The Dickensian Aspect
The Ghost in the Shell is so much. For reasons within and without, it feels precious and rare like a gemstone in every second, every frame. It is true there hasn’t been a recent installment, the latest now six years old, but it’s also an example of anime, a craft initially defined by limited movement in comparison to Western animation, and yet Science Saru adapts Masamune Shirow’s kinetic manga with buttery-smooth animation, an active camera, and generous colors. The only visual element withheld is the gore, the opening body explosion covered in a digital mosaic – which somehow makes it more obscene – leading to the splat of a bloody stick-figure against the wall. Where traditional adaptations pare back the farcical, even manic quality of the source material, opting instead for deadly serious meditations which, honestly, better fit the subject matter, The Ghost in the Shell is paced with a punchline rhythm, and is altogether a carousel of great faces. One of the small joys of the manga is the candid glimpses of characters in repose, where Batou might be wearing an enormous grin or otherwise be looking silly (or pervy). This is practically the animating philosophy at the heart of 2026’s Ghost in the Shell, if the first episode is any indication.
The experience of watching the premiere, “Prologue + Super Spartan i,” was, among other things, an exercise in “spot the reference,” only backwards. I considered doing a larger feature on this, but I’ll highlight a couple of the deeper cuts, like the Major’s “create your own future” speech having been reworked for The New Movie (featured at the end of the trailer), or the Internal Affairs minister punching himself in the face being Batou in Stand Alone Complex. Of course, there’s also the “Round-the-Clock Cherry Blossom Op” which made up the bittersweet coda of 2nd Gig, and the opening assassination has been reinterpreted countless times. Understandably so, as the “Prologue” is one of the best character introductions of all time. These heretofore scattered children of the manga are finally properly contextualized, and we may find that they’ve always worked according to the original design. Without a doubt, though, The Ghost in the Shell is a wild departure from the solemnity of the Mamoru Oshii movies and the grounded, meat-and-potatoes police procedural of Stand Alone Complex (not to mention the various adaptations of other Oshii manga). It’s chaotic and funny, as well as nostalgic yet entirely novel.
Following the opening sequence is an interstitial piece of exposition that lays to rest decades of confusion within the Ghost in the Shell fandom. Chief Aramaki and Major Motoko Kusanagi aren’t working together from the beginning. A special forces unit like Section 9 is her idea, “citing the need for crisis management,” and she goes to the toad-like Internal Affairs minister, who then turns to Aramaki from Public Security. Wow. Suddenly, the belabored complexity of Arise didn’t seem so necessary. Starting out with the formation of Section 9 colors the group – and the Major – as quite mercenary, a thin line Stand Alone Complex was always willing to explore. Here, they aren’t institutional but almost decadent, the pet project of a woman who came out of nowhere and only last night murdered a foreign diplomat, before turning invisible and crushing a police cruiser, which was so hot. It isn’t long before the dangerous prospect of a black ops police unit is justified by the onset of the Sacred Citizen Relief Center, rampant with child abuse: “All of you, get to work! Work for the food you ate! The bed you slept in! And the work we give you!”
The twist here is that the obvious evil of the relief center never truly becomes the object of cathartic justice. The Major’s first reaction to helping war orphans is basically “eh, not interested.” The ghostless android assistant is more aggrieved, where the Major is more occupied by abusing the android assistant. It takes the alleged existence of a “ghost controller” to spur the Major into action, despite an escaped child on the loose and in grave danger. Storming the facility would likely cause a scandal, blunting any indignant response. Later on, we learn that the relief center wasn’t shut down because it was brainwashing kids, but because it went rogue, and Aramaki needed to make an example of them. The Internal Affairs minister (as in, the Ministry of Internal or Home Affairs, not like those I.A. rats) believes the Major went overboard in doing so, despite that she showed mercy to the final cyborg guard and arrested him. In the end, it was all about politics, not victims.
What’s notable in the action scenes in between is Section 9’s relative incompetence. The first operation in Stand Alone Complex is surgical precision, the Major as overwhelming force. Here, Togusa knocks himself unconscious by piloting his Fuchikoma into the gated end of a sewage pipe, the android assistant gets fried by an attack barrier, Ishikawa and Saito are hacked by the ghost controller, and even the Major gets batted around. She actually expresses frustration, in one instance by bashing herself on the head. This is the chaos, constituting maybe the most profound difference in adaptations. For me, it’s a different kind of fun. I love Stand Alone Complex Major because she’s the ultimate professional – endlessly intelligent and almost deific – the scariest possible person in this world tempered only by a compassionate, curious outlook. This new (old) Major is scary because she’s unpredictable and plainly temperamental, but these qualities also make her more immediately engaging.
“Y-You came to take us away from here, right?” asks the runaway kid, who was inches from a lobotomy, and gets an irritable response from the Major: “Huh? What do you even want? Are you gonna mooch off of welfare without meeting your obligations to society as you’re being brainwashed by trashy media?” She never even looks at him. So while Stand Alone Complex Major was driven by a sense of justice, The Ghost in the Shell Major – at least, at the beginning of her story – is truer to the reality of policing – at least, as suggested by The Wire. According to David Simon and Ed Burns, the best detectives were the ones who wanted to prove they were smarter than the criminals they pursued. “Marlo is an asshole. He does not get to win. We get to win!” We aren’t patronized by the genre’s usual sermons about The Job or half-whispered promises to widows fulfilled by TV-budget shootouts. The “natural po-lice” officer isn’t quite the Major, either, because we don’t know what makes her tick yet (and we will). For now, I like to think she’s a challenge seeker, and wants to know what it’s like to operate at the highest levels. Work hard, play hard (and we’ll see that, too).
This first episode is a morsel, over before I knew it and better than I could’ve imagined. It’s so weird and perfect, capturing in brilliant terms the rhythms and preoccupations of a fascinating artist. Science Saru, and director Mokochan, make the most of the new medium, adding energetic music and a quality of animation I can only hope maintains through the next nine episodes (I’m aware enough of modern anime to know how bad things can get no matter the promising start).
With Eyes East 