The inevitable question that arises from all this, of course, is how much artificial enhancement and replacement can a person undergo and still remain fundamentally human? Limbs are upgraded with weaponry and other special functions eyes are replaced with powerful computer-enhanced sensors minds and memories are expanded via external storage technology.
#Ghost in the shell 1995 wiki movie#
The story follows Section 9’s pursuit of a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master who, in a world of computer-enhanced individuals, can hack humans as well as machines.ĭirector Mamoru Oshii wanted a movie that portrayed the “influence and power of computers” by looking at how that influence and power might evolve over time, and the film posits a near future in which humans have begun to merge with machines. They all work for Section 9, a shadowy government security agency run by the aging Chief Aramaki, another character who would recur throughout the series.
Those characters included the franchise’s protagonist, Major Kusanagi, a human-machine hybrid whose construction is shown during the film’s opening credits, and her colleagues Batou, a gruff, tough cyborg with enhanced eyes and a shock of white hair, and Togusa, a newbie officer who is probably the closest thing the movie offers to an audience surrogate. The film introduced the characters and ideas that would become the foundation for the franchise. Shochikuįor many, including me, Ghost in the Shell was a gateway to the wider world of Japanese animation, one that blended the appeal of comic books, movies, and science fiction - in particular, the sort of noir-tinged cyberpunk that Western writers like William Gibson had popularized in the 1980s. The film arrived at a time when anime was gaining global reach, and it highlighted the form’s strengths: richly detailed art, high-concept sci-fi world building, stunningly executed action sequences, and a willingness to deal in both adult themes and content.
#Ghost in the shell 1995 wiki series#
The Ghost in the Shell franchise began as a Japanese manga series in the late 1980s, but it was the 1995 movie that built its international reputation. By positing a world in which people merge with machines, Ghost in the Shell examines what makes us fundamentally human It’s a showcase for what top-notch animation can do - one that the new movie never quite manages to match. The world of Ghost in the Shell is part futuristic action movie and part philosophy lecture, in which artfully constructed animated action sequences serve as vehicles for investigations into the nature of consciousness. These are the sorts of consciousness-expanding questions that have animated the Ghost in the Shell franchise for more than two decades. It’s a Dennett-esque foray into both the emergence of the self and its evolutionary perpetuation. He finishes the speech by asking the movie’s protagonist, the cybernetically enhanced security officer Major Kusanagi, to merge with him, allowing for an evolutionary procreation. The anime Ghost in the Shell finishes with a protracted shootout against a giant robot tank that looks like a spider - but the true climax is a lengthy monologue in which the villain, a sentient computer program, explains how he unexpectedly gained self-awareness, and laments the lack of basic life systems like death and reproduction. As a recent New Yorker profile of Dennett notes, he believes that consciousness is “something like the product of multiple, layered computer programs running on the hardware of the brain.” It’s an evolutionary process, purely physical in nature, in which sensory information and other biological functions combine and grow correspondingly more complex over time. It’s not an adaptation, but The Matrix ended up borrowing heavily from both the structure and visuals of Ghost in the Shell.Īs for Dennett, the movie dwells on many of the same questions and ideas about the nature of consciousness with which Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University, has spent the better part of his career engaging. Before making that movie, the Wachowskis showed Ghost in the Shell to producer Joel Silver as an example of what they wanted to accomplish with their non-animated action sequences. The link to The Matrix is obvious enough. In preparation for the new live-action Ghost in the Shell movie, I recently returned to the 1995 anime film on which it’s based, and I couldn’t help but think of two things: The Matrix, and philosopher Daniel Dennett.
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