Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) Anime Movie Review
If I’d been hesitant to review Mamoru Oshii’s first Ghost in the Shell (GitS) movie, then I dreaded returning to review his follow-up, Innocence. Back when it was first released on UK DVD by Manga Entertainment back in 2006, I hated it. A slow, ponderous, muddily-textured film, I recall feeling bored and disappointed by the lengthy, obtuse, philosophical, chin-strokingly pretentious dialogue and relative lack of action. Although the English-language cast of my beloved Stand Alone Complex returned to voice their equivalent characters, this was a different continuity, one instead closely linked to the 1995 movie with its po-faced seriousness and pathological lack of humour.
For a long time, Innocence has been my very least favourite part of the GitS franchise (except for maybe the manga Man-Machine Interface, which one of these days I’ll write an excoriating review of). In Innocence I perceived the zenith of Mamoru Oshii’s “Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome”, in that he’d made a stupendously detailed movie with beautiful sequences, filled with intelligent-sounding dialogue that all of the critics wet themselves over. While I, a mere anime fan, felt it was excessively dull, self-congratulatory, masturbatory twaddle.
Even so, it’s a film I’ve now watched four times over, and like with its predecessor, my feelings towards it have softened with time. But only slightly. Innocence is both more complex, yet simpler than the original GitS movie. Let me explain why. In terms of themes and overall structure, GitS (1995) plots the development of a single, troubled cyborg woman with an identity crisis who ends up transcending her humanity. Any philosophical quotes (of which there are only a few) tend to be Biblical in origin and effectively complement the story. Innocence, by comparison, follows two cops investigating a series of murders. They identify the perpetrators, and solve the crime. That’s it. There’s a whole lot of extraneous stuff about identity and philosophy, a crap ton of pretentious allusions to literature and poetry that add up to very little in the end. The film tries to make itself more intelligent by overcomplicating itself, I believe to its detriment.
As related in tie-in novel prequel After the Long Goodbye, Public Security Section 9 investigator and 100% cyborg body replacement Batou lives alone with his pet dog Gabriel (Gabu), and hasn’t been the same since his partner Major Motoko Kusanagi ascended to a higher digital plane of existence at the end of the preceding film. He’s now partnered with the human-bodied family man Togusa, an ex-police officer directly scouted by Kusanagi to add a different viewpoint to her team. Togusa frequently objects to Batou’s often violent and foolhardy problem-solving strategies, and is keenly aware that in Batou’s eyes, he’s a poor replacement for the Major.
Innocence’s cold open isn’t quite as iconic as its predecessor’s — Batou doesn’t strip naked and jump off a skyscraper for one (thankfully), but it still features some arresting imagery. Batou silently hunts down a killer “gynoid” through a grimy, dark alleyway (with some too-smooth CGI that makes it look like a videogame), the ground covered in the bloody corpses of its victims. When Batou finds the gynoid, it begs for help while ripping off its skin as its face pops open to reveal bare metal and naked eyeballs beneath. It’s certainly disturbing, especially as the gynoid’s design isn’t that different to Major Kusanagi’s pale, blue-eyed, dark-haired cyborg body appearance in the first film.
The opening sequence once again homages the original, with a super-detailed CG depiction of a gynoid’s creation, from artificially-created and rapidly-dividing neuronal cells to doll-like ball joints, smooth skin and wire-manipulated fingers. The CG looks pretty good, unsettlingly hyperrealistic, but lacks the iconic charm and artistry of the original’s hand-drawn images. In this film, Oshii intended to push the envelope of what was possible in Japanese CG animation, and while he certainly succeeded, CG tends to date a lot quicker than its hand-drawn equivalent.
Despite the undeniable beauty on display, there’s still something quite stiff, stagey and artificial about Innocence’s CG. Some of that artificiality is no doubt intentional in a movie about dolls and synthetic humans, but even when it comes to the too-shiny CG of vehicles and the surrounding cityscapes, the heavy reliance on CG for setting and ambience feels dated in a way the 1995 original does not. Saying that, few subsequent anime have featured such beautiful use of CG, though few anime have access to the budget and resources afforded to Oshii when making Innocence.
