Ghost In The Shelll

Do robots have souls? Do you?

"In the year 2029, Niihama City has become a technologically advanced metropolis. Due to great improvements in cybernetics, its citizens are able to replace their limbs with robotic parts. The world is now more interconnected than ever before, and the city's Public Security Section 9 is responsible for combating corruption, terrorism, and other dangerous threats following this shift toward globalization.

The strong-willed Major Motoko Kusanagi of Section 9 spearheads a case involving a mysterious hacker known only as the "Puppet Master," who leaves a trail of victims stripped of their memories. Like many in this futuristic world, the Puppet Master's body is almost entirely robotic, giving them incredible power.

As Motoko and her subordinates follow the enigmatic criminal's trail, other parties—including Section 6—start to get involved, forcing her to confront the extremely complicated nature of the case. Pondering about various philosophical questions, such as her own life's meaning, Motoko soon realizes that the one who will provide these answers is none other than the Puppet Master themself."

Motoko Kusanagi ladies & gentlemen.

Impressive visuals.

This blog was opened decades ago, 17 years ago to be exact. Hundreds of films, TV shows and Animation from the most diverse genres have been reviewed. Today, is the day I pay a long overdue debt I had with one of my all time favorites: Ghost In The Shell, by maestro Shirow Masamune. While, this intro may seem useless to the reader, I actually think this review is arriving just in time. Society has evolved enough to have people making friends with AI, and even typing "Please" before every prompt we make. That science fiction distant future, is slowly becoming a reality, and we are now "wired to the network" even as we sleep at night. 

Bare with me, and let's try to answer two larger than life philosophical questions: What makes a person, a person? is there a soul? If so, where is it, and where does it come from? Science fiction interest in using philosophy, religion, and mythology as part of what sets its context and drives its characters, has been explored and exploited since the beginning of time.

Ghost In The Shell, GITS from now on, it's a 1995 1 hour and 22 minute OVA based on the first volume of the eponymous manga. The source material was originally published on the Kaizokuban magazine from 1989 to 1990, in 11 publications. Obviously, you can't expect an hour and a half movie to cover the source material in its entirety, so we won't go through the usual "The Manga is better than the OVA because...". The original source material will always remain the best. Even for the Snow White classic tale. 

"Cybernetic organism with living tissue".

The outside looks very real.

In case you're still reading, the OVA heavily condenses the original storyline, reducing the original material's comic relief and sexual content in favor of a more serious tone and changing the setting from Japan to a city modelled after Hong Kong. The artwork within the animated film was produced using an innovative mix of cel animation and digital effects that had never been seen before in an animated feature from the genre which perhaps helped in making GITS one of the world's most famous Japanese animated films, being the first to reach #1 on Billboard magazine's video best-seller list, and also served as a major inspiration for the Wachowskis in their creation of the Matrix movies. 

Plotwise, Cyborg cops battle an anonymous super-hacker who takes control of people's computerized brains and forces them to do his bidding. It's a wicked sci-fi thriller, yet it's also so much more. Not only is it a refreshingly original take on the standard Coppers vs Robbers plot, but it manages to do it in such an intelligent manner. The philosophical questions above mentioned, are never shoved into our faces every five minutes, yet the producers of the OVA seem to know exactly the type of audience this story is aimed to. Casual sci-fi enthusiasts may feel a bot overwhelmed with the lack of a clear background context for characters and even the city where the story takes place. This isn't a Marvel movie. This is based on a Manga that knows that its niche audience has a brain that works. 

Visuals, as above mentioned already, are one of the elements that make  GITS essential viewing. The action scenes take it to the next level with Kokomo's invisible suit. Moreover, every scene is full of atmosphere, due to detailed backgrounds, and a clever use of CGI technology that was limited at the time, and yet it delivers a seamless visual experience even today. Yet the most astonishing part of the art is not the quality of the animation, or the artwork. It's the level of thought and polish that went into creating the look and feel of this film. I mean, the Manga artwork is already impressive, but here they found a way to make it even more impressive.

 

In for a surprise.

The Matrix has you...

Now, going back a bit to the philosophical questions the original manga asked, and this movie also asks, I'd like to focus on three crucial elements that I think the film manages to pull off nicely for an 82 minute animation. One, the question "what makes us human?" Most humans living in Niihama City have chosen to enhanced their bodies with cybernetics. There is one crucial scene, near the climax of GITS where producers cleverly ask "Does pain make you human?". The answer in this futuristic cyberpunk world comes in the shape of "when you're a cybernetic organism, you no longer feel pain, even if your limbs are taken to the extreme". 

