Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Rating: M (contains violence, nudity and some profanity). English subtitles.
Written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. Also known as Inosensu: Kôkaku kidôtai.
Based on the manga by Shirow Masamune.
Japanese language cast: Akio Ohtsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Toichi Yamadera, Naoto Takenaka.
Original music by Kenji Kawai.
First released 3 December, 2004. 99 mins. http://www.gofishpictures.com/GITS2/
I fear that, in writing this, I am establishing a reputation for myself as a reviewer of obscure Japanese animated films. But there is much that is worth commenting on in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. For those who are unfamiliar with the series or the movie, let me introduce you to them in chronological order. The whole thing begins with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-2004), a television series of 26 half-hour episodes which was first released on DVD in Australia last year and which are currently screening in Australia on SBS on Thursday nights at 10 pm. (The second series, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd gig, has just been released on DVD overseas.)
Based on the manga (the generic name for Japanese comics) by Shirow Masamune, the series revolves around the operations of Section 9—an organisation which combats criminal activity in the interests of public safety and security. The year is 2020-something and society has become cybernetic—humans supplement (or completely replace) their weak flesh with machines: camouflage skin, optical implants, cyborg body parts and e-brains (which render most communication telepathic, complete with file attachments!).
Most of the episodes in the series are stand-alone; like Law and Order, you don't have to see the others in order to enjoy them. What makes the series so interesting is its preoccupation with the increasingly fuzzy boundaries between man and machine, and the question of what it means to be human.
Following on from the two series, the first movie, Ghost in the Shell (1995), expands on the episodes. When it was released, it became a cult anime classic, going on to influence such films as The Matrix and Kill Bill 1 and 2. This time the Major and her team are investigating the Puppet Master, a shadowy figure and superhacker responsible for a host of crimes. The plot culminates with the Major choosing to abandon her once-human body and disappear into the Net.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) picks up the threads three years later in a visual feast of the most breath-taking animation I've ever seen. It's 2032 and this time Section 9 has been called in to investigate a series of murders perpetrated by gynoids made by a company called Locus Solus. They're recreational robots, female in form, created purely for the purposes of sex, but their ethics programming should have prevented them from committing atrocities of this sort. The story is narrated through the cyber-optically enhanced eyes of Batou, who, against his will, is teamed up with the human, Togusa, to solve the mystery. But, again, what is interesting about this film is its commentary on humanity, what it means to be human and what it means to recreate the human image. As one blogger has written,
The film suggests that humanity itself is to be removed from the centre of our philosophy, where, as we expand the limits of our biological and psychological frailty through the use of technology, we will face an ontological crisis. The outcome of this crisis is the death of anthropocentrism and the birth of technocentrism in studies of humanity. (Source)
It seems far-fetched but these ideas are not that far-removed from the reality we experience. A work colleague commented to me today about the activities of his daughter: rarely a moment goes by when she is not plugged into some electronic device—talking on her mobile, watching TV, listening to her iPod, and emailing and chatting on the Internet. Could it be that we are only a small step away from internalising these external devices? Will we one day make ourselves machines? For director Mamoru Oshii, this is inevitable:
There is a very tiny difference between whether those tools are inside of your body or outside it ... Really, it doesn't matter. You have already become part of the machine; you have become the device. (Source)
But if man is becoming increasingly machine, why do we persist in trying to re-create machines in our image? Why do we persist in creating any thing in our image?—progeny (children), playthings (dolls) or pleasure-machines (gynoids)?
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is populated with robots that bear human faces but not human emotions. Instead, we the audience project human emotions onto them, imagining that they feel grief as their comrades are shot down or pain as their heads explode. They do not. And neither does Batou ... or does he? Batou may be cyborg but he represents the bridge between man and machine. He's an impassive killer soldier but every night, he goes out and buys his basset hound's favourite dog food. We cannot see his thoughts but we know that he appreciates the welcome and adoration he receives from his canine companion who, in a sense, he has “created” in his image (a dog is a cyborg's best friend ...?). When the chain-smoking coroner tells Batou and Togusa that the murdering gynoid committed a form of suicide, he is not visibly moved but the words come back to haunt him later when he uncovers Locus Solus' crime.
In the final frame we see Batou with his dog in his arms, looking at Togusa with his daughter in his arms, with her doll in her arms. They are like evolving mirror images—man and beast, man and child, child and doll—each seeking to re-create themselves in another. The movie ends on this ambiguous note, leaving many a question unanswered.
For myself, I couldn't help thinking that, without the doctrine of man (made in the image of God, male and female), such endless philosophising about humanity, technology and the distinctions between the two (or lack of) merely winds up traversing the terrain in bigger and bigger circles. We cannot look to the things we create to tell us who we are; we can only look to the Creator. However, the Ghost in the Shell franchise gives us an interesting glimpse of the possibilities of what humans might become: we may not be sporting cybernetic iEars yet, but if a day comes when half our fellow commuters are clones, the other half have been genetically-engineered and our children chat online to their friends while simultaneously watching TV through their frontal lobe, then we must be very sure that we know who we are and in whose image we were created to be.