Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor 1 and 2 - The Coup Trilogy - Anime Analysis
Whispers in My Ghost
(Major Spoilers Ahead!)
“Cyborgs are nothing more than specialized beings. They are just a means for drawing mimetic and simulated characters. So I drew them with many restrictions and as beings with very little freedom, and you could say that this was the aim of this work. I tried to express concentrjdedly in Motoko, the heroine, the various problems that arise from changing the body into technology or machinery. One such problem is that of one’s originality. Her body is in a sense ready-made, so she sometimes runs into girls with the same face, that sort of problem. Also, it is easy to imagine that cyborgs can’t exist without maintenance, or a giant system terminal. Humans who can’t exist without maintenance, so to speak. Therefore, even if she wanted to leave the system, she couldn’t.” –Mamoru Oshii, Alles E-zine Interview
What makes up an individual? What defines humanity? What sets us apart from the rest of nature and the wild beasts of chaotic technology we create? Most would say our superior, yet underutilized, brains. That grey flesh in your head is what allows you to stay on top of your day-to-day and the information it stores are the pieces of memory that make up your individual life. What happens when we combine this precious fragile brain with cybernetics hooked up to the networks that control the world? We expose it to infection, corruption and lies. When information is all encompassing and considered to run the world, as Ghost in the Shell suggests, the boundaries between fantasy and reality become blurred. If you are ghost-hacked your memories, the pieces that define you as an individual, can be cut, copied, corrupted, and erased into falsehood or obscurity. You become a puppet.
Motoko Kusanagi has to wonder if she is just a puppet herself in a larger game. What makes her individual? Not her body, or shell, it is a common, high-run and ideal model peppered throughout Newport City. Through a revealing and disturbing boatride, Motoko sees her visage in mannequins and everyday people. It makes her realize that all that makes her individual is the fragile information encased in her brain. At least this is what she is lead to believe.
The Puppet Master gives Kusanagi the opportunity to transcend the fold and into a new world of vast information networks. He proposes a marriage, if not just a consumation, to integrate their two networks to create an offspring. The sum that is greater than its parts inherits divine knowledge. This rogue, prodigal child of the net has a huge responsibility not to abuse its privilege of total freedom. It seems like it must be more powerful than the Puppet Master, a god of the electronic world, riding through the weave of the fabric of reality and fantasy.
Ghost in the Shell’s sexy yet sexless mind meld finale forces the choice of a higher existence upon the Major. Her marriage to the Puppet Master is the scientific leap of evolution that man couldn’t make for himself. It is vague and almost inconceivable to comprehend an existence wrapped in the sea of information without drowning. Somehow, the child is able to jump in and swim with the fishes without coming up for air. The primordial soup of the net has forced itself back into the common mind of humanity.
“If man can achieve something, he will, like it’s damn near instinctual.” –Major Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell
Motoko unfortunately must sacrifice the low percentage of humanity she had left for the privilege of a higher evolutionary state. And why not? Is it so wrong that man would invent the right machines to meld reality and fantasy into immortality? The only problem is finding someone to stay behind and feed the ever-lasting network batteries.
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