Second question: Does building memories make us human? Well, the super hacker behind the story is certainly a philosopher himself. When people start falling victim of his tricks, they lose their memories. Moreover, this puppet master implants foreign memories into his victims making them believe they actually lived these experiences in the past. Quite clever if you ask me. A lot of people in the real world are discussing the good ol' days, and nostalgia as if they experienced it first hand. Many youtubers and influencers alike, only talk about what they read on the internet. Especially when they want to discuss retro tech, or cartoons from before they were born. This clearly makes them misunderstand some key information and eventually produce content that has a lot of misinformation in it, yet they strongly believe they know what they're talking about. Also, you can go back to adolescence, and think how hard we try to fit in with our group of friends sometimes forcing ourselves into enjoying things others find cool just to be  a part of something. 

 

Yes, big secret mecha.

This man deserved more screen-time.

Third and final question, where does our soul go after we die? Thinking about the OVA title, our "ghost" inhabits a body (shell) for a limited period of time, so can machines host souls in their mechanical skeletons too? Motoko certainly experiences this long before her dying body is rescued and replaced by a newer, younger version of herself. When she encounters the puppet master, a special connection happens between the two, despite having different motivations and responsibilities they ultimately blend.

I'm simply amazed at how philosophical Animé can be. There's so much content underneath the science fiction cover, that I think that's what makes us come back for another watch. Moreover, some of the greatest celluloid franchises come packed with philosophical questions that can only be seen after a few rewatches. Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, Matrix, are amongst some of the films that have used science fiction as a facade to push people into the "more than meets the eye" motto a certain transforming robots cartoon preached long ago.

Still here? waste no more time and go watch Ghost in the Shell!

 

 

Appleseed

a police girl and his biodroid colleague.

The work of Shirow Masamune is largely recognizable, and it has inspired the world of Manga and Animé, as well as their enthusiastic fans. With cyberpunk titles like Ghost in the Shell (not reviewed here yet, I don't know why), Dominion Tank Police,  and today's entry, Shirow explored what makes us human through futuristic settings mingling technology and flesh. Sadly, trying to tell the original 7 chapters from volume 2 of from the manga, seems a nearly impossible venture. Be thankful they chose to work with this volume alone. Volume 3 was released on July 31st, 1987, around the same time this OVA began production, and the final volume wouldn't be released until April, 15th, 1989. Imagine how much of a mess it would have been to fit 25 chapters into and hour animated feature.

The 70-minute OVA from 1988 is based upon volume 2 of the manga, and opens with a woman's suicide scene. We soon realize it is part of Caron Mautholos nightmare as he nightly revisits his wife's suicide. He's a member of the police force of Olympus, a city built after World War III.  Charon's mental health has reached a sticking point that secretly drives him into teaming up with terrorist A.J. Sebastian to  bring down the city and its entire leadership. I just love how antagonists have a tendency to avoid going to therapy, and prefer to choose elaborated schemes to destroy the world as if massive murder and chaos could make you come to terms with your inner demons: "hey, I know a good therapist you could talk to". "Nah!, I'll destroy the world instead".

Good ol' opening titles style.

The future.

Enter the good guys Deunan and Briareos, two cops ready to go beyond the call of duty. Deunan can be the animated equivalent of any female action hero from an 80s film. She could be Red Sonja, Ellen Ripley, and Sarah Connor at the same time, while on the other hand Briareos is actually a human being, a WWIII survivor. Underneath his cybernetic implants and new body parts, he still enjoys burgers and fries. Their mission is clear: find who's behind the stolen new defense technology. Little do they know though, that their enemy is right next to them.

For someone from the 80s, the animation on this film is good enough.Some of the action scenes come off nicely. It looks like an average OVA from its era. Some will always criticize this, as the source material will always be superior regarding character design and action sequences. Obviously, the manga NEEDS TO provide attractive visuals in order to survive in a world where hundreds of thousands of the same work are being still made as we speak. The OVA on the other hand, like most of them, suffers from time constraints, and modest budget, so here and there you will see some ugly animation but, I would neither call it an abomination nor a crime against Shirow Masamune.

Dining with colleagues is dangerous.

Nothing is more chill than cleaning your gun in your underwear.

From a plot perspective, director and writer Kazuyoshi Katayama scrapped all the subtleties the Manga had to offer, turning off everything that makes Appleseed an interesting read. Instead we're offered a standard cop story where everything is reduced into "the good guys battle the bad guys" type of story that may appeal to children, instead of teenagers and young adults, who are the original target audience of the story. I have to admit, in rewatching the OVA I fell asleep several times. As a matter of fact, I had this review incomplete for several months because I simply couldn't watch it from start to finish paying attention to details in order to have something to say other than "the manga is better, discard this from your watch list". However, Appleseed is worth watching as an early exercise on trying to adapt Shirow's work into the small screen.  Most online reviews agree it's neither the worst, nor the best you can find in the cyberpunk genre during the OVA craze of the second half of the 80s. Perhaps, its only value lies in the fact this is an adaptation from one of the most popular authors of all time. Not everyone reads manga, they prefer the animated adaptations faithful or not. 

