Cyberpunk has long attempted to dethrone traditional concepts of the soul, usually replacing them with oversimplified slogans cribbed from information theory. William Gibson tried to hand-wave the Turing Test into a mechanistic notion of the human soul as composed of information. He was followed by scores of imitators who took it as proven that human souls are nothing more than computer programs. The Ghost in the Shell franchise has always tried to be more intelligent than most cyberpunk (although it was primarily known for having its heroine jump off of rooftops while wearing a transparent, skin-tight bodysuit.). Ghost in the Shell: Innocence made progress toward seriousness (apparently because it had more basset hounds). With the fifty-two-episode TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the franchise has finally balanced entertainment and seriousness.
A disorderly pile of speculative thoughts does not constitute science fiction any more than a disorderly pile of bricks constitutes a house. Masamune Shirow created the original Ghost in the Shell manga stories from a very large heap of exciting thoughts, none of which were overly burdened by actual science or mathematics. The result was a thin glaze of cyberpunk painted over not-very-thoughtful action involving lots of of scantily clad female bodies. The attempts at philosophy in the original Ghost in the Shell movie have been deservedly mocked in webcomics.
This links to a webcomic mocking the first movie.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex cannot be dismissed as uneducated philosophizing dressed up in cyberpunk. Both seasons deliver counterterrorist action, police drama, social criticism, and moral challenges to modern humanism. The eye candy is outstanding, as expected; Yoko Kanno's soundtracks alone are worth the price of admission. The cyberpunk speculations on technology are not much improved, but they are much less necessary to the plot. Further, Shirow's original philosophy appears to have less impact than the contributions of the rest of the creative team. In addition to long-winded philosophy, there are wordless but comprehensible visual allegories, overt and covert references to classic films, allusions to popular science (such as Dawkins' memetics and Lovelock's Gaia), and very pointed commentaries on the racial and economic problems of modern Japanese society. However, despite all the much-needed improvements, it is clear that the team loves the original stories and movies, with all their flaws, because the allusions to the older material are always present.
Without any of its diverse elements -- story, art direction, music, etc. -- this TV series would be much weaker. In fact, it's a shock to consider the difference between the aesthetics of the first and second seasons. The first season opens with excellent computer animation, synchronized to a groundbreaking song composed by Yoko Kanno and sung partly in Russian. The first season closes with a Cowboy Bebop-ish rock song, accompanied by beautifully painted still images of the main characters. The second season opens to a rock-and-roll song, sung partly in Russian, that is perfectly serviceable, accompanied by a nicely drawn but ordinary opening art sequence. The closing is an uninspiring song played over text credits. If the same team worked on both of these, they apparently did two efforts and then put the obviously stronger effort first. For those of us who worship Yoko Kanno as a living Muse, the second season is more than a little disappointing.
The heroine, Kusanagi Yomoko, is a no-nonsense superwoman who makes "Dirty" Harry Callahan look like a limp-wristed jazz pianist. Equipped with a super-strong cybernetic body, near-perfect invisibility, and gravity-defying breasts, she is a deranged voyeur's conception of a perfect woman. Her high-tech "shell" of a body must be periodically maintained and replaced, making her extremely loyal to the shadowy secret police force which provides her equipment. While her exhibitionism has been toned down from the manga (in which she made porn recordings), she still takes every possible opportunity to execute her police duties clad in thigh-high stockings, underwear, and a leather jacket. This sartorial choice actually prevented me from watching the show when it first came out, since I was too busy laughing at her clothes to watch the show. The emotional side of her sex life gets short shrift, although the second season develops it slightly. First, last, and always, however, Kusanagi's priority is effectiveness, whether expressed by combat or computer infiltration. This single-minded pursuit of excellence may be the flip side of a quiet despair which sabotages her ability to give and receive love. Or then again, maybe she's just another hot fictional chick with superpowers.
The next-most effective warrior on the secret police team is Batou, a giant ex-Ranger who is always brave, tough, and kind to children and animals. Batou embodies a traditional masculinity, enjoying weight equipment (which his cyborg body does not need) and boxing. Batou's devotion to Kusanagi appears to go beyond professional loyalty.
A strong contrast to Batou is Togusa, a slender young policeman with almost no cybernetic enhancements and a romantic attachment to impractical gear such as a Mateba autorevolver. Togusa appears to be the only person on the team who actually has the traditional attachment to notions like "due process of law," "evidence," "minimum necessary force to apprehend suspects," etc. Togusa also has a wife and children; while he lacks seniority and appears to be younger than his teammates, he also seems to be the most psychologically mature person on the team.
The commander of the team, Aramaki, is a statesman and spymaster, not a warrior. His principled professionalism is the totality of his character. The remainder of the team gets very little time in the spotlight. Borma is an ex-military demolitions expert; Saito is a sniper; Ishikawa is a military computing specialist. The mysterious, sexually promiscuous Pazu might have a non-military background; he acts more like a gangster than a soldier. The show is frequently stolen by artificial intelligent battletanks called "Tachikoma," who have no personal names or numbers. The childlike enthusiasm and curiosity of these non-human machines are possibly the most cheerful and humane elements of the story.
Many episodes are standard James Bond/Tom Clancy style action pieces about the glorious excitement of counter-terrorist commando raids. Some episodes take side-journeys to deepen characterization. However, the overall arcs of both the first and second seasons are very serious stories about how the secret police deal with government corruption, widespread social alienation, and the stresses of accelerating technology. Both seasons feature highly sympathetic characters who are willing to undertake dangerous criminal or terroristic actions because they live an intolerable society. Until now, I have held up Gasaraki as the anime which best deals with social alienation, but Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (including its sequel movie) has usurped its place as the most thoughtful social commentary in anime.
The literal translation of the Japanese title of this franchise is "Mobile Armored Riot Police." It is not surprising to see distributed social unrest, riots, and revolutions playing important roles in the story. There are many shades of grey in the morals of all the characters. Is it ethical to risk public safety and welfare in order to produce much-needed social change? Is it ethical for personally enraged police officers to go berserk, bend rules and wage private shadow wars? Is it ethical for public servants and office-holders to take initiatives that would be scandalous if they were public? Is it ethical for the powerless and weak to give material support to terrorists fighting on their behalf? Is it ethical for police to temporarily ally themselves with minor criminals in order to survive and fight serious terrorists? The first season addresses questions of this kind in the context of a mysterious super-hacker who seems to be bringing about chaos by anti-corporate terrorism and blackmail. The first season's writing is intertextual -- it makes numerous references both to classic film and to Catcher in the Rye, a book which influenced real-life gunmen John Hinckley, Jr. and Mark David Chapman. The second season, which is less intertextual but still finds time for references to classic films such as Taxi Driver, concerns a conspiracy of truly epic scope, in which Kusanagi has an unbearably personal stake.
