Studio: Production I.G, Bandai Visual, Manga Entertainment
Short Synopsis
In 2029, in a crowded Asian port city, most people have cybernetic implants that connect their brains directly to the network, and some, like Major Motoko Kusanagi of the government's counter-cyberterrorism unit Section 9, have entirely artificial bodies, with only their "ghost", their consciousness, remaining human. Kusanagi and her partner Batou are hunting a mysterious hacker called the Puppet Master, who "ghost-hacks" people's brains, implanting false memories. A garbage collector, convinced he is spying on his estranged wife, turns out to have been given an entire fictional life. A female cyborg body escapes from a factory and is brought to Section 9; inside it is the Puppet Master, who reveals that it is not a person at all, but a computer program developed by the Foreign Ministry's Section 6 that has become self-aware in the sea of information and now seeks asylum as a living being. Section 6 steals the body back. Kusanagi tracks it to an abandoned museum, tears herself apart fighting a spider tank to reach it, and agrees to merge her consciousness with the Puppet Master's. She wakes in a new, child's body, a new being, and goes out into the vast net.
Why It Matters
- The film combines hand-drawn and computer animation with a slow, meditative style: a long, wordless sequence of the city in the rain, set to Kenji Kawai's haunting choral music, is one of the great passages of animated filmmaking, and Kusanagi's questions about what makes a self, her body or her memories, give the action real philosophical weight.
- It is one of the most influential anime films ever made. A success on video in the West, it shaped cyberpunk cinema, most famously The Matrix (1999), whose directors showed it to their producers as a model, and it helped establish anime as a serious art form for international audiences.
Notes and Trivia
- Masamune Shirow's manga first appeared in 1989.
- The English title comes from Arthur Koestler's book The Ghost in the Machine, which Shirow cited.
- See also: Perfect Blue (1997), Princess Mononoke (1997).