Section 9 chief Daisuke Aramaki makes a couple of short appearances, mainly to give Togusa and Batou orders. It’s weird watching these scenes in the light of Stand Alone Complex — Section 9’s headquarters are so gloomy it’s like they’ve been forced to turn the lights off to save cash. Anyway, Aramaki sends our two leads to the lab where the gynoid Batou executed is being forensically examined, and they meet a quirky medical examiner who is quite fixated with talking about the similarities of children to dolls, which really irritates Togusa, who has a daughter. It’s a kind of interesting scene, depicted in stark, bright lighting, a significant counterpoint to most of the rest of the film.
The gynoids who have gone crazy and killed their owners are all experimental products of the company LOCUS SOLUS (a literary reference to the 1914 novel of the same name). The victims’ families have been reluctant to report the crimes to the police because, as the doctor explains, “they have unnecessary organs” — the gynoids are primarily used as sentient sex dolls by the rich. Disturbingly, each of the retrieved gynoids all appear to harbour a “ghost”, which as with all fully-artificial constructs, should be impossible. Remember that “ghost” is roughly analogous to a soul/personality/mind. This seems to be a disturbing updated version of sexual slavery/trafficking, with human ghosts being duplicated into doll-like gynoids. The presence of a ghost allows the gynoids to circumvent the laws of robotics, making them capable of murder.
While Togusa returns home to his family, we see a little of Batou’s lonely home life, for what I think must be the first time for the animated incarnation of GitS. Even in Stand Alone Complex, we never got to spend much time with the characters outside of their work responsibilities. Batou’s front door is sealed by a worryingly complex collection of deadlocks, though I suppose such paranoia is probably warranted in his line of work. Awaiting him is his loving Basset Hound Gabu, modelled after director Mamoru Oshii’s own pet. (You’ll perhaps have noticed that Oshii inserts cameos from Basset Hounds into many of his films.)
Batou feeds Gabu her favourite meal, then as he sits down to relax in his old man recliner chair, Gabu climbs onto his lap for a snuggle. I’m glad that Batou has someone who loves him unconditionally, after the Major left. Batou does look like he’s aged a decade in the 2–3 years since the events of the first film (Innocence is set in 2032), and he’s grown his hair out long enough that he has a ponytail now. Does cyborgs’ hair even grow? Does their appearance age? Has Batou deliberately chosen an older, more tired-looking body with pre-styled ageing rock star hair?
Batou and Togusa follow a lead to the local Yakuza offices, in what is probably the most light-hearted scene of the movie, as Batou takes delight in using one of his Bloody Enormous Guns to turn the criminals to mincemeat. It’s saying a lot that the (sole?) humorous scene involves such bloodshed. Batou also gets to fight a freaky dude with an enormous crab claw-like knife appendage. He certainly feels like something taken from Shirow’s manga, while much of the rest of the movie feels quite far removed from it.
Following Batou’s violent Yakuza rout, he seeks out Gabu’s favourite (and apparently quite hard to find) dog food at a convenience store. Unfortunately, his brain is hacked, he’s shot in the arm, and he almost ends up murdering the proprietor. Thanks to Ishikawa’s quick action, tragedy is averted. This scene in particular is hyper-detailed. Before the film’s plot was even written, Oshii had already planned out this scene, and insisted on having his artists animate thousands of separate objects. Before his “episode”, Batou hears an otherworldly voice informing him he’s “entered the killing zone”. It’s very similar to when Kusanagi first hears the Puppet Master’s voice in the first film, so I wonder whether this is her giving Batou a warning? It’s never made clear.
