Ghost in the Shell (1995)

 

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

 

This Animated film and larger Francise is a big deal, addressing complex issues regarding the Culture that bore it, the World Culture swirling around it, and Humanity’s Future in Context of Accelerating Technologies, so you must forgive me as I provide a lot of context before getting to the film and then do the same throughout the whole essay.

 

1.  Cybernetics and Cyborgs

 

“Cybernetics” is an interesting word that is mostly associated with sci-fi, but was borrowed by the literature from Real Science, where it means much more than the Genre is generally open to.  

 

In 1948, in the USA, eminent Mathematician Norbert Wiener coined the term to create a language for an emerging transdisciplinary field that explored regulatory systems, especially artificial ones, and defined it as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine."  

 

This was cutting-edge technology that partly originated from the development of the first Pressure Suit (the precursor to the Space Suit) in 1931 in the Soviet Union. During WWII, research into this new technology intensified as the first manned high-altitude jet airplanes were being developed, demanding a new perspective on how humans interact with machines as we cautiously explored increasingly hostile environments. In the USA, future sci-fi writers Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein were both involved in that project. Notable aspects of Heinlein’s later fictions can be seen as influencing “Ghost in a Shell”: he shows cynicism toward government structures but still makes Soldiers and Intelligence Agents his main Heroes, challenges traditional sex roles and ideas of sexual identity, and demonstrates an unusually confident immersion in the Near-Future settings of his stories. 

 

Even more out-there possibilities were being considered in England, by another Mathematician of towering reputation, Alan Turing. In 1936, he built a simple, almost-computer, a machine that could revise its functions based on changing the commands presented to it in algorithmic codes, giving it infinite potential applications, all based on Human/Machine Communication. Then Turing invented the coding and decoding discipline of Banburismus and built the first true electronic Computer; the latter success made him one of the men most singularly responsible for the Allied victory in WWII (1938-1945). Turing additionally published landmark papers on the seemingly Esoteric subject of what Machine Intelligence would be like, and how it would be recognized when it arrived, now known as the “Imitation Game” and sometimes the “Turing Test.” Despite saving his nation from the Nazis, Turning was an intolerable being to the English Government because of his Homosexuality, was Criminally Prosecuted, Chemically Castrated (which left him Intellectually Disabled), and driven to Suicide (1954).  

 

In 1958, NASA was founded in the USA, taking Cybernetics to a whole new level. There were increasingly complex issues related to the Human Interface with Machines and the use of technology to enable humans to survive and work in the environment of Outer Space. When NASA was founded, the word “Computer” was mostly a job title for Humans doing complex Math, but around 1962, the word morphed into primarily a description of a Machine, not a person.  

 

In September 1960, another new word was coined, “Cyborg” in a Scientific article titled, "Cyborgs and Space," by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline: "Space travel challenges mankind not only technologically but spiritually, in that it invites man to take an active part in his own biological evolution…For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term ‘Cyborg’…The purpose of the Cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel."

 

In today’s popular usage, these words’ meanings have changed. Cybernetics now typically refers to the technologies that enable a Direct Interface between Human beings and Computers. The term Cyborg now generally means a human who has incorporated advanced technologies into his or her body to achieve something beyond normal capacities or is sometimes used interchangeably with the word “Android,” which refers to a Robot that mimics human appearance and actions. While themes of Cybernetics and Cyborgs are frequently explored in SF films, few works challenge us to question the very nature of their reality. When was the last time a movie truly made you reconsider what it all really means to be an Advanced Human, or perhaps “Post-Human”? 

 

2.  The World and the Story

 

Writer/Artist Masamune Shirow is a giant in Japanese Magna comics, but I’m sad to say I’ve never read his stories, though I’ve seen his artwork. His most famous creation is the “Ghost in the Shell” (original title “Mobile Armored Riot Police” (1989)) which has expanded beyond comics and become an international franchise with multiple prose novels, three theatrical anime movies, two anime TV series, an anime TV movie, an anime OVA series (in USA terms, direct-to-video), a theatrical live-action movie, and several video games. I have seen one anime movie plus the TV animes, love them all, and also the live-action film, which sucked. This essay mostly concerns the first theatrical anime movie, and without doubt, it was a landmark, perhaps second only to “Akira” (1988) in its achievement.

 

The world of “Ghost in the Shell” franchise is a mixture of some Optimism but mostly Cynicism for the Future and takes most of its pleasure from the Cynicism. It’s a dense Cyberpunk landscape of Class-Warfare and Corrupt Elites wherein the honest Cops know they work for dirty people but see the larger threats in the Chaos constantly threatening; tolerating Systemic Injustice is a small price to pay for a half-way decent quality-of-life. These Hero Cops strut smugly Above-the-Law but, paradoxically, their Integrity ensures a modest level of Social Order. They themselves, long for honest reform, sometimes even act in an honestly Revolutionary Manner, though their jobs mostly demand actions opposite of just that. Often the narratives are a challenge to follow, but the amazing action and complete conviction drags you along.

 

In this Future, Japan that is the world’s premier Political and Economic giant and the world’s greatest city is a ferociously over-built urban-sprawl called New Port City. The story is centered on an elite Cyber-Crime SWAT team called Public Security Section Nine, under the authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and therefore distinct from both local Police and conventional Military. Section Nine, itself, proves to be politically and legally distinct even from other Sections under the same chain-of-command.

