The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories Review
Around of the time of 2017’s Hollywood live action Ghost in the Shell movie there were a flurry of tie-in books published. Apart from the obligatory novelisation of the film script (which I will look at in a later article), the rest have no direct relation to the film, and this volume — Five New Short Stories — in particular makes little sense if read with only the Hollywood movie as a background. It’s a collection of stories set during various GitS continuities — some either manga or 1995 movie-related, one very explicitly in Stand Alone Complex continuity, and a couple that are more vague. I’m unsure of the selection criteria for contributing authors, for as far as I can see, only one — Tow Ubukata — has had any direct involvement with the franchise. I’ll go through each entry as they appear in the book.
Firstly we have Shadow.net from Toh Enjoe (The Empire of Corpses, Godzilla Singular Point). It’s a 26-page story set sometime after the end of either the first GitS manga volume, or perhaps the 1995 movie. Unlike in the disastrously missing-the-point ending of the Hollywood abomination, Major Kusanagi has combined her being with the entity known as The Puppeteer and transcended this realm of existence. Now Batou and Togusa are partnered together as in GitS 1.5: Human Error Processor, or Innocence.
Our point of view “character” is some kind of disembodied intelligence that has apparently arisen from the cyberbrain of a person whose facial recognition aspect of their biological brain has been damaged. There’s some interesting musings about the use of drone surveillance and the tension between public safety and privacy, but it doesn’t really amount to a whole lot. There’s a suitably odd but vague conclusion that may kind of tie things into the concepts of personality fragments distributed across the net, as featured in GitS 2: Man-Machine Interface, but it never really comes together as a properly cohesive story. Despite reading it only earlier today, I can feel all remnants of it fading from my memory.
Our second story is the 30-page Heterochromia by Gakuto Mikumo (Asura Cryin’, Strike the Blood), and is altogether a lot more interesting. This one also seems to take place in a (very non-Hollywood movie) continuity where Major Kusanagi merged with The Puppeteer. Split across two timelines, between 2030 when Kusanagi is still active with Section 9, and 2034, long after her disappearance, we focus on police officer Yuki Misaki and her strange obsession with Kusanagi.
In 2030, Misaki is badly wounded in a terrorist attack and is saved by Major Kusanagi. This begins Misaki’s obsession/infatuation with the Major, resulting in her replacing her damaged natural eye with an identical model to Kusanagi’s eye prosthesis. Her obsession grows to the point she seeks out other replacement body parts analagous to the Major’s, with the apparent purpose of, in essence, “becoming” her. It’s a weird and creepy story, but it’s great idea and executed well — one of the highlights of this collection.
Thirdly, comes Soft and White by Kafka Asagiri (Bungo Stray Dogs), which at 64 pages is by far the longest entry included here. I was initially unsure about this story, which takes a while to get going, but the payoff is worth the effort. Our viewpoint character this time is Hide (short for Hideo Hisaragi), a “crackerjack prosthetics user” with a military background who now works as a prosthetics consultant, terrorist tracker, and information broker. He is invited by the head of security to an ultra-locked-down exclusive underground resort for the rich and famous, situated on a the remote island of Leigo, in an underground geofront, and physically cut off from the internet. He’s promised a vast amount of money in order to prevent world-renowned terrorist “Jupiter” from smuggling a gun into the facility and committing atrocities.
The facility is colloquially named “SOFT” and its ultra-powerful supercomputer simulates an incredibly realistic fantasy environment for its ultra-rich patrons, consentually hacking their cyberbrains to fool all five senses to provide the ultimate in pleasurable experiences. Hide finds the subsequent blurring of reality and fiction difficult to navigate, as he can no longer trust anything his senses tell him. Author Asagiri uses the opportunity to explore Kantian philosophy, plus also jam in as many JD Salinger references as possible. Yes, this one inhabits Stand Alone Complex territory, though to explain how huge aspects of both SAC season one and 2nd Gig are integrated would reveal absolutely massive spoilers.
None of the regular GitS characters appear, but it’s very clearly set in the SAC world, and provides some nice answers for what certain characters either did next, or what they did before their TV appearances… This one is probably worth the price of admission alone, even though the conclusion is perhaps just a little contrived.
Returning to a seemingly standard 30-page-length, Soliloquy is by Yoshinobu Akita (Sorcerous Stabber Orphen), and as the title suggests, is essentially a long monologue — complicated by the fact that in GitS the existence of cyberbrain technology means a single personality can be duplicated across multiple iterations. For once, the viewpoint character is Motoko Kusanagi herself, most likely from a continuity with The Puppeteer in it (they’re mentioned once, in passing). Kusanagi is trapped within her own cyberbrain, presumably after sustaining severe bodily damage, and her own subconscious is essentially attempting to keep her sane by talking to her.
It’s all a bit woolly, and apart from some strikingly evocative imagery, it’s not that interesting. Bonus points for giving us some backstory on Kusanagi’s struggle to to adapt to her new body after her initial cyberisation as a 6-year-old child (though that would place us in SAC continuity…) There’s a fun cameo from Batou at the end, showcasing their usual sparking banter missing from the rest of the stories in this collection. At least the ending explanation for the story’s “events” (if you can call what is basically a simulated dream “eventful”) is coherent and convincing.
Finally, we come to Springer by Tow Ubukata (Mardock Scramble, Psycho-Pass 2&3), at a mere nineteen pages the shortest story collected here. Ubukata previously wrote GitS: Arise Borders 1–4, plus their conclusion in The New Movie, so he’s well-acquainted with the franchise. His work on Psycho-pass, although starting poorly with the badly-received second season, blossomed into the fantastic third season, plus both First inspector and Providence films. Providence especially feels more akin to a Ghost in the Shell than Psycho-pass film sometimes.
Springer is a fairly ephemeral piece, but it’s written well, with an excellent eye for character. The story is presented as a transcript of a police detective handing his case over to Public Security Section 9. It’s a disturbing tale featuring brutal serial murders perpetrated by a cyberbody that may not exactly have a human mind controlling it… Ubukata has always been good at posing moral quandaries behind the existence of advanced technology in the worlds he writes about, even if he doesn’t always explore them in great detail. I’d have liked to read more about the concepts introduced here, which was pretty much how I felt about his work on Arise too.
Overall, I’d hesitate to say that any of these five stories were essential. Of the five, Heterochromia and Soft and White are no doubt the most effective. It’s a fairly slim volume, but it can be picked up quite cheaply as an e-book or secondhand for under ten dollars. Next, I’ll cover another collection, this time comics, from 2018 — Global Neural Network. See you again soon!
The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories
Authors: Toh Enjoe, Gakuto Mikumo, Kafka Asagiri, Yoshinobu Akita, Tow Ubukata
Translator: Not credited
Based on: Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
US publisher: Vertical
US publication date: 4th April 2017
Pages: 1985
Language: English
ISBN 13: 978–1945054228
