Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

• 1. Introduction

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  Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set in the year 2030, in a Japan where many people have replaced their bodies with prosthetics and become cyborgs. It is an anime television series about an elite law enforcement unit that investigates cybercrime and terrorism. Across the first season, that unit keeps coming back to one name, the Laughing Man. He is an elite hacker and corporate terrorist, known only by that title. The series carries a puzzle in its own name. What exactly is a Stand Alone Complex? What did the Laughing Man want? And why does a story about cyborg detectives keep drifting toward politics and war?

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• 2. The Laughing Man Incident

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  Major Motoko Kusanagi finally hears the Laughing Man's motive from the hacker himself. He had discovered that several micromachine manufacturing corporations, working with the Japanese government, had suppressed word of an inexpensive cure for a debilitating cyberization disease. The money lay in the costlier micromachine treatment instead. So he abducted one of the company owners and tried to force a confession on live television. At the event he hacked the vision of everyone present, and the cameras too, so that a stylized laughing face logo covered his own face.

  The title's Stand Alone Complex grew out of what happened next. His popularity produced several genuine imitators, and those copycats are the phenomenon the series is named for. Later, an official investigation caused the Laughing Man to resurface in the present day.

  Public Security Section 9 then found that the same companies, along with several Japanese politicians, had borrowed the Laughing Man's image to win public support and profit. Section 9 is a special-operations task force built from former military officers and police detectives. Togusa and the Major spearheaded a campaign to spread the truth. The Cabinet answered by labeling the unit domestic terrorists and forcibly disbanding it. Several members were captured, and Kusanagi seemed to die.

  None of it was what it appeared to be. The Major's death was a ruse meant to deceive the government, and the members of Section 9 regrouped, alive and well. They brought the micromachine corporations and the corrupt politicians to justice, and the result was the dissolution of the current Japanese government. Corruption inside government would remain the unit's problem in the second season.

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• 3. Refugees of Dejima

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  About three million Asians became refugees during the Third and Fourth World Wars, and Japan invited them in as a source of cheap labor. The second season, 2nd Gig, is set two years after the Laughing Man affair and examines the political and social fallout of those wars. The refugees were settled on the reclaimed island of Dejima. When the wars ended they lost their jobs, and their unrest came close to outright war.

  A hostage crisis pulled Section 9 into the refugee issue. A domestic terrorist group called the Individual Eleven caused it, and the unit stopped it. Newly elected Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki then officially reinstated the organization. The Individual Eleven seemed to be modeling themselves on the May 15 Incident, when a group of naval officers assassinated the Prime Minister and then won the public's support. They hoped to stir the refugees by fighting for them against the Japanese government.

  Kazundo Gōda, head of the Cabinet Intelligence Service, drew the unit into his own affairs. With the group's help he defused several clashes between refugees, and he also moved plutonium through Dejima. Both efforts produced failures and refugee deaths that strained relations further.

  Section 9 eventually learned that Gōda was manipulating both events from behind the scenes. He had leaked the social virus that spreads the Individual Eleven ideology, creating a new Stand Alone Complex, and he had arranged the failures with the refugees on purpose. One man escaped his calculations. Hideo Kuze sincerely wanted the best for the refugees and rallied support for their independence from Japan. During the investigation, Kusanagi came to suspect that she might know Kuze from her childhood.

  Gōda was found guilty of his part in the refugee incidents and was killed before he could defect to the American Empire. His scheming had also led to the death of Kuze. A later film would again begin with the deaths of refugees.

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• 4. The Puppeteer's Children

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  In the television film Solid State Society, the Major has left Section 9 and Togusa has become field commander. The story is set two years after the Individual Eleven incident. Togusa's team investigates the deaths of refugees from the Siak Republic.

  The trail leads to a government computer system that coordinates the kidnapping of 20 thousand abused children. Each child has had a cyberbrain replaced. The children are placed in the care of senior citizens, who have been made comatose by a separate government program that looks after all of their bodily needs.

  The inquiry draws the Major out of hiding and exposes an entity called the Puppeteer. It is a rhizome formed from the collective will of the comatose senior citizens. The Siak Republic intended to use the kidnapped children in its own plans, and that intent brought about its downfall.

