Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045:
Sustainable War Movie Review
Now that I’ve covered all three of the mid-2000s Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex films (The Laughing Man, Individual Eleven, and Solid State Society), the first two of which compile and edit down a 26-episode TV anime season each into 2.5 hour digests, it’s time to move on to the equivalent movies for sequel series SAC_2045. I first reviewed SAC_2045’s two twelve-episode seasons back when Netflix began streaming them, in 2020 and 2022 respectively. While my take on them was at least somewhat positive, general fan and critic reactions to both seasons were savage. You can read my reviews below:
Much negativity was focused on the hideously plasticky CG visuals, which, to be honest, deserve all the hate they get. While Russian artist Ilya Kuvshinov’s new character designs are stunningly iconic and beautiful, they don’t translate all that well to the horrible doll-like animation. Despite sharing the same chief writer and director as the original SAC run (Kenji Kamiyama), SAC_2045 is generally perceived at best as a mistake and at worse as an abomination by what seems to be the vast majority of GitS fans.
Further criticism was levelled at the story, for missing the complexity and profundity of earlier SAC entries, instead focusing on empty spectacle. I think this is unfair, as I suspect had this series been animated more traditionally, then the story would likely have also been more widely accepted. The CG animation does lend itself well to some incredible action sequences, especially those featuring vehicles like multiped tanks, drones, helicopters, and the beloved returning little blue Tachikomas. It’s whenever characters start moving there’s a problem. For every cool robot guard dog or formidable armoured suit, there’s an inexplicably somersaulting naked billionaire. I know that sometimes SAC used action humourously, but we’re supposed to laugh with the action, not at it.
SAC_2045 introduces three main heady concepts that fit magnificently into the overall GitS universe. First is the concept of the “Sustainable War”, a ruse by ultra-rich billionaire arms companies and certain affluent countries to keep the world in a perpetual state of war, in order to prop up the economy. War is good for business, after all. Second is the “Simultaneous Gobal Default”, an unprecedented economic disaster that wiped the value of all currencies from the stock market. This seemed to have been triggered by a group of people manifesting the third concept — that of the “Post-Humans”. These Post-Humans, whoever they are, have vastly more powerful cyberbrain capabilities than any normal humans, even Major Kusanagi, plus they’re physically and mentally superhuman with incredible abilities to match.
SAC_2045: Sustainable War edits the 12-episode first SAC_2045 season down into just under two hours, and like the season itself is divided almost exactly in half by two main story arcs, which makes for a weirdly-constructed film. It’s like watching two hour-long OVAs artificially jammed together. The first hour covers episodes one to six, though is heavily streamlined, often with dialogue from one sequence playing out over the visuals of another for maximum efficiency. In 2045, eleven years after the events of Solid State Society, Public Security Section 9 has once again been disbanded, and now Major Kusanagi and several of her former colleagues (namely Batou, Ishikawa and Saito) have formed mercenary group “Ghost” and are working on US soil for a US mercenary hire organisation.
We watch Ghost attempt to foil a terrorist attack against a rich Beverly Hills residence by a group of broke ex-students, who have been provided military hardware by an anonymous billionaire. (Apparently they’ve resorted to terrorism in retaliation for the student loan interest that has bankrupted them… Modern day US government take note, please…) The subsequent action scenes are intense and a level above anything achieved in the original SAC because of the freedom of motion provided by the shiny, shiny CG. It’s a shame Kusanagi looks like a child now.
Former Section 9 member Togusa has been left behind by the Major, and appears to have returned to the Police force, when he is contacted by Daisuke Aramaki who engages him to reform Section 9 with all of its original members. Togusa appears much sooner in the film than in the TV version, and his attempts to track down Kusanagi et al are interspersed with their scenes. Eventually Togusa and Aramaki are reunited with their former colleagues, after a truly bizarre battle against Post-Human billionaire Patrick Huge. A seemingly new member of the team, a black American man Batou dubs “Clown” is sent away with false memories by the Major, and smarmy CIA agent “John Smith” introduces his imprisoned Post-Human, who’s missing half his brain. Things go predictably and horribly wrong, leading to exploding heads. There are a lot of exploding heads in this film. Presumably director Kamiyama is a huge Scanners fan.
