.
Since I’m not going to be focusing on critique here, I’ll take the
space
to focus on something else. Right, there are two seasons. No there aren’t. There’s one season split into two for some reason.
The animation is pretty good. It’s not quite Monty Oum-level action, but the action was still quite nice. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite take advantage of the 3D animation to do anything too crazy. I’d say the action in SAC_2045 doesn’t get as good as the action in S.A.C. or 2nd Gig though.
Some might like that the aesthetics of SAC_2045 got updated more to the modern day
I didn’t. Although I have to admit that they did a pretty good job of updating the looks of some things. Similar to Kidƍ Kēsatsu Patlabor’s attempt to do so.O)
Also, the critics of this show (skimmed Wikipedia a while ago) are probably too harsh, especially when it comes to action and animation. When it comes to philosophy
well, I don’t remember what they said, just that I thought they were being stupid about it. The writing in SAC_2045 isn’t good and the philosophy presented here is completely bonkers, but I don’t think it was presented any differently from the previous S.A.C. entries.
The way I’d rank this among the rest of Ghost in the Shell is
well, I should note first that I initially thought that SAC_2045 was better than the 1995 film. I’ve since changed my mind: SAC_2045 is probably worse than the 1995 film. The film has pretty animation to look at and doesn’t quite break the world/story as much as SAC_2045. However, if both were standalone, SAC_2045 would probably rank higher. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Also, a big surprise to hear Mili perform the first season’s ED.

Speculah & Analysis

Minor Tech Misunderstanding

There are times where Ghost in the Shell appears to make mistakes in relation to the technology being used. This is nitpicking of the highest order.

Ghost heard as noise/static.

While I believe this to be an error
I am declaring it an error based on an assumption. Basically, there’s a point in the manga where Kusanagi connects to the other Section 9 members through their electronic telepathy thing. And at this point, the others start to hear her ghost in the form of static, or she tells them not to get ‘closer’ (whatever that means in this context) to the static because that’s her ghost. (I’ll have to check later for sure.) However, if we assume the communications are digital (why wouldn’t they be?), then why can the ghost be heard as noise at all? Part of the plus of digital data is that there’s no interference or noise
so her ghost shouldn’t be audible through those communications at all.
I’ll add that the way the telepathy works in the manga is really strange anyway
with everything else treating it as just electronic communication.

Kusanagi's eyes having scanlines.

In the film, after being knocked down and severely injured, we get to see the scene through Kusanagi’s eyes
and they have scanlines. Scanlines are only a thing in CRT Displays (Will check for sure later) and I doubt her android eyes are CRTs. Now, this could be excused if: A. Her vision is interlaced for some reason (unlikely). B. Her vision has scanlines by default. The first makes some sense but, logically, her eyes should be sending her raw (or at least properly processed) visual data, rather than any kind of
whatever we see.

The United Nations

The UN existing is a serious flaw in the worldbuilding of Ghost in the Shell. The UN’s main goal is to prevent another World War from occurring.
The Ghost in the Shell universe has two world wars happen back-to-back – needless to say, the UN should not be able to survive this.
To elaborate further, the UN would have serious trouble justifying its own existence after another major war, let alone a world war
let alone two of them back-to-back. Even if the UN doesn’t suddenly collapse, it would definitely ‘rot away’ over time, as member states might choose to leave due to the UN’s lack of legitimacy. The UN could only survive if it seriously reformed into something completely different.
For example, I can see the UN disappearing, but organizations like UNESCO (or at least their World Heritage thing) surviving in some form. Or the WHO surviving. But the UN as a whole, with peacekeeping operations? Nah.

Name Speculah

The term æ”»æź»æ©Ÿć‹•éšŠ is a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting to go down. This is the name that the franchise is known under in Japanese. Ghost in the Shell is the name of the film and the subtitle of the initial manga, but all the other productions use that.
Wikipedia translates it as ‘Mobile Armored Riot Police’1) which is described as the literal translation
which is, uh, a choice.
I wanted to check whether this was accurate, so I looked at the individual Kanji to piece things together. æ©Ÿć‹•éšŠ is pretty straightforward, as it’s ‘Riot Police’. This is also, probably, where the ‘mobile’ comes from, because the 拕 means ‘motion’. So, if we work backwards from Wikipedia’s ‘literal’ translation, the first half æ”»æź» should mean ‘armored’. But

