Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Episodes 1–13 review
As much as I enjoy the original manga, and despite how much I respect Mamoru Oshii’s contemplative, philosophical movie adaptation, my number one favourite aspect of the entire voluminous Ghost in the Shell franchise is Production I.G.’s 2002–2005 TV anime series Stand Alone Complex. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who would later work on Moribito and Eden of the East (both also for Production I.G.), his TV anime incarnation of GitS is, in terms of tone, closest to Masamune Shirow’s original manga.
1991’s Ghost in the Shell manga (and its aborted sequel Human Error Processor) is an episodic police procedural at heart, with occasional forays into more complicated storytelling. Shirow himself went off the rails in the incomprehensible 2.0: Man-machine Interface, losing the attention of many readers with increasingly esoteric stories diverging from the adventures of the Section 9 characters we had all come to love.
Kamiyama doubles as head writer for Stand Alone Complex, and his tight control of the narrative prevents the show from ever disappearing up its own I/O port, unlike Shirow’s later installments. This first season is divided up into two story types. “Stand-alone” episodes cover the day-to-day police work undertaken by Major Motoko Kusanagi’s Public Security Section 9. These are as close to individual episodes of CSI as you’ll get in anime, albeit with a strong sci-fi tinge. Conversely, the “Complex” episodes gradually build up a convoluted yet compelling narrative around the “Laughing Man” phenomenon.
Clever wordplay is one of Kamiyama’s signatures, and in-narrative the term “Stand-Alone Complex” is used to describe an event that arises from multiple sources that may not have an origin. Much like how in the manga and movie “The Puppeteer” is a life form that emerges more-or-less spontaneously from the internet’s sea of information, a Stand Alone Complex arises from the intricate, almost infinite web of interactions between connected individuals, as influenced by surrounding culture and technology. It’s a heady concept, that to be honest I still struggle to entirely get my head around. In that aspect, it’s in excellent company with the often-inscrutable manga.
The first season’s 26 episodes originally broadcast on SKY PerfecTV’s pay-per-view satellite network channel Animax starting October 2002, and aired two-episodes at a time, on the first day of every month, for a full 13-months. It took two years for the show to eventually reach Western audiences — we didn’t have simulcasting back then! Long before the Manga Entertainment DVDs were released in the UK, I used to import super-dodgy bootleg DVDs from Hong Kong via ebay. I remember the first volume had only two episodes, and the opening sequence obviously hadn’t even been completed at that point — the OP was set to scenes from the episodes themselves! After that, each volume contained four episodes, at the rate of one disc every two months. The wait was excruciating, and the subtitles were terrible. They must have been translated from Japanese to Cantonese and then to English. The godawful grammar and hilarious mistranslations only added to the fun (and my confusion, it has to be said). Unfortunately, I donated my full collection of bootleg DVDs to charity as soon as official versions were available to buy. It’s a shame, as I can’t find images to prove the editions I owned existed anywhere on the internet.
For the purposes of this article, I wanted to see if the show was streaming on one of the many services I’m currently subscribed to, but nope! Although the later Arise series is available to stream on Crunchyroll, the only place streaming SAC in the UK is Funimation NOW, and I cancelled my subscription to that ages ago when Sony merged it with Crunchyroll. Even now, heaps of the back catalogue hasn’t yet been shifted across. It seems weird that a show as big and popular as SAC has been left to languish on what is essentially a dead service. The only other options are to pay £30 per season to buy from Apple TV. No thanks — I’ll stick to my single-volume DVDs in their special edition metal box from 2007!
I’ve still got the t-shirt that came with it— unfortunately the model tachikoma has long since disappeared. That makes me sad. A weird thing about the size of the tin — it was made to fit seven individually-released DVD volumes in plastic cases. However, unlike in the US, every UK volume was also given an additional cardboard slipcase which bulked them up to the point that only six volumes would fit in the box! This was remedied for the second season with a bigger tin. To this day, my season one metal box set sits incomplete with six volumes inside and the seventh volume orphaned on the shelf beside my other DVDS. Anyway, thank God I tend to obsessively hoard media and have the DVDs easily available. They still look pretty decent played via my PS4 on my humble 32" living room TV!
