Ghost In The Shell (Animated) (Special Edition) > Reviews > My ghost makes me human

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Outstanding
Soundtrack	Good

Advantages:	A truly thought - provoking work of art
Disadvantages:	A somewhat uneven plot

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

Ghost in the Shell is inarguably Mamoru Oshii's most famous creation, one that can be seen as standing in a similar position in the director's achievements as Akira is to Katsuhiro Otomo. With its deeply philosophical attitude and pondering feeling, the film is distinctly Oshii's creation with all his strengths and weaknesses. Based on the manga by Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell details the operations of Section 9, the covert organization set up to deal with technology-based crime. As the world has become more and more computerized, crime has developed into more sophisticated hacking into the interactive network in which the cyborg enforcers of Section 9 can access any network on Earth in order to hunt them down. Taking place in the near 21st Century, Shirow's manga posed questions as to how our world is constantly getting more technologized, and how this effects our perception of what is real and what is not. The underlying question of the manga and film is "What makes us human?"

Major Motoko Kusanagi is the central character, a woman who has forsaken her organic body in favour of a cyborg one, with only her brain and part of her spinal cord being organic. The thing that still differentiates her from a machine, though, is her "ghost", which is basically an individual's mind or essence of being, the new definition of a soul. As long as an individual retains their ghost, they retain their humanity and individuality. Shirow took this idea from Arthur Koestler's essay "The Ghost in the Machine," where it is argued that the origin of the human mind is a physical condition of the brain. Shirow expands on this philosophy to include a broader sense that a ghost is not only a physical trait, but a more complex phenomenon that works in a larger system, such as a removed organ, like an arm or liver, will lose its autonomic nerve and therefore its ghost, unless stimulated by a mechanical replacement. Major Kusanagi has replaced everything in her body with these mechanical replacements to maintain her ghost by reproducing the stimulus.

HOW TO DEFINE HUMANITY?

Oshii's film adaptation is much more slow paced and serious in tone when compared with the original manga of Shirow. In favour of making the film easier to digest within its 82 minutes of running time, Oshii concentrates only on one of the stories from the manga, which is also the overarching story of Shirow's entire plot, the cyber-criminal called "The Puppet Master." After the brain of the translator of the foreign minister is hacked by the Puppet Master, Major Kusanagi is called to hunt down the perpetrator with the help of her team of Batou (similarly a cyborg) and Togusa (still almost completely a human). It turns out that the Puppet Master has been able to hack into the minds of many other people and using them as hosts to carry out its purpose. What is unique and most dangerous about the Puppet Master, though, is that he is in actuality an artificially intelligent computer program (Top Secret Project 2501) developed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or Section 6, and escaped with the purpose of evolving by merging with Kusanagi.

In essence this desire can be compared with the concept of birth, where the combination of two separate entities will create a third individual entity that is neither one or the other of the originating ghosts or DNA. It is something contemplated with quite some depth during the museum sequence where life is made up as the evolutionary step to creating artificial intelligence. Kusanagi also ponders on several occasions of what she is, what is a soul, and what being a human really is. The Puppet Master declares at one point that he is an autonomous entity capable of personal choices and memory, and should therefore be allowed political asylum. When it is contested that he is just a self-preserving computer program, he simply reiterates that by that definition the DNA that they carry is nothing but a self-preserving program in itself and as science has been unable to explain what life is, how can they say he is not a real life form. This leads to the re-evaluation of what can be seen as humanity despite its manifestation is not organic but a complex program with its own memories that make up a person's individuality.

SO HOW ABOUT THE MOVIE?

But despite the high flying rhetoric and philosophical pondering that Oshii spades through with much apparent delight, as an actual story Ghost in the Shell is an acquired taste. With eight issues of the original manga to use, Oshii pretty much takes ideas from many different places and strings them together for a somewhat uneven plot. There are many scenes that seem to be more like independent instances taking place outside the main story or simply edited there for a collage type jigsaw puzzle. It is easy to lose the thread of thought if not paying attention and this is something of a major weakness in Oshii's usual practices. He seems so intent in providing so much meaningful and heavily philosophical ideas and questions that the actual story sometimes gets buried or blurred out of sight, something that is also very apparent in the dialogue of Kusanagi and the Puppet Master in the museum sequence. Even the action sequences of which there are quite a few seem not to have much relation with each other in the wider sense of the story.