It doesn’t. The æ”»æź» is an invented word presumably created just for the franchise. The first character (攻) means ‘aggression’ or ‘attack’P) and the second (æź») means ‘shell’, as in ‘electron shell’ going by the specific reading, though it means ‘shell’ as in ‘husk’ more generally. You’ll notice that only ‘shell’ could be considered to be included in the translation.
The thing is that this is a pretty complicated term, so it’s understandable that there’s confusion. I couldn’t really think of how to translate it myself. I settled on ‘Armored Shell Riot Police’ because it makes the most sense as a literal translation: they are cyborg riot police, they have an ‘armored shell’. Though an alternate translation could be ‘Offensive Shell Riot Police’ or ‘Offensive Armored Shell Riot Police’. I am technically excluding the ‘aggressive’, though I can understand why that’s excluded, since it’s assumed in ‘riot police’. In-universe, it makes half sense, since they’re mostly an offensive force rather than defensive.
It’s confusing and annoying.

  • Cyberbrain - I’ll read it later.
  • aniDB - For the movie.
  • aniDB - For S.A.C.
  • AniList - For the movie.
  • AniList - For S.A.C.
  • AniList - For the Manga.
  • These are links to the first film and the first season
the remaining content can be accessed via ‘clicking on stuff’.
  • There’s something I forgot to note when comparing SAC to the film. The film is pretty clearly ‘dystopic’ in tone. The world it portrays doesn’t look very nice. SAC, in comparison, looks pretty normal, just that technology has moved into a weird place. This key difference makes SAC way more interesting. This is just how the world is now. The manga is just weird.
  • I have just found out (2025-04-27) that there’s going to be another adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, the manga, coming out sometime in 2026. The poster suggests it’s going to be more faithful so
cool.

A) This is an unexpectedly big rabbit hole. Refer to Name Speculah
B) Evidence to back this claim is the simple fact that the S.A.C. branch has more content than the film branch. The 1995 film has one sequel and a remake. S.A.C. has two seasons, two summary OVAs, a TV movie, a spin-off and an additional sequel series with two seasons and its own summary OVAs. That isn’t including all the additional content like vidya.
C) To elaborate on this. Based on how the term is used in-universe, any device that stores memory/information outside of the brain classifies as ‘external memory’. So, basically, your hard drive or SD card would fall under this as well. Where it gets potentially confusing is where they will save actual memories to an external memory. But it should be kept in mind that this is a world where memories can be fully digitized.
D) Of course ‘Soul in the Shell’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.
E) More so than the later Stand Alone Complex, which is impressive considering half of that series is made up of individual episodes.
F) The manga does attempt to present this as part of her character, but we don’t get enough for the split-second flip to make sense. The fact the Puppet Master points out she accepted faster than he expected indicates that Masamune-sensei knew that something was off.
G) Granted, it’s a subtitle in the original Japanese and it does sound cool.
H) This is me being honest, because ‘Ghost in the Shell’ implies something very different from what we see. The only examples I can think of, from the Manga, are the Uchikomas and that one chapter where they learn Ghost Dubbing was used to create Androids. Though the Uchikomas are kinda a side-note in the manga, strangely enough. And Ghost Dubbing is kinda
not what the theme is.
I) Whether she dated around in the later entries, like SAC, is hard to figure out. I get the impression she doesn’t, but I’ll have to check.
J) I’m specifically referring to the scenes of the soldiers in Tokyo. Showing how daily life has changed (or hasn’t) with the presence of soldiers.
K) It could be argued that the film doesn’t neglect to explain anything important to understand the plot and everything else can be pieced together. I can’t remember whether this is or is not the case, though. I was pretty sure that there was something, but since I can’t remember what
yeah.
L) In both Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, you end up wondering how anyone could live in this world when it’s so depressing. This is a worldbuilding flaw because the world just can’t exist in that state for long.
M) Assuming it is. In my mind, however, the two seasons tend to blend together. Although I can still differentiate them.
N) I should note that I was kinda let down after that episode, since it was never directly followed-up on. The focus with the theme really shifts to the Tachikomas
which isn’t bad just
different.
O) Which isn’t yet detailed there. Oops!
P) And also ‘criticize’ or ‘polish’, but I think the general meeting is ‘aggression’.

lb/gits.txt · Last modified: 2025-05-04 08:00:28 by ninjasr

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