Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow (1991) — Manga Review
For anime fans of the 1990s, pseudonymous manga author Masamune Shirow was one of the most recognisable names in Japanese entertainment. Raucous action comedy Dominion Tank Police was one of the biggest early hits of the VHS era — certainly in the UK it remained one of Manga Video’s top sellers for years. Shirow himself directed the single volume OVA adaptation of his debut manga Black Magic M66, a minor hit (released in the UK by Kiseki Films), which was followed by the OVA Appleseed, also from Manga Video, an adaptation of his at-the-time biggest series. Then in 1995, everything changed.
US independent comic producer Dark Horse, in partnership with Toren Smith’s Studio Proteus, kept all of Shirow’s manga works in print in English following the end of Smith’s contract with (now-defunct) Eclipse comics. Knowing that an enormous cinematic event was forthcoming, in March 1995, Dark Horse began publishing their 8-issue monthly release of Shirow’s 1989–91 manga Ghost in the Shell. This completed in October, only two months prior to the mega-hyped release of famed director Mamoru Oshii’s movie adaptation in the West.
An unprecedented East/West co-production, Manga Video themselves contributed money to the film’s budget, becoming part of the production committee, and securing a limited UK theatrical run within a month of the Japanese release. A PAL VHS edition appeared in time for Christmas, while the US didn’t get their NTSC VHS version until the following March. Although it didn’t recoup its 10 million dollar production budget on its theatrical release, Ghost in the Shell made a huge profit on video, becoming a movie that the media often mentioned in the same breath as 1988’s Akira.
Ghost in the Shell went on to influence worldwide popular culture, most notably with the Wachowski siblings’ Matrix series of films that lift concepts and even entire scenes from Oshii’s original. Although Oshii himself deserves much of the credit for creating such a stunning, cinematic adaptation, it’s the incredibly forward-thinking Shirow, author of the original manga, who deserves most recognition. It’s incredible to think now, but in 1989 when Shirow began writing Ghost in the Shell, the internet barely existed.
Authors like William Gibson had of course explored “cyberpunk” territory before, even coining terms like “cyberspace”, and Shirow liberally borrows from Gibson’s playbook. Shirow’s voluminous footnotes and sidenotes reveal him as very widely read, so it’s certain he had significant familiarity with Gibson’s work. Interestingly, Ghost in the Shell with its musings on the technological singularity pre-dates renowned author Vernor Vinge’s seminal novel A Fire Upon the Deep, and his influential essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.
Although Ghost in the Shell as a franchise soon went on to eclipse previous success Appleseed, with multiple films, TV shows and other spinoffs, today I only want to cover the original 368-page graphic novel. I first read it back in 1995 as it was released in eight US-format floppy comics, in mirror-image left-to-right reading format. Much has been written in fandom over the years about how this release was censored, with Shirow himself removing a particularly contentious and explicit two-page lesbian virtual threesome scene between main female protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi and two friends.
This scene was eventually reinstated by Dark Horse in their 2004 collected second edition, however when Kodansha retrieved the rights later, all subsequent English editions have featured the censored version. This is in fact at Shirow’s own request, Kodansha is on record stating they’d have been happy enough to release the lesbian orgy edition had the original creator permitted it. Anyway, it’s a prurient scene that adds nothing to the narrative. In typical pervert-mode, Shirow style, it features well-oiled, nubile female bodies contorted in various improbable positions pleasuring one another while conversing in hilariously dry out-of-context technobabble. If you really must see what the fuss is about, you can see the offending pages at the Internet Archive here (pages 58 and 59), but honestly you’re not missing much.
As a young adolescent, Shirow’s works fascinated me. His worldbuilding was so intricate, his footnotes so technical and detailed, that I felt surely I wasn’t clever enough, and that’s why I found his stories difficult to follow. I read and re-read Ghost in the Shell multiple times, and although I understood the general flow of the story, it still bothered me that much of the basic plots of the individual, episodic chapters baffled me. It was my hope that coming back to the manga decades later as a fully-educated and experienced adult would allow me to plough through the complex, at-times obtuse plots with ease. Not so — it’s still as resolutely difficult to follow as before, and I don’t think it’s because I’m dumb.