For this planned journey though all 52 episodes (both seasons) of Stand Alone Complex, I’m joined by my son (in his early 20s) who did attempt to watch them with me about a decade ago, while in his teens, but he sort of lost interest and wandered off, which is the story of our lives watching media together. Watchmen TV series? Gave up and wandered off two episodes before the end. Raised by Wolves? Freaked out by screaming existential horror and ran away after six episodes. Blade Runner: The Final Cut? Fell asleep within 30 minutes. I’ve never been so disappointed as a father. So far though, he’s seemed engaged in the show and has paid attention, which is great, because I’m hoping he might be able to comprehend, then explain, some of the more confusing shit that I couldn’t wrap my head around when I watched it myself in my early 20s.
Kamiyama eases us into the flow of things with three Stand Alone episodes, with the first neatly referencing both the manga and movie’s opening with Major Kusanagi using her thermopto-camoflage to defeat a bad guy. No Oshii-induced nakedness this time, but the Major certainly wears an… uh… “eyecatching” outfit that’s essentially a leotard and a jacket combo that doesn’t seem to be exactly standard-issue government uniform. Shirow’s eye for incongruous cheesecake remains, though it’s certainly dialled down greatly from the manga. If anything, Stand Alone Complex is a show that’s pretty light on the distracting fanservice.
Much like the manga’s prologue, the first episode’s story involves international intrigue, military intelligence, and the Japanese Foreign Minister. We’re introduced to the concepts of cyberbrains, and the weird identity crises inherent in having removable craniums and hot-swappable hard drives as brains. It also cements GitS’ healthy anti-US cynicism. The Americans are usually up to no good in the GitS world.
Episode two focuses heavily on the cute, blue, deadly Tachikoma multi-ped tanks, adapted from the manga’s red Fuchikomas that were sadly absent from the movie. These high-spirited metal buddies were a huge part of the manga’s appeal, and it’s heartening to see a tone-accurate version of them so prominent here. It’s a fun episode that also covers interesting societal and religious objections to the march of cyberbrain technology. It fleshes out the world our characters live in.
Similarly, the third episode is a succinct little meditation on the relationship between a lonely young man and the obsolete android he loves. Of course there will always be people who form unhealthy attachments to tech. This episode does end with a deeply weird twist involving French New Wave film Breathless. We’ll see many more literary and film references as the show progresses. We also get a fun cameo from a version of manga chapter 6 (Robot Rondo)’s funny little cuboidal cyborg Jameson — though he’s less evil in this iteration.
Episodes four to six give us a first taste of the insanely complex Laughing Man storyline, starting with the deeply paranoid, noirish INTERCEPTER. This is probably the first truly great episode that does an excellent job introducing what this show is really going to be about. The paranoia only escalates into a national incident in the following two episodes, where we find Section 9 chasing their tails while an unidentified hacker (or hackers?) run circles around them. There’s a deep conspiracy at work here, and both Section 9 and the viewer are in the dark about what’s happening and why. While in the manga this narrative disconnect happened frequently, here it’s less egregious because we have the confidence that explanations will eventually come, there’s a reason for everything we’re watching. Whereas in the manga, Shirow would randomly namedrop all sorts of disconnected shit and then never follow-up on it.
The next couple of episodes return to stand-alones, with IDOLATER in particular homaging the manga with an overt reference to the ghost-dubbing technology from chapter six. There’s a different context to its use, but it’s no less unsettling. It’s another self-contained episode with a cool twist. MISSING HEARTS provides some essential backstory for Major Kusanagi that we never got from either the manga or film — it’s confirmed that she became a full-body cyborg from the age of around six, holds onto a wristwatch as a memento, presumably of her organic body, and one of her memories is of accidentally destroying a doll with the overpowered grip of her new prosthetic body (as referenced in the opening sequence). Although the Major does often work best as a mysterious figure, it’s great that finally we witness a few more sides to her character. She’s not as funny as she was in the manga, but she does still have a playful, whimsical side at times.
Infamous episode CHAT CHAT CHAT is a Complex episode that takes place almost entirely within an internet chatroom. It’s a fairly accurate, prescient piece, though my son pointed out it wasn’t that realistic because the chatboxes should have been filled with offensive slurs. Sigh. I know he’s right. Anyway, I like this episode. Although it’s all talking heads, it’s a fascinating way of exploring the implications of the previous Complex episodes. It also features the animated debut of Major Kusanagi’s online alter-ego Chroma from GitS 1.5 and 2.0.
