Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell (***)

"Memory cannot be defined but it defines mankind."
"I wonder where I'll go now. The net is vast and infinite."

Somehow I managed to go this long without seeing either of the Ghost in the Shell movies. so I used my newfound streaming Netflix account to check out the first one tonight. I've already seen a bunch of "Stand Alone Complex" on Adult Swim--not the whole run beginning to end, but a lot of it--so I was already pretty much aware of the characters and the basic themes going in. The show can sometimes be really dense and talky, and the dialogue can be really stiff and wooden sometimes, but it's still more than interesting enough to watch because of it its around a very cool cyberpunk setting and the ideas about humanity, personhood, and identity at it's center. I feel much the same way about the movie. A lot is jammed into less than 90 minutes, and at time it's a bit difficult to follow. It had to be damn near impossible to follow for most American audiences when it first released in 1995 if they didn't really know what to expect going in. There's a hollowness to a lot of the scenes and characters aren't developed much. And yet, it's still an easy work to admire because of the vision of a future where the line between human and machine is no longer clear that it creates. It reminds me in some ways of the Metal Gear Solid games, which deftly weave amazingly complex conspiracy plots and present a lot of interesting ideas (some of which, especially in MGS 2 and 4 are actually similar to the ideas of Ghost in the Shell) and yet also feature lines like "Snake, do you believe that love can blossom, even on the battlefield?!" It's not nearly to that extend here, it should be said, it's just a comparison.

At the film's start, Section 9 is investigating a series of ghost hacks of government officials. Alright, so right off there's some splainin' to do. The "ghost" in Ghost in the Shell is the mind, the soul, the consciousness. Whatever you want to call it, it's the intangible thing that makes a person and person. So a "ghost hack" is a hack of a person's mind, made possible by the fact that much of the human population is now living in partial or total cybernetic bodies. Section 9 is a police force that investigates crimes such as this. They communicate with each other through a neural link without speaking. They do their detective work by tapping their brains into computer systems. Section 9 is helmed by Chief Aramaki, who is developed more as a character in the show, but for purposes of the movie basically serves as the old intelligent dude who's been around the block before. The point woman on the ground is our protagonist, Motoko, or simply The Major, who has a fully cyborg body which the filmmakers have deemed we need to see in the nude about 6 times over the course of the 83 minute movie. Alongside on the team is Batou, the man closest to major, whose unchanging prosthetic eyes seem to complement his stoic military man personality. There's also Ishikawa, who we don't get to know much, and Togusa, who was chosen for the team for a diversity of opinion because he's still almost entirely human.

After a brief gunfight/chase sequence, the culprits of the ghost hacks are tracked down. The one who isn't killed in the firefight is brought in for questioning. In the interrogation room, the man, a garbage man by trade, has it explained to him that he himself has been hacked into, his mind planted with false memories of having a wife and kids that don't actually exist. A "simulated experience" it's called, one of the genuinely unsettling ideas in the Ghost in the Shell universe. The case starts to trouble Motoko, as she begins to question whether she can deem anything about her own life as a certainty since her body is no longer human. Section 9 realizes that the ghost hacks can be traced by to a master hacker, a Puppet Master. The turning point of the plot comes when Section 9 comes in possession of the cyborg body of an unknown woman who, seemingly unrelated, was struck by a car, and it eventually becomes clear that the very nature of the Puppet Master is as much a question as his identity. The whole thing makes for an interesting, if hard to follow on the first viewing detective story, though it's mere 83 minutes leaves you wanting a bit more. The same can be said with a lot of animated movies, I suppose.

Most of the English voice actors (the dub was what was on Netflix) are those who would go on to do the voices for the "Stand Alone Complex" series. One exception is Motoko, whose voice doesn't sound as good here, I don't think. As a whole, the voice acting is decent but seems kind of stiff. I think some of that is some of the dialogue they're working with, although I also think that more recent anime dubs are usually better crafted, "Stand Alone Complex" included. More interesting in the soundtrack, which compares a bit to the other big watershed movie for U.S anime fandom, Akira, in that it has an eastern influence. Wikipedia tells me that the main theme is actually based on a Shinto prayer.

Ghost in the Shell was about what I expected. It was enjoyable, if a bit too self-involved and stiff at times. As far as early breakthrough animes go, I much prefer Akira. Maybe that sounds inconsistent because I just chided Ghost in the Shell for being hard to follow, and Akira is by all rights far more incomprehensible at times, but there's something about the way Akira all comes together that I love. Even though it was made seven years earlier, the animation seems to have more richness and more life to it, and combined with one of the coolest soundtracks I've ever heard, the movie delivers more of a punch for me. I still think Ghost in the Shell is something of an important work, though, because of its philosophy and its ethics and its unprecedentedly lucid cyberpunk vision.