Even more so than Shirow’s prior work, Ghost in the Shell (GitS) is very episodic, taking the form of a futuristic police procedural, focusing on the fictional Public Security Section 9, a secret Japanese government task force set up for clandestine action against cyberterrorism. Headed by experienced administrator Daisuke Aramaki (who even has brown hair in the first chapter, before presumably greying due to stress!), field actions are led by full-conversion-cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi, poster girl for the franchise. Kusanagi (even this is only a pseudonym) is the only female member of section 9, and we learn very little about her true identity other than her only remaining organic constituent is her brain, the rest of her body is a highly-tuned, high-spec augmented, yet off-the-shelf cybernetic replacement.
Second-in-command is the meaty Batou, an ex-army soldier who brings muscle and combat experience. He, similar to the Major, also has a full-body cyborg prosthetic. Other than boss Aramaki, married man Togusa is the only full-human on the team, recruited from the Police for his investigative skills. Other team members like covert intelligence specialist Ishikawa, tactical sniper Saito, explosives expert Boma, and investigator Pazu play only background roles, and barely even have dialogue.
If you’ve only seen the film, reading Ghost in the Shell’s original manga is something of a culture shock. While Oshii’s movie is cold, clinical, philosophical and even somewhat ponderous, the source manga is a dense, fast-paced and humorous read. Kusanagi actually seems to have a personality and a sense of humour, and often hijacks Batou’s cyberbrain implant to make him punch himself for various perceived slights. It’s not unusual for Shirow to portray his characters in deformed style purely for comedic effect, and that can lead to significant tonal whiplash in chapters dealing with child trafficking, sexual abuse and mind-wiping. Shirow also never met a female butt, crotch or breast he couldn’t aggressively over-sexualise by drawing them from tortured angles, or in bizarre poses. It can be very distracting from the story he’s trying to tell. Shirow’s always been like this though, so any of his seasoned readers should know what to expect.
Among the movie’s most notable omissions are the AI-equipped “think tanks” employed by Section 9 as both transport and weapons back-up. In this iteration of GitS, they’re small red-coloured multi-legged tanks called “Fuchikomas”, distinct from the later Stand Alone Complex TV show’s blue-coloured “Tachikomas”. The only reason the TV version is different is due to a rights issue (presumably something to do with merchandising). If anything, Stand Alone Complex is probably the closest GitS has had to a faithful animated adaptation, despite its different plot. Its tone, characters and episode structures are almost exactly like the manga, so SAC fans should be (mostly) right at home with this first manga volume.
As I aim for this to be a fairly definitive overview, we’ll take it issue by issue as per Dark Horse’s initial release (because that’s still the version I have). Issue one covers a short (and bloody) 8-page colour prologue and a then the first full chapter. Each chapter is given a date, which is helpful to show the passage of time between installments. We begin in March 2029, which doesn’t quite feel as far away as it used to…
The prologue introduces the mysterious blue-haired Major Kusanagi in her pre-section 9 days, working secretly with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to foil an international conspiracy involving government executives, foreign powers and the recent assassination of the previous Japanese Prime Minister. Oshii adapted this scene for the opening of his movie, introducing the now-iconic visual of the (seemingly almost-naked) Kusanagi launching herself backwards off a skyscraper while engaging her thermopto-cam invisibility. While this manga chapter does feature the element of an invisible Kusanagi assassinating a government enemy, there’s no nakedness — that was Oshii’s addition! It does also introduce the concept of biological neurochips and cyberbrain technology, which are foundational to the entire franchise.
The first full chapter Super Spartan, runs to 40 pages (yes, this was a 48-page first issue, sold at the fair price of $3.95 US) and involves the beginnings of Section 9, introducing the rest of the crew. Kusanagi’s hair is now brown, she takes orders from Aramaki (in the prologue he had no idea she’d been sent to assassinate the politician he was investigating), and the only other character to get significant development is Batou. We also meet the Fuchikomas for the first time, and this is a really solid opening chapter that demonstrates the sort of horrifying cybercrimes and human rights abuses that Section 9 is set up to combat.
