A Short Guide to Ghost in the Shell


Only diversity wins in the game of evolution

A cult movie by the cult director - is probably what comes to mind when you hear "Ghost in the Shell". But Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film is only the tip of the iceberg. By the date (2018) the franchise includes:
  1. [1] Angel's Egg by Mamoru Oshii (1985)
  2. [2] The original manga by Masamune Shirow (1989)
  3. [1] The original movie by Mamoru Oshii (1995)
  4. [3] The Standalone Complex TV by Kenji Kamiyama (2002)
  5. [3] The Standalone Complex TV 2nd GIG by Kenji Kamiyama (2004)
  6. [1] GitS Innocence movie by Mamoru Oshii (2004)
  7. [3] GitS SAC: Solid State Society movie by Kenji Kamiyama (2006)
  8. [1] GitS 2.0 (renewal of the original movie) by Mamoru Oshii (2008)
  9. [4] Arise OVA by Kazuchika Kise (2013)
  10. [4] Koukaku Kidoutai ARISE: Alternative Architecture TV by Kazuchika Kise (2015)
  11. [4] Koukaku Kidoutai: Shin Gekijouban by Kazuya Nomura (2015)
If you are not familiar with GitS, it is better to follow the chronological order. The numbers in square braces are (tentative) lineages. Although the lineages incorporate the same fictional world and characters, they are elaborated by different authors and offer barely connected stories. You may wonder, why I have included "Angel's Egg" into the franchise, and what these feathers from the iconic Floating Museum may mean at the picture above. It may be hard to guess, but the feathers are what connects "Angel's Egg" to Oshii's "Ghost in the Shell". Let's speak about this (and about a little bit more) below.

Cyberpunk in a nutshell, or what is necessary to know about the original GitS manga


Cyberpunk is a phenomenon that has grown along with Fantasy on the fertile remnants of deceased hard science fiction. Probably, to look accountable, sci-fi needs to offer a kind of imagery that could be considered somewhat possible, albeit in a fairly distant perspective. But after the readers have realized that brave galaxy conquests a la Douglas Adams are too far-fetched, and humanity does not have time to get even to the Moon until it will be drowned by melting glaciers, new literary vehicles became necessary.

By the moment of the decline of the classic science fiction and its space operas, sci-fi writers had two brilliant devices of escapism, though: the Cyberspace accompanied by the heritage of the J. R. R. Tolkien. And authors' creativity didn't make you wait: now you may find piles of tales for every taste about what happens when hackers get to you iTeaPot or when orcs mate with gnomes. Yes, undoubtedly, there are trace amounts of works that reflect on the miserable aspects of technological diversity or the intricacies of transhumanism. Although the playground inside the genre is too narrow for meditations on the eternal themes, and despite the existence of such gems as GitS, the genre is considered even more niche one than the good old sci-fi.

Still being novel and daring enough for its age, the original Ghost in the Shell manga is a work of, umm, a yet another type. Unfortunately, you won't find Oshii's kind of poetical spectacular drama there; just imagine playful cyborg-girls in underwear, or even without it, and you will instantly get the point. But its fictional technology was too ingenious to throw it out, and a plethora of the offsprings have spawned of it as the result.

 Psychological test: try to guess which kind of a device she's trying to install.

The most important things from the original manga we should take into the account:
  • The existence of cybernetic brains which allow making copies of human personality. There is a faint difference between an artificial and a natural personality. 
  • A personality can be transferred over the tight global network and gradually degrade during the process of copying. 
  • The direct man-machine interface allows arbitrary manipulations with human memory.
The manga itself is filled with acute sarcasm along with depictions of the hard everyday life of a social security department in such a hyperconnected world.

Angel's Egg


If you ever watched Angel's Egg, you surely were enjoying by the profound bright emotions which abruptly pop up from the atmosphere of heavy tranquility, wondering at the same time if this sequence of silent abstract scenes has a plot at all. The answer is yes, and what a plot. But why we are discussing it here? The reason will become clear below, but also probably because it is a rare brilliant work that is born when a cyberpunk author tries to embrace the eternal.

Basically, "Angel's Egg" is a story about the encounter of two children in a strange deserted post-apocalyptic world. They are not just two ordinary children. A child of faith and hope meets with the child of knowledge and technology. The children may actually symbolize coexistence and the results of the confrontation of nature along with civilization. And this is exactly what should touch us here as cyberpunk lovers, isn't it? Note also the right-sided composition the animator prefers at the images below.