Upon returning to Japan, Section 9 is re-established, we meet the new (blonde, half-American) Japanese president, hyperactive pink-haired annoyance Purin Ezaki who acts like she’s wandered in from a different franchise entirely, and John Smith who keeps hanging around like a bad smell. We miss out comedy bank heist episode 7 — PIE IN THE SKY, because it’s the closest thing the season has to a “Stand Alone” episode, then we’re onto the next story arc, which features a hunt for three Post-Humans thought to be on Japanese soil. One of these is a former professional boxer who uses a prosthetic arm to explode his targets’ heads (they’re all people he seems to find morally objectionable), another is a school student who programmed an app that facilitates collective vigilante justice via cyberbrain hacking.
This second half is much more pedestrian, and somewhat unfocused — probably because it’s comprised of a bunch of less-heavily-serialised episodes crammed together, and in an altered order. Purin manages to be somehow helpful in investigating app-writing teenager Takashi Shimamura, and following the leads she discovers, Togusa ends up possibly getting infected by some kind of virus that gives him access to Shimamura’s memories. Togusa witnesses a tragic event from Shimamura’s childhood, and winds up disappearing in front of Batou. It’s a deeply weird, unsettling scene — especially as the Tachikomas can still see Togusa as he rides off on a seemingly nonexistent truck, while Batou looks completely confused, his vision clearly hacked. This was originally the cliffhanger to SAC_2045’s first season, but here it’s instead followed by the events of what was episode 9 — INDENTITY THEFT, presumably to give us at least some action before the end.
This provides us with a fairly unsatisfactory ending. The final scene is in fact taken from the second season’s fifth episode, showing Togusa alive and well, undercutting any power from what was previously an effective, if strange, cliffhanger. We then get a nonsensical montage of random images from the second season, which rather than drum up enthusiasm, just provides confusion and disorientation. Despite having already seen that second season, I was left thinking “Is that it? Are we really done now?” Considering this film was first released in Japan a good six months before the international streaming debut of the second season, perhaps seeing new footage then would have stoked fans’ anticipation?
Compared to the previous two SAC digest movies, Sustainable War isn’t even in the same league. It’s not bad, it’s still coherent, but it’s a poorly-shaped story that feels much more obviously Frankensteined-together than the others. Abruptly ending the action-filled first half and transitioning straight into the unevenly-structured second half really robs it of any momentum. Some important plot threads are definitely laid that will be important for the future, but this just does not work well as a film. Perhaps this is a consequence of Kamiyama not taking charge of the editing himself this time around — instead the direction is credited to Michihito Fujii. At least we get to keep the same, excellent SAC English dub cast. I’d still recommend watching the full twelve episodes, because I really don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to make it out to be. SAC_2045 can’t hope to match the standards of Kamiyama’s previous SAC work, but I think it’s a bold experiment that, despite it’s terrible visual (and structural) flaws, takes the GitS franchise in some new and interesting directions.
While the twelve-episode second season has been available to stream on Netflix since 2022, not so the second compilation film, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045: The Last Human. Although it was released in Japanese theatres on 23rd November 2023, it’s yet to make its way to international Netflix streaming. I can find almost no information online about it, other than some vague rumblings that it alters the ending to the show slightly. PlayAsia lists the JP Blu-ray release date for The Last Human as 28th August 2024, so I assume we can expect Netflix to stream it in English sometime around then. I’m sure I’ll end up reviewing it.
Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045: Sustainable War
Directors: Kenji Kamiyama (chief), Shinji Aramaki (chief), Michihito Fujii
Written by: Kenji Kamiyama
Based on: Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
Character designs: Ilya Kuvshinov
Music: Kazuma Jinnōchi, Nobuko Toda
Studio: Production I.G, Sola Digital Arts
Licensed by: Netflix
JP release: November 12, 2021
International release: 9th May, 2022
Runtime: 118 minutes
