Ghost in the Shell

• 1. Introduction

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  Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese cyberpunk franchise that began as a manga by Masamune Shirow. Its 1995 animated film made a lasting impression on the creators of The Matrix. The Wachowskis showed it to producer Joel Silver and told him, "We wanna do that for real." That reaction hints at how far the story travelled. A networked future, imagined on the page, kept finding new audiences across films, television, games and a live-action remake. Where did a title like Ghost in the Shell come from? How did one manga become a tangle of retellings, each starting the story afresh? And what did later artists take from it?

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• 2. A Hackable Future

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  In the mid-twenty-first century of this story, many ordinary people carry a cyberbrain. The device links the biological brain to networks. Some people use only a minimal interface. After severe trauma, others have the brain almost entirely replaced with cybernetic parts. Prostheses can be added in varying degrees, and a fully prosthetic body makes a person a cyborg.

  Major Motoko Kusanagi, the protagonist, is exactly that kind of cyborg. A terrible accident in her childhood left her needing a full-body prosthesis to house her cyberbrain. She leads Public Security Section 9, a fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization. Its staff are professionals skilled at solving and preventing crime, and most of them have police backgrounds.

  Political intrigue and counter-terrorism operations are routine work for Public Security Section 9. Each scenario brings its own mix of corrupt officials, companies and cyber-criminals. Stopping a series of incidents from escalating takes the diverse skills of the whole team.

  Heavy cyberization carries a price. The more thoroughly someone is cyberized, the more exposed the brain becomes to highly skilled hackers. The most dangerous of them can force a person to bend to their whims. The squad's Japanese name has an origin story of its own, and it began with an editor's request.

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• 3. Shell Squad

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  Koichi Yuri, the manga's original editor, wanted something more flashy. The original title came from Shirow, but when Yuri asked for "something more flashy", Shirow answered with 攻殻機動隊, read Koukaku Kidou Tai and meaning Shell Squad. Shirow was still attached to Ghost in the Shell, so he kept that title as well, in smaller type.

  From April 1989 to November 1990, the manga ran in Young Magazine, an anthology published by Kodansha. It was released as a single tankōbon volume on the 2nd of October 1991.

  A sequel, Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, appeared in nine issues of Young Magazine in 1997. It was collected in the Solid Box on the 1st of December 2000. A standard edition with modifications and new pages followed on the 26th of June 2001.

  Four stories from Man-Machine Interface had missed the earlier tankobon releases. Kodansha gathered them in Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor on the 17th of July 2003. Several art books have appeared as well. Director Mamoru Oshii was the one who first took the manga to the screen.

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• 4. Two Animated Films

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  Mamoru Oshii directed both animated films drawn from the original manga, and Production I.G animated each. The 1995 film follows the manga's "Puppet Master" storyline. In 2008 it returned as Ghost in the Shell 2.0, with new audio and updated 3D computer graphics in certain scenes.

  Innocence, also titled Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, arrived in 2004 as the sequel. Its story comes from a single chapter of the first manga. Two years before Innocence reached audiences, a television series had already begun a telling independent of that manga.

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• 5. Stand Alone Complex

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  In 2002, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex premiered on Animax with a fresh telling, separate from the original manga. It followed Section 9's investigation of a hacker called the Laughing Man. A second season, S.A.C. 2nd GIG, arrived in 2004 and centered on a terrorist group named Individual Eleven.

  The main storylines of both seasons were later compressed into OVAs. The Laughing Man was broadcast in 2005, and Individual Eleven followed in 2006. Also in 2006, Solid State Society showed Section 9 confronting a hacker known as the Puppeteer. It served as the finale of the anime series. Yoko Kanno composed the extensive score for the series and its films.

  On the 7th of April 2017, Kodansha and Production I.G announced that Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki would co-direct a new production. On the 7th of December 2018, Netflix was reported to have acquired worldwide streaming rights to the original net animation series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. It premiered on the 23rd of April 2020. Sola Digital Arts collaborated with Production I.G on the 3DCG series, and Ilya Kuvshinov handled the character designs. It ran for two seasons of 12 episodes each.

  Books, two separate manga adaptations and several console and mobile games also grew up around Stand Alone Complex.