  A member of the House of Representatives was also using the children, for nationalistic purposes. Section 9 and the Major infiltrated a welfare center where he brainwashed them. There the Puppeteer revealed what the seniors had wanted, which was to give the children free will in their future. The politician had interfered with that plan. The film was released in 2006.

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• 5. How It Was Made

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  An investment of 800 million yen paid for the series, which Production I.G animated. Kenji Kamiyama directed it and wrote it, while Hajime Shimomura created the original character designs. Additional screenwriters included Junichi Fujisaku, Yoshiki Sakurai, Shōtarō Suga, Dai Satō, Nobutoshi Terado, Yutaka Ōmatsu and Yūichirō Matsuka. The producers included Bandai Visual, Dentsu and Nippon Television Network.

  Masamune Shirow, who wrote the original manga, supplied the plot for several episodes. He also provided character sketches and mechanical designs, among them the Tachikoma, and he approved the scripts before production began. Even so, Kamiyama chose to make the series a "relative" of the manga and the film, a separate parallel world from both.

  For the second season, Mamoru Oshii contributed ideas to the overall concept and the earliest planning. In an interview he described his role as supervising the whole series and writing the plots for each episode. Dai Satō said the team first meant to explore how Japan would take part in war after 9/11. By the time they were writing episodes, the Iraq War had begun and Japan's Self-Defense Force had been sent to Iraq. Japan also held an election in that period. Satō created the Individual Eleven episodes to express the irresponsibility of voters who backed politicians planning to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Yoko Kanno composed the soundtrack, which Victor Entertainment produced. The first season opens with Inner Universe, sung by Origa, with lyrics in Russian, English and Latin. Its ending theme is Lithium Flower, performed by Scott Matthew. The second season opens with Rise, again by Origa, and closes with Living Inside the Shell, performed by Steve Conte.

  When the series moved to terrestrial television in Japan, the songs changed. GET9 by jillmax and I Do by Ilaria Graziano replaced the first season's themes. The second season's replacements, CHRisTmas in the SiLenT ForeSt and Snyper, were also performed by Graziano. That terrestrial run was only one stop in a long broadcast history that began on pay-per-view.

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• 6. Broadcast History

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  SKY PerfecTV! began showing the series on its pay-per-view service on the 1st of October 2002. It ran for 26 episodes, until the 1st of October 2003. Nippon TV later aired it on terrestrial television from January to June 2004. After each episode came Tachikomatic Days, short comic animations starring the Tachikoma think-tanks. They usually related directly to the story that had just ended.

  A second season was decided on immediately after the first season's television run. At Otakon in 2003, Bandai extended the episode list to 52, which hinted at what was coming. In October 2003 Production I.G officially announced a second season of 26 episodes, to air at a rate of two per month. Animax broadcast 2nd Gig from the 1st of January 2004 to the 8th of January 2005. Nippon TV followed from April to September 2005.

  Bandai Visual and Manga Entertainment licensed the series in North America, and Madman Entertainment did the same in Australia. In the United States it was broadcast on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. YTV carried it in Canada, and AnimeCentral in the United Kingdom.

  On the 18th of March 2015, a full weekly rebroadcast on BS11 in Japan was announced, starting on the 1st of April 2015. On the 25th of April 2017, Starz said its video on demand service would offer episodes from the 1st of May 2017.

  A new installment was formally announced in December 2018, an original net animation series titled Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. Netflix released its first season on the 23rd of April 2020 and its second on the 23rd of May 2022. Each season has 12 episodes. Kenji Kamiyama directed one season and Shinji Aramaki directed the other.

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• 7. Spin-Offs and Merchandise

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  On the 23rd of September 2005, the feature-length OVA The Laughing Man was released in Japan. North America received it on the 2nd of October 2007. It retells the first season in abbreviated form, with minor changes to the Laughing Man affair and some added animation and voice work. The Japanese version kept the series cast, while the English version used new voice actors, with dialogue recorded by Ocean Productions. A Blu-ray followed on the 22nd of December 2010.