Stand-alone episode JUNGLE CRUISE is by far the most disturbing and upsetting installment so far, when ex-Ranger Batou is faced with a serial killer he failed to catch in his previous role. This guy captures women, hacks their cyberbrains, and forces them to watch as he peels the skin off their torso, before leaving them to die slowly. It’s like something from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit mixed with Se7en. No wonder this one ran with a viewer warning on Adult Swim.
Complex episode PORTRAITZ is definitely one of the weirdest ones so far, with Togusa investigating a social welfare residential facility for kids with “Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome”, which functionally seems to be something like autism — affected kids can shut themselves away from the world entirely, or become completely consumed by complex online activities. The episode constantly plays with Togusa’s — and the viewer’s — perspectives, until we’re not entirely sure what’s real. Togusa seems to experience hallucinations and periods of missing time. It really makes me hope that cyberbrains never become a thing — I’d never want my mind to be so vulnerable to outside tampering. We get our first glimpse of the kid who could potentially be a Laughing Man candidate, alongside a whole bunch of JD Salinger/Catcher in the Rye references.
Episodes 12 and 13 round off the first half of the series with a couple more Stand-alones, (a run of which will comprise the entirety of the episodes up to and including episode 19), the first may be my favourite so far — ESCAPE FROM, where Batou’s Tachikoma goes off on it’s own random little adventure. From interacting with a cute kid who admonishes it like a naughty puppy, to stealing a mysterious cyber-brain from a dodgy market stall, Tachikoma certainly has an interesting day-trip, all the time observed by the Major in one of her backup bodies. It references the market sequence in manga chapter seven, though unfortunately doesn’t feature Dominion’s Puma Twins. The scene where Tachikoma interfaces with a cyberbrain is like a direct lift from one of that chapter’s manga panels, as is the reference to Batou using Natural Oil for his Tachikoma causing unexpected problems.
NOT EQUAL is one of my least favourite episodes mostly due to its really stupid ending. Apparently a girl who’s been kept hostage for the last sixteen years, who has a biological age of 26, for some reason looks like a woman in her 60s or 70s “due to the stress of being a hostage”. I’m sorry, but that’s not what happens. Ridiculous. I’d even recommend skipping this episode, if it wasn’t for the cool action sequences.
What almost every episode has in common is extremely high production values — everything looks great, even over two decades later. Even the relatively early (for anime) cel-shaded CG looks pretty decent, with the tachikoma and other mecha being definite highlights. The mix between 2D and 3D animation can be a little jarring at times, but for the period, SAC uses its CG well. Action scenes in particular look fantastic, with well-choreographed fights and excellent hand-to-hand bouts mixed with exciting gunplay. This is helped immeasurably by Yoko Kanno’s eclectic and memorable soundtrack. There’s a reason that some of SAC’s music has remained on my anime songs playlist for decades now.
Opener Inner Universe with its lyrics split between Russian, Latin and English is a hyped-up banger of a track, though every time I hear it I’m tragically reminded that singer Origa is no longer with us. She died of lung cancer in 2015. The accompanying CGI looks very dated by modern standards, even at the time it seemed about the level of a PS2 cutscene, but it’s still very atmospheric and effective despite the doll-like Kusanagi with her weird uncanny valley expressions and teeth.
I also like the chilled vibes of closer Lithium Flower. Those lyrics don’t really make a lot of sense, though they’re definitely about Major Kusanagi (she’s “incredible math”, apparently). When the show was re-run on Japanese terrestrial TV, they switched out both opening and ending songs with markedly inferior choices. Thankfully the DVDs and blu-rays feature the objectively correct tracks.
Overall, Stand Alone Complex is off to a promising start — it’s clearly not the same world as either the manga or the movie — it takes place in 2030 for one, the Major should have met the Puppeteer by now, but hasn’t. It’s probably best to view this as an alternative universe where Project 2501 was never unleashed onto the net, and Kusanagi never received the opportunity to transcend. It’s a shame for Kusanagi, but a bonus for us, as the series only gets better from here on out. I’ll be back soon with some thoughts on the second half of the series.