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• 6. Arise And Newer Tellings

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  In 2013, Ghost in the Shell: Arise took an original look at this world, set before the original manga. It came as four original video animation episodes, some with limited theatrical releases, between 2013 and 2014. The four were later recompiled into a 10-episode television series, Kōkaku Kidōtai: Arise - Alternative Architecture.

  A fifth episode, Pyrophoric Cult, first aired as two episodes inside the Alternative Architecture broadcast. It was released on its own on the 26th of August 2015. Kazuchika Kise served as chief director, and Tow Ubukata as head writer. Cornelius composed the score. Maaya Sakamoto, the Major's new voice actress, also sang on certain tracks.

  Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie, a 2015 film directed by Kazuya Nomura, finishes the Arise arc. It continues the plot of Pyrophoric Cult and ties up loose ends. A manga adaptation ran in Kodansha's Young Magazine from the 13th of March to the 26th of August 2013.

  On the 25th of May 2024, a new anime television adaptation was announced from Science Saru, aimed at a July 2026 premiere. Science Saru would join a production committee with Bandai Namco Filmworks, Kodansha and Production I.G. The announcement named a director known as Monkochan and a script by EnJoe Toh.

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• 7. Live Action And Games

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  In 2008, DreamWorks and producer Steven Spielberg acquired the rights to a live-action adaptation of the original manga. On the 24th of January 2014, Rupert Sanders was announced as director, with a screenplay by William Wheeler. The full cast was announced in April 2016. It included Juliette Binoche, Chin Han, Lasarus Ratuere and Kaori Momoi, with Scarlett Johansson in the lead. Her casting drew accusations of whitewashing.

  Principal photography began in Wellington, New Zealand, on the 1st of February 2016 and wrapped in June 2016. The American-produced film premiered in Tokyo on the 16th of March 2017. It reached the United States on the 31st of March 2017 in 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D. Reviews were mixed. Critics praised the visuals and Johansson's performance but faulted the script.

  On the 17th of July 1997, Sony Computer Entertainment released a Ghost in the Shell game for the PlayStation in Japan. Exact developed this third-person shooter, which has an original storyline where the player is a rookie member of Section 9. Its soundtrack, Megatech Body, features techno artists including Takkyu Ishino, Scan X and Mijk Van Dijk.

  In 2016, Nexon and Neople released a first-person shooter, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - First Assault Online. A virtual reality game, Ghost in the Shell Arise: Stealth Hounds, became available in 2017 at Bandai Namco's VR Zone Shinjuku arcade. The influence of the franchise reached well beyond its own releases, from Hollywood sets to ice rinks.

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• 8. Echoes Everywhere

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  The Matrix borrowed several concepts from Ghost in the Shell, and two are easy to spot. Its digital rain was inspired by the opening credits of the film. Its characters also access the Matrix through holes in the back of their necks.

  Parallels have been drawn to James Cameron's Avatar, Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Jonathan Mostow's Surrogates. Cameron himself cited Ghost in the Shell as a source of inspiration and as an influence on Avatar.

  Bungie's 2001 third-person action game Oni took substantial inspiration from the setting and characters. Ghost in the Shell also influenced the Metal Gear Solid series, Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077.

  Kenji Kawai wrote and arranged "The Ballade of Puppets: The Ghost Awaits in the World Beyond" for Innocence. In 2023 it opened the ice show Ice Explosion 2023, produced by Daisuke Takahashi, an Olympic bronze medallist and former world champion. The show featured 24 elite skaters, including Takahashi and Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa. Former world silver medallists Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje took part, as did Olympic team bronze medallist Jason Brown. Retired ice dancer Massimo Scali choreographed it.

  Takahashi said, "I've been obsessed with this song since I was 18 and wanted to skate to it myself one day..." He went on: "It's over four minutes long, so I didn't really get the chance, but I thought it would be cool to use it for the opening."

  Yuzuru Hanyu, a two-time Olympic champion, took the music further in his solo ice show tour Echoes of Life. One program used Utai IV Reawakening, arranged by Kawai for the live-action American film. The programs of Echoes of Life are woven into a story that questions the meaning of life, following an enhanced human being through a devastated, imaginary near future.

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