His cyber-brain reinitialised and his damaged arm replaced, Batou is sent along with Togusa to a lawless technologically advanced city in one of the Kuril Islands north of Japan. Historically, the islands’ sovereignty have been disputed between Japan and Russia, and in this period that ambiguity has led to the growth of a massive city outside of international laws. Massive megacorporations like LOCUS SOLUS headquarter here because they can exploit workers without worrying about restrictive labour laws, and research is unregulated by legal ethics considerations. We see a stunning flyby of the bronze-tinged city as our characters’ fancy plane traverses an almost alien cityscape dominated by enormous thin, strangely shaped skyscrapers and an enormous cathedral-like structure, replete with its own gargoyles.
In a reference to a similar scene from the first movie, Kenji Kawai’s ethereal score once again sets an exotic tone as Oshii guides us through the city at street level, using at (for the time) cutting-edge CG to depict a lively carnival filled with strange animals, hindu gods, odd costumes and bizarre masks. It still looks beautiful, but oddly sterile and too-shiny in a PS2/PS3 cutscene kind of way. It’s still possible to admire the sheer amount of effort that this scene must have required to complete, but the CG dates it greatly.
For some reason there’s a massive funeral pyre where either dolls or androids are publicly burnt, and I don’t think this is at all explained either. Perhaps its a meta-commentary on the ephemerality of man’s creations, or the inevitability of death, or of the symbolic shedding of the shackles of the physical realm. Or perhaps Oshii just thought it would be cool. The whole carnival scene is interesting, but it lacks the same emotional heft as the original equivalent scene in GitS 1995, the musical score iterates too closely, and without the Major having a quiet existential crisis, other than providing eye candy, what does this scene even achieve? It feels extraneous, and somewhat indulgent.
The journey to the Kuril islands references manga chapter 7: Ghost Fund, which involved a complex tale of industrial espionage. This chapter was also loosely adapted in a different context during SAC 2nd Gig. Oshii also provided outlines and scenarios for that season, so he must have been aware that he was, in a way, repeating himself. By the time that Innocence was in production, Oshii had access not only to GitS’ first volume, but also to 1.5: Human Error Processor and 2: Man-Machine Interface. Like with almost every other GitS adaptation, the impenetrable Man-Machine Interface is completely ignored. The premise of Human Error Processor is superficially similar to Innocence, in that it follows Batou and Togusa as they investigate crimes in the aftermath of the Major’s disappearance. However, none of its plot is used for Innocence, which relies partly on the aforementioned volume 1 chapter 7, and, as we’ll discuss later, primarily chapter 6: Robot Rondo.
Batou and Togusa make their way to a spooky stately home, which is the residence of a prominent hacker with ties to LOCUS SOLUS. This sequence is probably the trippiest, most creative, but also most leaden section of the movie. While the interior of the massive house is incredibly ornate and intricate, with a shiny bronze lobby, stairs and mezzanine, plus rooms are filled with ghost-like hologram images of birds and human beings, the dialogue is several levels beyond pretentiously impenetrable. Sorry Oshii, but human beings do not converse like this, with each conversation a competition to out-obscure the previous person with an even more galaxy-brained quote or tortured philosophical musing. It isn’t interesting, it isn’t insightful, it’s just obnoxious.
Anyway, it’s clear this Kim chap is messing around with Togusa and Batou’s brains, and there’s some proto-Inception-style dream logic around nested realities. It’s kind of cool, but by this point I just wanted Oshii to get the hell on with the story. Via yet another pretentious word reference, it seems that Major Kusanagi enters the mental maze to guide Batou back to reality. I don’t know, I suppose Oshii must thinks this is clever, but… it makes me sigh in frustration. At least we get the upsetting image of Togusa as a broken android with his ribs bursting open. Ewwwww.