There’s not only action in the physical sphere with Togusa, Ishikawa and Kusanagi battling against armour-suited goons, but we’re introduced to the concurrent cyberwarfare in the background, with both sides utilising mental viruses and brain-hacking to gain the upper hand. Although Kusanagi’s team liberate a group of enslaved trafficked children whose brains are due to be wiped by a secret government black project, she’s incredibly harsh to one of the rescued children:
“What do you want? Do you just want to eat and contribute nothing, to be brainwashed by media trash? To sacrifice the nation’s future for your own selfishness? Listen kid, you’ve got a ghost and a brain… and you can access a cyber-brain. Create your own future.”
I guess I can understand the sentiment, but this is a teenager who’s been institutionalised and abused. Kusanagi’s something of a hardass…
Issue 2 gives us Junk Jungle, set in July 2029, a 44-page (46-page with uncensored cybersex scene) chapter with a couple of pages of Author’s Notes for the first two issues. These range from interesting and informative to waffly irrelevances that add little. Anything involving Shirow’s fictional weaponry belongs to the latter category. As with all of these chapters, there’s a 6(8)-page colour section to introduce the story that always looks pretty good, and to ease the transition to standard B&W pages, Shirow tends to desaturate the last few colour panels, which is a nice touch.
Movie fans will recognise the central plot point of this chapter — that of a garbage collector given false memories about a nonexistent wife and child being manipulated to perform a remote cyberbrain attack. It’s quite a depressing concept, and though the manga iteration is leavened with humour, the final image of the garbageman with his head in his hands, his whole life exposed as a lie, is potent enough that Oshii adapted this section almost wholesale. Of course in the manga, this is essentially a standalone chapter with nothing to do with the manga’s later “Puppeteer” story that the movie focuses on.
Issue three brings Robot Rondo, set in October 2029. Bizarrely, this earlier chapter is what Oshii decided to (very loosely) adapt for 2004’s movie sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. It’s another story involving child trafficking, and introduces the existentially horrifying concept of “ghost dubbing”, wherein a child’s mind is imperfectly copied across multiple androids, giving them “simulated ghosts”, to sell to rich investors as sexual playthings, while destroying the original. Shirow was out here doing this nightmare fuel stuff years before Black Mirror made it trendy. This is one of the most thought-provoking, interesting chapters of the whole manga, and it’s fairly easy to follow for once. Oshii’s movie version dilutes the story with endless circular pseudo-philosophical monologues that although are present to an extent in the source material, don’t bog it down in pretension.
Phantom Fund, set in December 2029 (Christmas Eve!) comprises issue four and is one of the weaker chapters, with muddled, vague storytelling. Kusanagi and co travel to the Kuril Islands north of Japan, to Soviet-occupied territory (GitS was written before the fall of the USSR, hard as that may be to comprehend now!) Perhaps the best aspect is the random comedy cameo from Dominion’s Puma Twins.
This chapter also introduces Batou’s Fuchikoma’s obsession with “Natural Oil”, and harvesting data from old cyberbrains. Both of these subplots become important in the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV anime, though are little more than jokes in the manga.
I’ve read this chapter through multiple times and I really don’t understand the plot in this one. It seems to involve double-crossing and triple-crossing of Russian agents, gold smuggling and industrial espionage. Shirow is so coy with his plotting that although he’ll offer great tracts of irrelevant information about the weapons his characters use, he doesn’t do the same in regards to who the antagonists actually are, nor their aims. Perhaps that’s the point — in a complex world of cyberwarfare where nothing is quite what it seems, the characters themselves aren’t sure what’s going on — but it’s frustrating as a reader.
Issue 5’s Dumb Barter catapults us forward to May 2030 — and introduces us to Major Kusanagi’s boyfriend! He doesn’t appear in any other aspect of the franchise… Anyway, he’s not given a name in this chapter, though we know he works for Public Security Section 1, and somewhat inevitably he ends up on the opposing side of an intra-governmental conflict. It speaks volumes about their trust in each other that despite this, Kusanagi and her boyfriend team up to fight a common enemy and support each others’ wounded body after the battle. This is a really good chapter with exciting battles and a great central twist, though I still struggle to follow any of Shirow’s political narrative. He just sort of drops names that the characters clearly know but as readers we’ve never come across. Sometimes GitS can be extremely terse — which helps the narrative keep moving, but sometimes at the expense of coherence.