  Individual Eleven, a second feature-length OVA, retells 2nd Gig. It shifts the focus to the Individual Eleven investigation and to the relationship between Hideo Kuze and Motoko Kusanagi. It also adds newly animated scenes and a remixed soundtrack.

  Cavia developed a PlayStation 2 game, released on the 4th of March 2004 in Japan and the 8th of November 2004 in North America. G-Artists developed a PlayStation Portable sequel with the same title, released on the 15th of September 2005 in Japan and the 25th of October 2005 in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment published both in Japan. Bandai published them in North America and Europe. Several mobile phone games followed, released only in Japan between February 2011 and March 2012.

  On the 13th of December 2012, Nexon stated that it had obtained the rights for a massively multiplayer online game. It was formally announced on the 17th of September 2015 as First Assault Online, a squad-based first-person shooter for Microsoft Windows. Neople developed it, with voice performances by the original anime cast. It entered early access on Steam on the 14th of December 2015. By the end of 2017 it was discontinued in all territories. The reasons were low player uptake, poor reception, a lack of differentiation from other games in the genre, and the developers' own dissatisfaction with its quality.

  Junichi Fujisaku, a staff writer on the series, wrote a three-volume set of self-contained novel stories, illustrated by Kazuto Nakazawa. The volumes are The Lost Memory, Revenge of the Cold Machines and White Maze. Tokuma Shoten published them, and Dark Horse Comics distributed them in the United States.

  Kodansha published two manga series. The first, written by Yoshiki Sakurai and illustrated by Mayasuki Yamamoto, is based on the Tachikomatic Days shorts and ran to eight volumes. The second, illustrated by Yu Kinutani, adapts the first season and ran to five volumes. It launched on the 14th of December 2009 in Weekly Young Magazine.

  In December 2005, Wave produced a 1/24-scale plastic model kit of the Tachikoma. Figures of Motoko and the Tachikoma were made by CM Corporation, Kaitendo and the Good Smile Company, which worked with Nendoron. Other merchandise included clothing, key chains, notebooks, patches, bags, posters and body pillows. Official Log 1, a guidebook and DVD covering the first 19 episodes, appeared on the 25th of October 2005. Official Log 2 followed on the 24th of January 2006 and examined the remaining 7 episodes.

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• 8. Critics and Awards

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  Reviewers of the first season were mostly positive, and they singled out the animation and Yoko Kanno's score. Many liked the high-technology world, which one description called "believably futuristic". Lawrence Person of Locus Online wrote that the world is "recognizably our own", extrapolated from modern Japan. Several reviews also noted the themes that grew from this setting, especially what humanity means when the lines between man and machine blur.

  Reviewers agreed that the main Laughing Man storyline was satisfying, calling it interesting, complex and engaging. The stand-alone episodes divided opinion. Some critics found them boring, and a few called them the worst of the series. Others argued that those episodes deepened the characters and the futuristic setting.

  The 1995 film Ghost in the Shell set a high bar, and certain commentators measured the series against it. Opinion was split. Some reviews criticized the quality of the animation, and others felt the story lacked the film's depth. That lack of depth was explained by the series being action-oriented, with limited episode length for exploring deeper themes.

  The series won an Excellence Prize in the Animation Division at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival. It received a Notable Entry Award at the 2003 Tokyo International Anime Fair. In June 2004, Newtype USA gave it a "double scoop" cover story. The Japan Media Arts Festival described it as a "completely original television series...entertaining and easy to understand".

  For the second season, Chris Beveridge of Mania gave 2nd Gig an overall score of A and praised its coloring. Mark Thomas, also of Mania, gave it an A as well. Andy Patricio of IGN rated the first DVD volume 9/10 and called it the best-looking anime Production I.G had ever produced. Joe Luscik of Animefringe gave it 4.5 out of 5. Adam Arseneau of DVD Verdict said the second season felt more violent, more urban and more dystopic than the first.

  The third DVD volume was among the top-selling series in North America in 2006. It was also nominated for Best Animated TV DVD in the TV DVD Awards. At the American Anime Awards in 2007, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn won Best Actress.

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