How Mamoru Oshii ruined the Ghost in the Shell franchise

Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film Ghost in the Shell is excellent, technically groundbreaking, and hugely culturally important. However, as an adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga of the same name, it is an abysmal failure, and one that has negatively impacted all other elements of the franchise. Because of the upcoming american live-action film, I’d like to revisit the problems with the 1995 adaptation, if only because it seems like the 2017 film does to the 1995 film what the 1995 film did to its original source material — with major implications for future franchise entries if it becomes successful.

It’s important to give some background on Shirow, in order to understand why the manga is how it is and what differentiates it from his other work. Shirow (real name Masanori Ota) is known for works that combine heavily sexual content with detailed descriptions of machinery; his work ranges from pornography to hard SF. While earlier works like Tank Police, Orion and Appleseed contained a mix of science fiction and political ideas, Ghost in the Shell is notable in its first volume for its more grounded near-future setting and for much greater technical detail. Ghost in the Shell incorporates elements of previous works — like Tank Police and Appleseed, it’s about a government-sanctioned para-military anti-terrorism task force who have been super-empowered by the use of military hardware.

Where Ghost in the Shell differs from these other works (and nearly everything else in the genre) is the attention…