The plot of Angel's Egg


In the beginning, the child of hope wakes up and stares at her palms. That may be a thing that allows a person to feel her individuality since each person has unique palms. She lives among the debris of a gymbal of a broken globe installation which may symbolize the fall of human civilization.


Somewhere near the skeleton, which resembles remnants of a bionic machine, the child of knowledge welcomes an eye-shaped space-ship. Most likely, this is the "Mechanical Sun" referred at the movie soundtrack. It is also worth to note, that the last theme in the soundtrack is called "Different God", so the ship maybe not just a lantern, but some kind of a cult structure. As it is filled by the hordes of fossilized sculptures, it may be a memorial of the perished Humanity. A cross-shaped device that is born by the child of knowledge may point to the religious nature of the technology there. All this reminds us of the wold of Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, the artificiality of which has gone far beyond its natural borders.


The child of hope nurses an egg. She doesn't know what is inside, but she is strongly determined to nurse it to the end. On the contrary, the child of knowledge eagerly wants to know what is concealed there, but this would kill the being.


The action takes place at the giant ark, and the surrounding space is littered by Stonehenge-like megaliths. Along with the depositions of fossils shown latter, the megaliths may symbolize the parallel lineages of the evolution of technology and nature. The ark itself may be a reference to the cradle of life and Humanity (the Earth).


The child of hope constantly fills glass flasks with water which may depict the flow of time. She uses flasks to measure time at the ladder of evolution.


At the image below the child of knowledge walks along with the crab-shaped bionic machines (most likely, tanks). He also possesses some cross-shaped device, that should be a kind of weapon as it has a rifled barrel. The belongings of the children clearly reflect their inner nature.


The city they're walking around is inhabited by the fossilized fishermen who hunt for shadows of giant fishes during the rain. The fishermen do not care about the city; the stained-glass windows of the opera house may be damaged by their mindless actions. All this may symbolize the hunt for the ephemeral values of the perished humanity.


At the images below you can see the ladder of evolution (being shown from above it resembles the shell of an ammonite), the lineages of species on the tree of life, and angel's fossils:


The angels may be something that had surpassed humans in the game of evolution, and the child of hope nurses angel's egg. All the above may mean that humanity is intended to nurse something better than itself and should accept such a fate. But the child of knowledge doesn't want to accept it. All this may be inspired by the works of Richard Dawkins. Batou also cites Dawkins in "GitS Innocense", particularly the quote about that the DNA of a being reflects what the being creates.

After the child of knowledge breaks the egg to see what is inside, the child of hope commits suicide and takes the place of a saint among the fossilized persons at the spaceship. This may symbolize the technological extinction of Humanity from the scene of evolution. She matures under the water, spits out some bubbles of air and kisses her own reflection - these motifs are also found in the GitS movies. The bubbles then turn into eggs (probably a kind of hard-roe), which may denote the succession of humans and angels.


In the end, there is a lot of feathers on the ground; the feathers may belong to the creatures (angels) hatched from these translucent eggs or are left by their parents. The birds and feathers are also a common and abundant motif of Oshii's movies.


The child of knowledge is the only remaining observer at this ark drowned by the deluge; the deluge may be a symbol of periodical cataclysms and extinctions life encounters during its evolution. The top of the ark resembles a shell of a giant bivalve mollusk lying at the shore of the ocean of... time. The town and vegetation look like a bunch of parasitic algae from this perspective, which, along with the stated above, also makes some symbolism.


Ghost in the Shell


Now you can see that Oshii's Ghost in the Shell movies are simply a kind of "Angel's Egg" staged in the world of GitS. Let's try to recall, what happens there.

Some (probably US) special service creates a virus which is able to hack human minds (ghosts) and rewrite human memory. After several contacts with human ghosts, the virus becomes self-aware and escapes the service. The service starts a project to catch the virus from the territory of Japan, but its lead programmer realizes that something is wrong and asks for political asylum in a third-party country. As a response, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) asks the social security department to murder that country's diplomat to leave the programmer in Japan (probably under the pressure of the USA).

At the same time, the virus (the Puppet Master) starts the game to lure Motoko Kusanagi (the protagonist, an officer of the Social Security Department) into a trap, by rewriting strangers' memory. It begins from an MFA interpreter to make the social security to start an investigation against itself, and Motoko embarks on it. Probably, the virus has chosen her as an appropriate candidate who will agree for a ghost interbreeding because of her doubts about the very nature of this world and her own identity.

You, of course, remember, how, during a walk, Motoko encounters a cyborg of the same model, which makes her doubt about her own individuality:


She also spoke about her doubts at the boat with Batou just before that event; remember also the moment of her awakening at the beginning of the movie (which resembles the same moment from the beginning of Angel's Egg).


She doubts is there Motoko Kusanagi; had she died during the cybernetization; can she exist beyond the bounds of her shell - the cybernetic body?

If Kusanagi was a philosopher, she probably also would have had a doubt about the following question: does such advanced technology makes the society to devalue human individuality and to not to care about it? Will this bring extinction through the gradual unification instead the evolutionary advancement? It seems, that some top brass still cares about it there, since, during the detainment of the insane military veteran, Motoko says Togusa that social security had chosen him because he is almost no cybernetically-augmented, and they fear of simultaneous failures of standard systems, so the department needs diversity to survive.

Then, the virus steals a cybernetic body to ask political asylum in Japan, but MFA covertly kidnaps and detains it.

The Puppet Master resembles the child of hope from Angel's Egg, but here she is actually an egg, contents of which Motoko is eager to explore. On the other hand, the virus wishes to merge with Motoko, because it is only able to copy itself, but plain copying always stands aside from evolution.


The process of interbreeding happens at the flooded paleontology museum chosen by MFA probably to covertly pass the body to the USA. Note the tree of life, similar to the one from Angel's Egg, at the background and also a crab-like bionic tank.


Oshii's interbreeding process radically differs from the ghost diving at the manga. In the manga, they just need the memory of the virus as evidence, but in the movie, the goal is the creation of a new life form that will surpass humans at the ladder of evolution. The Puppet Master swaps the bodies, so Motoko's ghost finds oneself in the Puppet Master's body. Now Motoko has to merge or to die because the extermination of the virus is scheduled first. The falling feathers at the end celebrate her advancement.


Finally, the resulting being is placed into an adolescent body. What is next? The "Innocence" explores deeper aspects of the posthuman existence. Note the toy at the table. It may be a reference to a gymbal merged with a flask of water.


Ghost in the Shell: Innocence


The Innocence is an extremely complex and visually astonishing postmodernist work that builds its storyline through the vast amount of references to the multiple diverse third party sources. While the original movie revolves primarily around the question: should we consider self-aware computer programs as a form of life, the Innocence goes far beyond. It asks the viewer: if we begin to consider a machine and a human the same, is love becomes just a process which is incorporated into the machinery of our existence; if the things we create are defined by our genes, and if the genes make spiders weave a web, why we tend to create more perfect and stainless copies of ourselves; what would a bodiless mind do at the Network being left alone; do androids dream of electric sheep, and many more. Yes, the plot is probably based on Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (which is considered the most influential cyberpunk movie) combined with The Future Eve, but now you can imagine how vast is the amount of themes the Innocence touches. It answers only a few questions, though.

The movie begins with the question about love (taken from "The Future Eve") mentioned above. While the book is centered probably around the paradox of loveless human personality and loveable android, the Innocence barely touches this question and use the background of the book just to introduce gynoids which are capable of reproduction and are able to experience emotions; this allows them to break the third law of robotics.

It is worth to mention that Stanislaw Lem gave an interesting answer to this question in his "GOLEM XIV". Lem considers that an advanced AI would abandon any human emotions and especially love because it would consider it as an instrument that evolution uses to save intelligent but mortal biological beings from extinction. A posthuman intelligence simply doesn't need it, exactly this may make Motoko look so cold. Thus, emotions are the thing that originates from our mortality and distinguishes us from potentially immortal machines that tend to abandon them. So, do you still want to enjoy robots that are able to experience emotions, and especially ones that do not? Memento mori.

As in the "Blade Runner" gynoids murder people, so social security starts an investigation. At the forensic lab, Togusa learns that the gynoid destroyed by Batou tried to commit suicide, and the forensic supposes that this may be a protest of robots against maltreatment.