Cassette tapes in the future.

That 80s look Animé nails like no other.

My earliest memories of seeing some Shirow Masamune work, was through the Robotech comics. There were pages of ads from a variety of Animé/manga being published for the first time in the US, and one of those was Dominion Tank Police, originally released in Japan from 1985 to 1986. The Manga would obviously be adapted into an OVA in 1988 but it wouldn't be officially licensed until 1993. All I had was the ad, there was no chance I could get my hands into either the Manga or the OVA before it was legally available. My second encounter with his work would be his greatest work to date, Ghost In The Shell. This is circa 1996/1997 were there was a small but healthy industry producing dubbed/subbed VHS tapes with some of the most popular titles. Most of them would be from the 80s, but in the case of GITS, they managed to release a year or two after the Japanese release date. I was blown away. I even managed to get a deluxe reissue of the original manga and its sequel decades later. I know I should have reviewed it long ago, but since I like it so much, it takes me a longer time to decide how to proceed to avoid fangirling all over a post. Moreover, I did review the 2017 LAM, which I thought was pretty decent despite the negative reviews focused on Scarlett Johansson not being Japanese. In case you're interested here it is.

 

Robotech bioroids?

We're only here for the Mecha.

 

Another interesting fact we can observe on Appleseed, and in many other cyberpunk productions is how the artists perceived the future. Robots, cyborgs, transforming mecha, and power armors are everywhere. Yet, some of the most rudimentary technologies seem to be stuck in the past. The police department still has typing machines, and while they do have computers to profile criminals, they're still large in size. Watches are just watches, and phones haven't gone that far from video calls. No smart technology unless we go back to the robot part above mentioned. 

Now, we know and understand this retro futurism is there only for entertainment purposes, not to be historically accurate. Yet, in 2025 people are still listening to cassette tapes, wearing that old Casio F-91W, while living in an environment that is fully connected through the internet, very much like it is on Appleseed's city  of Olympus, where Gaia, a super computer, runs the various utilities and networks that make the city a safe place for humans, cyborgs and bioroids. So, old and new technology do share room in today's world. Two points for Shirow Masamune for predicting it. And two extra points for making the villains skip therapy and go straight into terrorist mode, just like it is today as well.

Yes, I'm sort of a hipster myself.

Yes, a collect call for Mr. Baldnutz, please.

Want more predictions? Well, just when you thought that was it, let's go back a bit to that opening suicide scene. Charon's wife, Fleia was an artist. The problem is felt stifled with all the artificial intelligence surrounding her. Aren't today's artists struggling with AI generators? Of course they are! that's why none of us should be using image generators to get some artistic result with a few prompts here and there. Fleia simply felt there was no reason for her to exist in such a pre-programmed world where there was scarce room for creativity and artistry. You can even create full songs with AI today. After she kills herself, Charon's anger towards this technological world grows bitter. Even though he's aided by A.J. Sebastian, who is only partially human, the reasons why Sebastian joins in the battle against technology remain unclear. I mean, you have survived with the aide of cybernetic limbs, why hate what kept you alive? Perhaps, he wants to secretly control the city?

 

There is no room for artists in the future.

Fleia warned us.

 

Overall, Appleseed is an experience you can choose to live or skip. If you're interested in the few animated adaptations of Shirow, go ahead give it a try. If not, perhaps try reading the manga instead. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

 

Ghost in the Shell

What makes us real?

Ghost in the Shell is probably one of the most beloved Anime properties in recent history. the 1995 OVA based upon the astonishing Masamune Shirow Manga blew everyone's VCR minds sky high! The music, the animation quality (with gigantic attention to detail) the presence of Shoji Kawamori in mechanical designs and the depresssing future themes granted GITS a place in history. 

Today, 22 years later comes the live action remake that everyone's been talking about for all the wrong reasons? To each his own, of course. However, as we always advice, watch the movies yourself. Don't let yourself be biased by missinformed people, naysayers, trolls, fanboys and wholesome pieces of shit from the crappy world of social networks. Shit, how I miss the 90's! it was so much easier and positive back in the day! 

