In a new-type technology world, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her partner Bateau are part of a covert division of the Japanese police. It is their job to investigate the cyber crime and crimes committed by runaway robots.
In their world, it is almost impossible to find a person who hasn’t been tampered with by electronics. But, as Major Motoko states, “if we all reacted the same we’d be predictable and there’s always more than one way to view a situation what’s true for the group is also true for the individual. It’s simple, over specialize and you breed weakness, it’s slow death.” That is why it is important for Togusa, the second most prominent male in the story, to be a part of their team. As an almost human being, except a slight brain augmentation, he adds a different view on the situation for the team.
Ghost in the Shell
3 Stars
In a new-type technology world, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her partner Bateau are part of a covert division of the Japanese police. It is their job to investigate the cyber crime and crimes committed by runaway robots.
In their world, it is almost impossible to find a person who hasn’t been tampered with by electronics. But, as Major Motoko states, “if we all reacted the same we’d be predictable and there’s always more than one way to view a situation what’s true for the group is also true for the individual. It’s simple, over specialize and you breed weakness, it’s slow death.” That is why it is important for Togusa, the second most prominent male in the story, to be a part of their team. As an almost human being, except a slight brain augmentation, he adds a different view on the situation for the team.
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The team encounters what first appears to be a hacker they call the Puppet Master. This so-called Puppet Master specializes in implanting false memories in unsuspecting people, just so they will do his dirty work. The first case starts with a poor and unsuspecting garbage man, a pawn of the Puppet Master’s, who is tricked into believing he has a neglectful wife who wants a divorce, and a daughter who blames him for the divorce. The Puppet Master gets him to use a public phone, so he doesn’t get caught, to try to hack into his wife’s ghost to better understand the reason for the divorce. When Major Motoko and her highly skilled team of cyber crime fighters realize what is going on they must catch up with the oblivious garbage man, who ends up leading the team straight to the person who “helped” him.
The team races around the film to only discover that the Puppet Master is an artificial intelligence that has no shell. The Puppet Master leeches onto anyone he can and controls everything the pawn of choice does.
Major Motoko, once a beautiful shell of a woman, is reduced to a child after tearing apart her last body to get at the Puppet Master. The thing I like the most about the shifting of her ghost from one shell to the other was when she began talking she had the personality and voice of the child, but soon personalized to her normal self and voice.
The anime is artistically beautiful; however, they did a horrible job at explaining what is going on before they dove into the story. The voice over at first sounds pretty poor, but after a while you get used to it and it stops distracting you from the story. I hope that by then you have a good grasp on the film, if not you could easily hit stop, because you really aren’t missing much.
I have had a couple people recommend this to me on some forums I am part of, and I have to say, this is the first time I have thought their recommendation sucked. Forgive me, I know… With so many agreeing, why didn’t I like it? Honestly, I haven’t the slightest clue, this is the typical story for typical me, technology, gadgets, telepathy, guns and action. On top of all those mouth-watering genres, there is absolutely no love story, none at all. However, for some strange reason, it just sucked. Best of luck with this one, many people enjoy it however I did not.
I’m a big fan of The Matrix, but I’m a bigger fan of Dark City. Released more than a year before Neo took the red pill to the delight of audiences everywhere, writer/director Alex Proyas presented a similar tale of a man trapped in a world where nothing is quite what is seems. Although not as widely known (more than six times the number of people have taken the time to rate The Matrix on IMDb), it is a superior film in almost every conceivable way. Released in 1998 we mark the occasion by reviewing the DVD ten years later.
Last year the combination of writer/director 