On a more technical level, Ghost in the Shell has been much celebrated for being one of the first animes in successfully melding traditional cell animation with DGA (Digitally Generated Animation) imagery. In many instances it is not even easy to tell where this has been used, so successful is the combination. For a long time Ghost in the Shell was looked as the benchmark on which similar animes were measured, although by this time the CGI technology of today has taken some of the novelty and sense of awe out of the film. Still there is no denying that the film does look very good and more than holds its own even today. Interestingly the film was much more successful in the West than in Japan when it was released in 1996 despite its sometimes confusing Oshii-isms. It raised a whole new wave of interest in Japanese animation that Akira had originally created and was one of the few titles available upon its release in Western countries (mostly meaning America). Those familiar with the manga might have felt a little disappointed as most of the sub-plots were dropped in favour of not cramming everything into to the film, while others felt that the film was better as it shaved off many of Shirow's obsessions and made it a more artistically satisfying and focused story.

The film's most apparent impact in our culture was highlighted in 1999's The Matrix, where there are numerous similarities to Ghost in the Shell (as well as other animes). Some of these similarities include the green digits during the opening credits making out the people's names in computer code very much like in The Matrix; during the lobby shootout where Neo and Trinity are hiding behind stone pillars is very similar with Kusanagi's fight with a tank; the terrified citizens in a market caught in the crossfire of Batou and a "puppet" features similarly exploding watermelons as bullets hit them; and of course the overall concept bears much similarities between the conception of The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell's cybernetically enhanced brains (and the Wachnowski brothers have even admitted the influence of the film).

DVD DETAILS

The DVD comes with the audio of English 2.0 and 5.1, while the original Japanese is only available as a 2.0 stereo. This is somewhat of a disappointment as the 5.1 mix is really of a very high quality and really showcases the sound of the film to a max. The big problem, though, is that the English dub is not all that good, some of the voice actors really feeling completely out of the picture most of the time. Kusanagi in particular sounds too whining to my liking. While the Japanese track is very good still, it could have been upgraded to 5.1 as well so the full benefits of the sound could have been enjoyed by a purist like myself as well. The music of Kenji Kawai comes out quite beautifully, though, with its harsh female voices over restrained percussive beats, making it quite haunting and strangely evocative. The picture quality is of very high quality and one sitting quite comfortably in the demonstration bracket. The film is presented in its original theatrical 1.85:1 Widescreen format that has been Anamorphically enhanced, which is good as in an animation it is always best to be able to see everything without losing bits in a Pan & Scan format. The music and visuals are particularly well displayed in a long collage of the urban Hong Kong with its dirty waterways and towering skyscrapers that can be seen as maybe an over-indulgence on the part of the filmmakers, but it is one of my favourite scenes, so who cares.

In the line of extras the original release doesn't really have anything outside of a trailer, while the Special Edition contains a few that in the end don't amount to much, though. The big highlight is The Making of Ghost in the Shell -featurette that follows much of the conception, animation, music and such behind the scenes things. The other extras aren't that fantastic though. The theatrical trailer is like any trailer really and not that interesting; the Sly & Robbie music video is nice, as it showcases the urban cityscape and other visuals of the film quite well, though the musical accompaniment is a little unremarkable. The database contains some character and maker info, but really is passable reading. So outside of the behind the scenes featurette, don't get your hopes up for some uniquely mind-blowing in the way of extras.

THE ENDING REVIEW SUMMARY (capsule)

Overall Ghost in the Shell is one of those animes that is just required viewing for anyone interested in the art form. The film has its problems and may require multiple viewings to fully absorb, but there is no denying that this is an infinitely intelligent and deep piece of cinema. Whether the film actually answers the questions it raises is up to the viewer to decide (I'm still not quite sure myself), but this is more than made up by the visuals, character designs and overarchingly intelligent discourse that it is well worth the effort to think out and makes for a consistently interesting experience. A definite must see.

MAIN CAST AND CREDITS (Japanese / English)

Major Motoko Kusanagi: Atsuko Tanaka / Mimi Woods
Batou: Akio Otsuka / Richard Epcar
Chief Aramaki: Tamio Oki / William Knight
"The Puppet Master": Iemasa Kayumi / Tom Wyner
Togusa: Koichi Yamadera / Christopher Joyce
Chief Nakamura: Tessho Genda / Ben Isaacson

Directed by Mamoru Oshii
Screenplay by Kazunori Ito
Animation Director: Toshihiko Nishikubo
Key Animation Supervisors: Kazuchika Kise & Hiroyuki Okiura
Character Design: Hiroyuki Okiura
Mechanical Design: Shoji Kawamori & Atsushi Takeuchi
Music: Kenji Kawai
Original Title: Kôkaku kidôtai
Based on the Manga by Masamune Shirow

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