So, Ghost in the Shell may or may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't nowhere nearly as bad as they want you to believe. Starred by Scarlett Johansson (sci-fi superstar!, look at her CV!)  as The Major (not a single minute called by her original name Motoko Kusagani) an enhanced cybernetic being devoted to stop the world's most dangerous criminals. Co-starred by film legends Takeshi Kitano (as Aramaki) & Juliette Binoche (as doctor Ouelet), the GITS film adaptation is actually very different from the original OVA.  The first big change is the fact that Motoko Kusanagi is no longer one of the many enhanced cyborg organisms living in the GITS universe. This time, she's the very fist enhanced being so that clearly calls for some bigger changes in the script that is cleverly, yet predictably adapted by Jamie Moss, William Wheeler & Ehren Kruger under the correct direction of Rupert Sanders. If you've watched the original GITS you know this big change will somehow diminish the complexity of the philosophy within the film. The second change is the fact that the Puppet Master (the original bad guy in the Anime) is no longer depicted as a hacker criminal, AKA project 2501 with the ability to travel across the cybernetic network and do as he pleases with immense power. Nope! the new bad guy is called Kuze (played by Kurt Cobain wannabe Michael Pitt) which instantly means we won't be seeing the naked girl being hit by a truck while the Puppet Master takes complete possesion of her cyborg body in order to establish a connection with Motoko. 

The future.

Cyborg Geisha.

Differences aside, GITS is still a very good movie. Viewers expecting an array of original ideas, don't waste your time!, everything's been done before!. The idea of a cyberpunk futiristic world has been explored by the entertainment industry for eons! Blade Runner, Six Million Dollar Man, Megazone 23, Terminator, Robocop, The Matrix, shall I continue? The thing is, the future of mankind is so interesting as an entertainment context, that I'm sure many films and other artistic forms will keep on exploring the possibilities of a humanity lost in a technological world (aren't we already there?) so bugging about it, won't change the world dudes.

Plotwise with the above mentioned changes, the story is more focused on Major's uniqueness and the world is presented through the eyes of an enhanced woman who's questioning what makes us human and ultimately, what makes us to feel alive.  The antagonist as the word quickly suggests, it's the exact opposite of Johansson's: AI desperately looking to be alive. 

The Major.

it's kicking ass time!

The speciall effects are really good, although not that surprising in this day and age, the invisible armor Major wears in the iconic water battle, looks superb! In addition, her skin tight suit makes it look like Scarlett Johansson was naked all the time! (and that is a good thing for us admirer of the starlet) Boy! look at those curves! (I know I sound like a macho pig, but do excuse me) Some visual sequences look like they were taken from the original 1995 animation, and that is always a welcomed gesture by fans. The opening sequence (although it lacks the original superb theme) is a carbon copy of the OVA. We see Scarlett Johansson being built into the Major frame by frame. Other action scenes were also made to look almost the same as the source material. Again, we can't thank enough director Sanders for that.

The score isn't as thrilling as the original OVA score was, it just plays like your standard derivative superhero/sici-fi soundtrack. Nevertheless, you don't really notice it that much because this film has a e s t h e t i c s written all over! The visual spectacle we're offered is a delight to our eyes. Did I mention Johansson looks like she's naked all the time? Oops!

I'm gonna getcha!

Lookalikes.

Gory violence has been completely erased from existance. Obviously, this is a Hollywood technique they use to widen their audience, thus making more money out of the film and its byproducts. The original OVA had a lot of graphic violence which was essential to the understanding of how cold this future world was. Nevertheless, the film script didn't include those subplots and/or made substantial changes to them to save them from censorship. Unfortunately, those changes make GITS a far predictable film, unlike its original counterpart where there was still a sense of oven fresh ideas.

and what about the whitewashing and shit?

Seriously? do you still see the world according to color, race & gender? If yes, then GITS is clearly a film you shouldn't watch, specially the 1995 OVA where the quintessential question is what makes us human? feelings? sex? gender? offspring? self awareness? Nonetheless, we will not discuss the matter here because we couldn't care less about it. We're all human beings!, persons! which is way more than being LGBT, Latino or Asian! The day we start accepting people as equals is the day war ends. Let's see if we make it to see that day. 

Scarlett Johansson has proven to be one of the most prolific sci-fi actress in the last two decades. She's portrayed comic book characters (Ghost World, Black Widow in the MCU, The Spirit) Science fiction characters (The Island, Lucy, Under the Skin) I think she was the right choice to portray the Major. if you compare her acting side by side with the animé, you'll see she delivers a respectful homage to the original. Besides, she's got the looks.

Major, you're human.

You're not real!

Overall, Ghost in the Shell is a daring experiment at touching something sacred and turning into a brand new western live action film. Like most films, the viewer is to decide whether it is a masterpiece or disposable junk. I for one, think it's a good movie, a fair attempt at paying homage to a wonderful 1995 set of memories I found myself countless times watching with a long gone friend on my VCR during the 90's. Truth be told, this film will never outdo the original, yet I don't think this was the original intention behind the making of this movie, just turn off your internet for a while, sit back, and enjoy this film.

Here's the movie trailer: