Review of Ghost in the Shell (1995) by Alexandre B — 16 Nov 2008

I saw this once before, probably ten years ago. I [i]think[/i] I saw it in Japanese that time, though I watched it in English this evening. And, as the title indicates, I'm about fifty percent sure that I read the manga at roughly the same time. I've also seen a lot of the TV show. I have a [i]lot[/i] of experience with [i]Kôkaku kidôtai[/i], and therefore, I advise you to take this next sentence seriously. Though I have put the movie in under "animation/family," it should be very clear that it fits the first part of that category but not the second, just as it fits the second part of "fantasy/sci-if" but not the first. There is swearing and nudity and violence (oh, my), and besides which, most little kids would probably just find it boring. There's some interesting stuff about the nature of intelligence and how you can tell you're human, but the kind of kid who's the right age for [i]My Neighbor Totoro[/i] and [i]Kiki's Delivery Service[/i] just won't get into it. Not that there's anything wrong with [i]My Neighbor Totoro[/i] or [i]Kiki's Delivery Service[/i].

In the future, there are cyborgs. A common theme, to be sure. Further common is the idea that these are cyborgs who can connect to the net through implants in the back of their necks, who can communicate as if with radio. Naturally, the government hires some of these cyborgs to combat crimes committed by others of their ilk. Among these are the Major and Batô. The Major is in a beautiful female body, though she's more beautiful, I think, in [i]Stand Alone Complex[/i]. They are, with their colleagues, on the hunt for the Puppet Master, a man (or so they think) who manipulates others' cybernetic brains in order to . . . well, okay, I missed why he was doing it. Because he could, one half suspects. Any way you look at it, the Major is going to be the main force in figuring things out.

I have always enjoyed the friendship between the Major (she has a name, but it doesn't really matter what it is) and Batô. She is inclined toward flinging herself headlong into things, and he seems to see it as his duty to be a stabilizing influence on her, or as stabilizing as a man fond of firing big guns at bad guys is really going to be. But the Major rushes in where regular policemen fear to tread, and the better for it. And not just because the story cannot progress without her doing just that, but because one feels that things in her city would be much worse without it. [i]Someone[/i] has to rush in and get things done, after all. But I think she is given more strength by knowing that, just behind her, there is Batô.

In my head, I am comparing animation styles between this, the original movie, and [i]Stand Alone Complex[/i]. (We're fourteenth in line for volume one, which appears to be all the other [i]Ghost in the Shell[/i] that the library has. There may be Netflixing involved in the future.) The animation in the movie is, I think, more complex than the animation on the show. The movie is grittier; the show is cleaner. I think there is a similar change in mood between the two, though I will note that the voice actors in the English version all seem to have made the transition from one to the other. It may also, however, be that the copy isn't very clean. There may be a better transfer of the movie available, but the DVD is dark, though I think that it is actually intentional. It will make interesting comparisons for later.

I am not reliably interested in cybernetic storylines. I thought [i]Johnny Mnemonic[/i] (which Graham owns, and which we will probably get to some weekend) was hilarious, but it clearly wasn't supposed to be. Generally, though, I find cybernetics to be a cheap attempt at hauling a story out of the genuinely awful, and there are, I think, no plot devices that can do that if the story isn't doing at least half the pulling itself. However, this story has things to say that cannot be said a different way without making it a completely different story. After all, wondering about what makes a person human is more poignant if there is reason to doubt in the first place.