The Anime of Ghost In The Shell was always going to be a tough act to follow, but when it comes to the near-impenetrable world of Masamune Shirow’s brooding, highly philosophical Manga, I guess director Mamoru Oshii couldn’t stop at just one. In fact, even though nine years had past since the first film fried the synapses of virtually everyone who saw it, there had always been lingering questions about what occured during the ambiguous ending and what it might mean for the cyborg main character whose questions about her very humanity led her to download her consciousness into endless data stream of the network.
However, ever the tricky one, Oshii opted not to go down a typical sequel route and instead based his follow up on a couple of supporting characters from the earlier movie and giving them their own case to crack while simultaneously give them whole new questions about the nature humanity to mull over. Prepare for a strain on the old cyber brain – it’s once again time to download some cyberpunk at its most complex.
After the events of Ghost In The Shell, we find highly augmented Cyber Terrorist agent Batou still working for Section 9 as the fate of his previous partner, the Major, starts to weigh heavy on his mind. But while he’d probably like nothing more than to endlessly theorise about what omnipotent being the Major has probably become after uploading her consciousness into the network while play doggy daddy to his beloved pooch, Gabriel, a new case arrives that could have some very serious ramifications.
It seems that a bunch of malfunctioning doll-like sex robots named gynoids have been violently killing their owners in incredibly gruesome ways, but because they all turned in glitchy butchers without any clear cause, Section 9 believes that these incidents have been premeditated and have tasked Batou with getting to the bottom of it. Teamed with Togusa, an agent with far less tech upgrades than usual, Batou is sent in to dispatch the latest malfunctioning gynoid only to find out that it’s victim worked for LOCUS SOLUS, the company that manufactured them and the plot thickens even more when the tech boys find the presence of an illegal “ghost” and a recorded message that is only a repeated plea begging for help.
It seems that someone is artificially duplicating human sentience and placing them inside the gynoids in an attempt to make them more human, but as their investigation progresses, Batou and Togusa finds that this case weaves its way through some very strange pathways that includes the Yakuza, doll obsessed hackers and the malevolent presence of LOCUS SOLUS itself. However, as the numbers stacks against them and they find themselves squaring off against lethal mind hacks, looped holographic realities and murderous kill bots, Batou finds that he has a familiar guardian angel watching his broad back.
Upon its release back in 2004, there seemed to be a wave of disgruntled mumblings that came in the wake of Ghost In The Shell 2 and for the life of me I can’t actually work out why. If I had to guess, I’d figure the slightly lukewarm reception probably either came from the fact that the film wants to tell its own story that is its own thing rather than directly following up the main events from the first film. The only other reason I can think of is that some Anime purists may have taken exception to the large amounts of digital backdrops the movie utilises in order to create a smoother, more complex space for the characters to move around in and while I’d admit, the ’04 CGI sometimes resembles the graphics of a PS2, I can assure you that they are the finest PS2 graphics that you’ve ever seen and blend into the more traditional animation in a way that creates a stunning visual language.
In fact, some of the visual beats actually invoke strong comparisons to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 and you wonder if the director studied the works of Oshii to prepare himself for the mother of all cyberpunk sequels. The similarities all but cement when you find that the director has shifted focus from the original Ghost In The Shell by changing the genre ever so slightly from a political thriller to a flat out detective noir film that mostly discards the previous lead character of the Major and instead focuses on her partner, a hulking, robot-eyed agent who, like all enhanced members of Section 9, all seem to come weighed down with emotional baggage due to his state of existence. But while he bares a passing resemblance to Viggo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters II, he proves to be every bit a layered character as his predecessor due to his habit of uttering philosophical quotes at any given opportunity and caring for his genuinely adorable basset hound who somehow steals every scene he’s in despite bring surrounded by killer robots and kickass tech.
However, anyone looking for an easy ride here has got something of a fight on their hands as Oshii seems to have doubled down on presenting various theories, ideologies and existential musings and delivered a sequel that throws so much brain searing ideas and concepts at you, they even start showing up during the various setpieces such as a truly mind melting sequence where our dogged detectives find that their hacked cyber brains are playing the same scenario over again and again with slight but noticable changes everything they go round.
Anyone who likes their cyberpunk less chatty and more action orientated may often find Ghost In The Shell 2 fairly frustrating when all they want to see is cool guns and funky robots, but when we get to the heart of the matter and discover what is really going on, there’s a feeling that Oshii is using Shirow’s rich world to make his own version of a classic noir, almost like Chinatown with killer sex bots. The reveal that the ghosts that have been implanted within the gynoids have come from trafficked children is a revelation that rocks you back on your heels and almost feels like a horrifying, futuristic prediction of the whole Jeffrey Epstein scandal with a large corporation dipping their toes (fuck that, make it their entire leg) into the reprehensible world of pedophile rings in order to craft a better sex bot.
At the end of the day, if Oshii was hoping to make a far more challenging sequel to his legendary original, then he’s managed to succeed with cyborg bells on. Is it better? Well, that’s a question that will differ wildly from person to person, but the choice to tackle this dark and compromised world from a different point of view this time makes the world of Ghost In The Shell feel even more fleshed out – even when the flesh is blatently synthetic.
And as for the Major? Her story does continue in some form, but it’s to the film’s credit that it makes the story of a cyborg and his dog just as engrossing as hers.
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