In 1995, an anime movie was created by Mamoru Oshii, based on the manga. The anime caused quite a stir, partly due to the use of revolutionary computer graphic techniques and the musical contributions by Kenji Kawai.
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Set in the 21st century, Ghost in the Shell is superficially a futuristic spy thriller, dealing with the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi, a major in the covert operations organization "Section 9", which specializes in fighting technology-related crime. Kusanagi herself is almost completely machine, a human brain in an artificial body, capable of superhuman feats, and specialized for her job.
The setting of Ghost in the Shell is distinctively cyberpunk similar to that of William Gibson's sprawl trilogy, but compared to Gibson, Shirow is much more interested in the ethical and philosophical ramifications of widespread merging of humanity and technology, the development of artificial intelligence, and an omnipresent computer network, in particular related to human identity and uniqueness. The manga, in particular, tackles these questions head on, as Kusanagi and her colleagues face both external threats and puzzles, and internal conflict over their own nature, being more machines than humans.
The overarching story of the manga (and the only story of the anime movie) is of the hunt for a cyber criminal called "The Puppet Master", real identity unknown, who commits a large number of crimes through a single modus operandi: "ghost hacking", breaking into and taking control of human minds. As the agents of Section 9 start to unravel the mystery of the Puppet Master, it becomes clear that it is no ordinary criminal, but a unique autonomous artificial intelligence project created by, and escaped from, the same government Section 9 serves, and wanting a real body and a human identity. Kusanagi, although initially skeptical, finally agrees to allow the Puppet Master to merge with her own consciousness, sharing her body, in what is no doubt intended to raise even more questions about the nature of human identity in a world where human consciousness is no longer unique.
The manga is also notable for the proliferance of footnotes and commentary by Shirow himself on both the technology and the socio-political background of the setting (in the complete, English language graphic novel edition, these take up more than 30 pages).
Directed by Mamoru Oshii, the movie is very atmospheric and slow paced in contrast to the manga. Also unlike the manga in which the characters, were more convivial silly, Oshii focuses on a much more serious situation. In addition Oshii made the anime movie shorter version of the manga to make fit it into 115 minutes of screen time. As a result the film only focuses on the 'Puppet Master Plot' and not the many subplots that were covered in the manga.
Many critics find the result of this conversion from book to film superficial and confusing as well as "boring" and "dull". Other critics argue that it gets rid of a lot of Shirows' "obsessive fannishness", adds focus to the story, and makes for a more "artistically pleasing" and "mature" effort than the original.
In addition, the movie seamlessly blends computer animation and cel animation, with all drawing being done to a high level of quality. The soundtrack is of a classical Japanese style. Ghost in the Shell was one of the first anime movies to blend traditional cel animation with computer generated imagery in this way.
Two television anime series called "" and " has been made, and a second film , called , has also been produced. It is noted that both have a different story line but refer to the "Gits" world of Masamune Shirow. A continuation of the manga and first movie storyline can be found in the second part of the manga entitled "".
One self-titled console game has already been produced for the series, developed by Exact and published by THQ. A second one bearing the series title (Stand Alone Complex) is scheduled for release in November 2004, developed by SCEJ and Cavia and published by Bandai.
The Matrix, a very successful 1999 sci-fi action movie, contains imagery apparently based on this movie (and other anime also). For example, the opening scene with green digits resembles the opening in Ghost in the Shell. During the opening scene in which Trinity flees the agents, the shot of the agent landing on the roof is almost identical to a shot of Kusanagi during the pursuit of the first 'puppet'.
Scenes comparison ( mirror page )
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