Ghost In The Shell SAC_2045 Official Visual Book Review
While it seems like the 2020–2022 anime series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 may be generally disliked (unfairly in my opinion) by the vast majority of Stand Alone Complex fans, I have a big soft spot for it. While the visuals take a lot of getting used to, especially the off-puttingly plasticky CGI that makes every character look like Barbie dolls, the actual character and mecha designs are great. Russian artist Ilya Kuvshinov is the one to credit for SAC_2045’s very different look, and he’s an artist whose work I’ve admired for a while now.
My first exposure to Kuvshinov’s work was via his character designs for director Keiichi Hara’s Birthday Wonderland (known as The Wonderland in the US). It’s a fun, meandering, episodic, colourful film with standout visuals and beautiful characters. I reviewed it over four years ago here. Kuvshinov also provided some designs (but not characters) for Hara’s next film, the superior Lonely Castle in the Mirror, my favourite pick from the selection at 2023's Scotland Loves Anime film festival, reviewed here. Fans of studio Doga Kobo’s excellent slice of life romance Sing “Yesterday” For Me might recognise Kuvshinov’s unmistakable art in the third ending sequence, video linked below. (It’s also a pretty decent song.)
Latterly, Kuvshinov has lent his pen to the promo art for currently-running anime movie-duology-turned-TV-show Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction, and his most prominent work prior to that was directing and designing the characters for the Cyberpunk Edgerunners-related music video for ending song Let Me Down, animated by STUDIO MASSKET. It’s well worth watching, and it’s linked below.
Probably his most prominent contributions so far in his relatively short anime career are his designs for SAC_2045. Major Motoko Kusanagi is a legitimate anime icon who has been visualised multiple times over — first by creator Masamune Shirow in his original manga, then by Hiroyuki Okiura in Mamoru Oshii’s two theatrical movies, by Makoto Shimomura in the original run of Stand Alone Complex, and then by Kazuchika Kise in Arise. That’s not including her multiple manga incarnations by various creators, and Scarlett Johansson’s controversial portrayal in the live action movie.
Kuvshinov’s Kusanagi looks a lot younger than in her previous Stand Alone Complex appearances, though in-world that could be explained by a change in body — she’s fully cyberised after all. Kuvshinov’s women all feature large, expressive eyes that hint at both coolness and playfulness, something very much akin to Shirow’s own conception of Kusanagi from his original manga. Kuvshinov’s female hairstyles invariably tend towards strongly-defined fringes (or “bangs” for you weird US readers and your bizarre terminology) that accentuate his characters almost elfin facial features. He conjures an air of slightly otherworldly cuteness, and with the Major, this is mixed with her undeniable badass-ness too.
The SAC_2045 Official Visual Book is a handsome paperback volume, only slightly wider than a typical standard US comic-sized graphic novel. Although there’s no Western release, it’s easily available from the usual online bookstores for under 30 dollars. I got mine from otaku.co.uk for £22. Text is kept to a minimum, this book exists only for the artwork Kuvshinov generated during production of the series.
As expected, there are pages and pages of drawings of Major Kusanagi in various outfits, usually looking effortlessly cool. Kuvshinov also includes pages of designs for every other main character, including all of Section 9’s task force, with a particular emphasis on pink-haired menace Purin Ezaki, including some outfits a bit more outlandish than what eventually made it onscreen. Various side character designs appear, including slimy CIA agent “John Smith”, post-human billionaire Patrick Huge (non-existent genitalia not pictured), and the slightly pervy maid bots and their selection of costumes.
Kuvshinov didn’t only design the characters — the book displays his mecha designs too, including his slightly taller redesigns of the beloved Tachikoma think tanks, armored suits, drones, and those super-cool (and terrifying) robot guard dogs that fold into Xbox Series X-esque cuboids when inactive. (Wouldn’t it be hilarious if it turned out that Microsoft stealthily installed cuboidal murderbots in every Xbox-owners’ home, presumably to destroy any PS5s on the premises?)
Included amongst the finalised designs are multiple pencil sketches, many of which are annotated with short Japanese-language notes. My general approach to these is to use something like Google Lens to get an idea of the jist of the text. I’m not a big fan of machine translation, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil when books like these aren’t officially localised for an English-speaking audience.
At only 96 pages, it’s a rather slim volume, and it really doesn’t take that long to flick through. A lot of the art is quite repetitive, in that there can be a dozen of the same character, in the same pose, with a dozen outfit variations. The colour art is nice, though there are a significant number of black and white sketches. I really like Kuvshinov’s character art, especially his female designs, though the Tachikoma art is excellent— particularly the schematic cutaways, demonstrating how the characters actually fit inside them. (In very cramped fashion, it seems.)
Kuvshinov has a few other non-Ghost in the Shell art books in print: Momentary, Eternal, and The Art of the Wonderland. I like his aesthetic so much that I may look them out. It’s also worthwhile following him on his instagram, it’s full of pictures of his beautiful girls! Now that I’m more or less done with relevant GitS art books, the next volume I’ll look at is a fairly obscure Stand Alone Complex guide book from almost 20 years ago, that comes with its own documentary-filled DVD. I’ll dive deep into that and return with a report soon!
Ghost In The Shell SAC_2045 Official Visual Book
Artist: Ilya Kuvshinov
JP publisher: Kodansha
JP publication: 1st June 2020
Language: Japanese
Format: Softcover
Pages: 96
Size: 182 x 257 mm
ISBN-13: 978-4065193471