Issue 6 is where shit starts to get real with Bye Bye Clay, set in July 2030. This is our introduction to Project 2501, perhaps better known as The Puppeteer. Huge chunks of this chapter are adapted wholesale by Oshii’s movie, and it’s also where Shirow starts to become a little… esoteric.
Kusanagi’s first direct interface with the Puppeteer is deep, fascinating stuff with full-on angel-evoking imagery, but the sheer density of technobabble is difficult to follow, and also mostly irrelevant to the story. Still, this is one of the best, most influential chapters of the whole story. Also poor Batou gets beaten up by Kusanagi. Again.
Penultimate chapter Brain Drain in issue 7 also features aspects adapted for the movie, but not so slavishly. There’s a version of the “Kusanagi on a boat and then in the sea” scene, but it heads in a very different direction, with Kusanagi entrapped and exposed by the media as a killer. She goes rogue, engineers a hostage situation using her remotely-controlled body, while Batou takes her physical brain (inside its metal case) to find a new body. Something kind of similar happens at the end of the movie — same plot beats, different circumstances.
Issue 8 concludes the story with the shorter chapter Ghost Coast and some funny bonus chapters that appear earlier in the collected editions. The Puppeteer contacts Kusanagi again, they have another lengthy jargon-filled conversation that probably looks a lot cleverer than it actually is, and then the plot culminates into their fusion as a new transcendental cyber/organic entity. We end with New Kusanagi transplanted into a stolen male body, marvelling at the vastness of the net.
In some ways it’s a fairly downbeat conclusion, until you consider the enormity of this event. Kusanagi has become the first human to transcend physical boundaries, and it’s implied she’ll be able to copy herself and multiply across the net to seek new experiences and forms of existence. This is transhumanism before the term was popularised (it was first coined in a 1957 essay by biologist Julian Huxley who surely wasn’t considering it in this context,) and it’s a shame that the franchise as a whole hasn’t done a whole lot to explore what Kusanagi did next.
There is, of course, more manga after this, and I intend to cover it soon — I have significant issues with its execution, however. Movie sequel Innocence only barely touches on Kusanagi’s apotheosis, and TV shows Stand Alone Complex and Arise do everything they can to avoid Kusanagi ascending to another plane of existence (it’s difficult to maintain a weekly police procedural show when your main character ascends to non-corporeal demi-godhood). The less said about the live-action movie’s bastardised, completely-missing-the-point ending the better.
Overall, Ghost in the Shell (1991), like all of Shirow’s work, is a mixed bag. Shirow’s obsession with overly-sexualised young women is enough to put off many readers, while his art is wildly variable. His dystopian cityscapes are intricately detailed and lived-in, while his mecha designs are weird yet oddly functional. His characters are often sloppily drawn, especially the men — probably because it doesn’t excite him to draw them. His action sequences, however, are immaculate, testament to his command of space, form and function. I never had trouble following what was happening, unlike, for example, Yasuhiro Nightow’s confused layouts in Trigun.
Shirow’s storytelling ranges from terse, tense, efficient and swift, to vague, confusing and labyrinthine. His extended technobabble sequences are enough to tire the patience of even the most well-educated saint, and his unabashed gun-fetishism is eye-rollingly dull. However, despite these flaws, Ghost in the Shell is full of moments of profound brilliance and entertaining character work. Shirow’s world is convincing and enthralling, even if now in 2024, with 2029 only five years in the future, it seems further away than ever.
With recent advances in artificial intelligence recently though, who’s to say we won’t have funny little philosophy and natural oil-obsessed multiped tanks at our beck and call soon? If Elon Musk gets his way we’ll all have creepy cyberbrain implants controlling our thoughts. If Ghost in the Shell taught me anything, it’s that although allowing direct computer access to my brain could open the potential to eventual digital ascension, it’s more likely an evil government, megacorporation, or terrorist organisation will infect it with a virus or fry my neurons first. I think I’ll happily stay unaugmented for now.