Once the lengthy mansion sequence languidly trudges towards its overdrawn conclusion, we get to the part of the film where something finally happens. Leaving Togusa behind to support him remotely, Batou infiltrates LOCUS SOLUS’ offshore gynoid-manufacturing facility. (In a way this is a little reminiscent of the floating Poseidon offshore complex in Man-Machine Interface, but may be unintentional.) The colour scheme changes to a cool, dark blue while Batou must fight off an army of gynoids with martial arts programs downloaded into their cyberbrains. This sequence is excellent, with some incredible visuals and crunchy, brutal action.
It’s also where Batou finally meets Kusanagi again, “in person”. In fact she’s only been able to download a tiny aspect of her consciousness, via satellite, to one of the gynoids. Whether she even has a physical body any more is left vague. Together again, they make short work of their assailants. It’s clear Batou is delighted to have the Major at his side, even if it’s only a shadow of her. The Major’s temporary doll body is quite spooky, though its appearance isn’t dissimilar to her previous cyborg body.
I can’t overstate just how good this final action scene is, it’s almost worth sitting through the interminably pretentious gobbledegook preceding it. If only the rest of the film had been so pulse-poundingly awesome. Eventually Batou and sort-of-Major uncover the source of the gynoid’s murderous impulses — a group of children abducted by the Yakuza, bought by LOCUS SOLUS, forced into ghost-dubbing machines for their ghosts to be imperfectly copied into sex dolls, while their original minds are destroyed. That’s one way yo make a convincing sex aid, I suppose. Imbue it with a soul. Ugh.
Batou rescues one girl who explains that they’d been told that if they “made trouble” when in gynoid form, then someone would come to rescue them. She didn’t realise this would cause people to die. Unlike her manga chapter 6 counterpart, the Major isn’t quite so mean to her, but the fate of these kids is left ambiguous. This was never really a story about the kids, it was a story about Batou pining for the Major, finding her again, and then her buggering off and leaving him again. Yay Batou. It’s not really the most satisfying tale, all told. I guess she leaves him with the promise that whenever he’s online she’ll be there alongside him, like a more intrusive and obsessive version of Amazon’s Alexa, but somehow he seems to find comfort in that.
We end with Batou reunited with his dog, while Togusa buys his daughter a horrifying doll, though she seems to love it so I guess he’s not a completely clueless father. It’s a nice enough ending I suppose, but it leaves me feeling a bit empty. Like, what even was the point of this movie? What was the point of all the cod-philosophical twaddle? Despite some arresting visuals and effective individual scenes, Innocence just does not hang together as efficiently nor as thematically purely as its predecessor. Although animation production progressed in leaps and bounds between 1995 and 2004, it’s the earlier film that looks better today. Innocence was lauded by critics upon its initial release, yet it’s the original Ghost in the Shell that remains in people’s memories. As a piece of art, there’s plenty to examine and digest in Innocence, but as a movie produced to provide entertainment, a compelling plot, and decent character development, it falls quite flat in all three areas.
While I can see myself returning again at some point to watch the first movie, I don’t think I’ll hurry back to watch Innocence. This is now past the point where Oshii as a director has started to disappear up his own exhaust port (though that probably started a lot earlier, even prior to Avalon), and I have not enjoyed anything he has produced in the last twenty years. Oh well. I’ll always have the first two Urusei Yatsura movies, Patlabor 1&2, and the original Ghost in the Shell film. I have them all on physical media so none of those damned streaming companies can ever take them away from me.
Next on my itinerary are a glut of GitS’ spinoff materials in print — there’s a whole bunch of manga and novels, so I’ll be back soon to cover them all!
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Screenplay: Mamoru Oshii
Based on: Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
Producers: Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and Toshio Suzuki
Music: Kenji Kawai
Character designer: Hiroyuki Okiura
Production Studio: Production I.G,
Co-production studio: Studio Ghibli
JP Distributor: Toho
JP theatrical premiere: 6th March 2004
UK distributor: Manga Entertainment
UK DVD release: 27th February 2006
Languages: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio
Runtime: 98 minutes
BBFC rating: 15