At the same time, someone sadistically murders an inspector of the firm which produces gynoids ("Locus Solus"). The firm had taken the inspector's daughter to use as one of the sources of personalities for the gynoids (a personality degrades after each copying, and the children die as the result). The inspector told his daughter that police may rescue her if she would think about revenge during the copying, and exactly this becomes the cause of the murders and suicides committed by gynoids. Probably, gynoids had committed suicides under the pressure of the conscience inherited from the personality of an innocent girl.

It turns out, that the inspector was murdered by yakuza in a revenge for the former yakuza boss, killed by a malfunctioning gynoid. The method of murder is the author's way to remind that humans are comprised of composite parts and not too far different from robots. So, the existence of emotional fertile gynoids basically equates humans and robots.

Batou violently raids yakuza's nest, but the new boss knows nothing about Locus Solus. After the blast, Togusa says that he saw his wife and daughter in his imagination, and Batou tells him that these were the messengers of death who saved his life.

In return, Locus Solus hires a hacker to intrude into Batou's cybernetic hand in hope to dismiss him and ruin the investigation. During the pursuit of the hacker, Batou and Togusa take part in a Buddhist festival where people burn dolls. This may express human fear against the things which closely resemble them.


Near that place, Togusa also finds a quote that reminds us of the transience of life and compares people with puppets. This may reflect evolution's wheel of life and death and the fact that human actions are not completely controlled by the conscious will; love, revenge and other (unconscious) emotions may take their part in this. So, the central difference between a human and a machine may be in the amount of conscious control, available to each of them.

It turns out that a hacker is a man with the invention. Through virtual reality, he deludes Batou and Togusa. Oshii uses this to insert a bunch of inspirational dialogues into the narrative, where the question, should we abandon the material culture if we develop virtual reality far enough to live there, maybe not the last one. Hacker's tea-doll is probably a reference to the mechanical dolls from the Blade Runner.


By their miraculous appearance, Batou's messengers of death: his dog and Motoko in an adolescent body make him aware that he is trapped inside virtual reality, so Batou is able to save Togusa by hacking the hacker. In the course of the following hardcore cyberpunk action, Batou and Motoko save the girl from the ship of Locus Solus, and Motoko returns back to the Network. Aramaki cites Buddha: "Let one live alone doing no evil, care-free, like an elephant in the elephant forest", which may be a sign of that Oshii considers Motoko's posthuman existence (equivalent to a Buddhist enlightenment) as the liberation from human nature and thus evolution's circle of life and death. 

It is possible to set a full stop at this point, but now you may try to answer the question, which appears through many references to mirrors, reflections (should I also point the emphasis on genes here?), dolls and beauty: why humans tend to create beautiful copies of themselves and fear them at the same time? It is the Evolution who has bestowed you with the ability to create, but imagine yourself with a bunch of hysterically emotional gynoids...


GitS SAC: Solid State Society


Although this is the movie from lineage #3, there are two reasons to discuss it. The first is: the plot is expressed in a such way, that it is not too hard to forget it despite its straightforwardness.

Hideo Kuze, the Buddha-in-chief of lineage #3 hijacks the identity of a governmental bureaucrat (Tateaki Koshiki, who is actually dead) and builds a collective consciousness (SSS) comprised of the minds of the elderly people attached to the cybernetic life-support system. It kidnaps children from troubled families, implants cyber-brains to them to rewrite their memory and leaves them an inheritance. Under the pressure of morality, these people think that they are doing a good deed because they had no children and lived only for themselves, although you may have some doubts about this.

There are also two groups of people who want to use this system for their own needs: the group of a former dictator Ka Rum, who wishes to perform a terrorist act using the nano-virus injected into the kidnapped children, and the group of Ito Munei, a yet another bureaucrat, who uses the system to brainwash the children according to his nationalist ideals. The investigation begins with the suicide of all members of Ka Rum's group, except the sniper Raj Puhto, who leads the social security to Munei. The suicides were orchestrated by SSS, which also intended to get rid of Munei using the sniper. Hideo escapes after the disclosure of SSS, and Motoko leaves him to live alone in his elephant forest.


The second reason is that it may provoke you to some thoughts about the future of humanity.

GitS: Arise, where Batou becomes Chuck Norris and Motoko acts like Steven Seagal


If you are considering the choice to watch or not to watch this OVA, you may ask yourself a question: "Do I like playful cyborg-girls in underwear?" Boldly watch if you do, although, unfortunately, this story brings nothing new, because it is entirely compiled of the ideas borrowed from the prior works of the franchise.


See also

 

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