 

In the first scene we are introduced to most of the team members, but the focus is on Major Motoko Kusanagi (in the English dub she was voiced by Mimi Woods, I haven’t seen this film with the original Japanese cast). She crouches on the top of a skyscraper, receiving messages from her comrades in a helicopter and surveillance data from a corporate lounge many stories below, both fed directly into her brain through Cybernetic Enhancements.

 

One of her colleague’s remarks that there is a lot of static in her head. She replies, “Yeah, I’m having my period.” There are at least three English dubs of this film, and that crass joke is missing from at least one of them. The thing is, that crass joke has layers on meaning, because it soon becomes a plot point that Kusanagi is, in fact, incapable of menstruation.

 

Her targets are Foreign Spies who are pressuring a Computer Programmer with a Security Clearance to defect to the country. Kusanagi’s advised to act ahead of schedule because another unit, Section Six, is about to raid the room. As Section Six is obligated to obey the Laws of Japan, and the Foreign Spymaster has Diplomatic Immunity, so Section Six won’t accomplish anything. Kusanagi and Section Nine’s job is to end the Conspiracy by Assassinating the Spymaster. Unfortunately, she now has to risk being killed by the Section Six Police because her unit isn’t really supposed to be there and she will be bursting into Section Six’s raid with her own guns blazing.

 

Kusanagi stands, strips off her coat, and appears naked beneath, but soon it becomes obvious she’s wearing a skin-tight stocking that allows her to go invisible. With the grace and emotional coolness of a completive high driver, she jumps off the building. She falls the exact number of floors she intends, then bursts through the window, guns down the Diplomat/Spy, and then jumps out again, as members of her own Police Force, but from a different Section, open up on her with automatic weapons.

 

We watch her fall until her stocking erases her from view. She’s mostly expressionless despite her large eyes. She might be mildly amused with the more Law-Abiding Cops she just infuriated and are now trying to kill her. Later in the film, the presumably Law-Abiding Section Six proves more corrupt than the Vigilante Section Nine.

 

Next, the film-titles unfold, and as they do, we get to watch a Cyborg being built. Its only human component is the brain. Soon it is obvious that this is a flashback to how Kusanagi was created and that the Major has had several bodies.

 

In the next few scenes there is more exposition provided, but mostly the audience is supposed to figure things out for themselves. There’s no narration and no Character explain anything that wouldn’t be already common knowledge in this World. Only through context does the audience come to understand the title: The “Ghost” is the human brain, but there’s a suppleness to the contextuality, sometimes it doesn’t mean brain as much as “Identity,” or even “Soul.” The “Shell” is the body but, often, it specifically refers to a Cyborg body.

 

This future is bound together in Computer Networks too sophisticated and powerful for any of the people using them to fully understand. The machines mostly create and care for other machines while humans move in various levels of ignorance through this artificial web of Data and Technology. (Like me, as I type into the word processor and then post this essay online.)

 

Cybernetic human enhancements and Cyborg parts have become so commonplace that to be wholly flesh-and-blood is the exception, not the rule. The most important enhancements are one’s connectivity to the Networks/Cyberspace, but these have also isolated human relations. Within Section Nine, only Togusa (voiced by Christopher Joyce), the Cop with the least enhancements, has any family. Meanwhile Kusanagi, at the farthest extreme of enhancements, is alone when not on the job. The second-most-enhanced member is Batou (Richard Epcar), former Military and rebuilt for War based on a standard combat design which gave him distinctive goggle-like eyes; anyone encountered with those eyes has the same Military background as he. Batou has the closest bond with Kusanagi, but even that is somewhat distant, though he’d willingly die for her.

 

The team’s next assignment is to hunt a Hacker/Terrorist known only as the “Puppet Master.” He/she got the nickname because of perfecting the “Ghost-Hack,” getting into the meat of people’s brains and turning them into his deluded slaves. There’s evidence the Puppet Master is plotting to assassinate VIPs by Ghost Hacking their staff members. Before the film has reached its thirty-minute mark, Section Nine has captured a petty Criminal being manipulated by the Puppet Master. The Criminal falsely believes he’s a persecuted Immigrant turned Radical Activist, but in truth he’s not an Immigrant but a Sanitation Worker who thinks he’s trying to get information on his estranged wife and daughter, neither of whom actually exist.

 

As Kusanagi and her team hunt the Puppet Master, he/she has taken a special interest in Kusanagi. Apparently, the goal isn’t a Ghost Hack, and the real goal proves to be is as much a mystery as the Puppet Master’s identity.

 

Kusanagi speaks some telling lines early in the film, “Overspecialize and you breed in weakness. It’s slow death.” (This echoes a famous Heinlein quote, "Specialization is for insects.") But as we become more Machines ourselves, how do we adapt in a way that avoids overspecialization when we’ve de-emphasizing Natural Selection and Hybrid Vigor?  Kusanagi said “breed in weakness” when she, herself, can’t bear children. With the final revelations, we realize that is what this film is all about.

 

3.  Style and content

 

Almost all the SF sub-genre Cyberpunk flows out of William Gibson’s short story “Johnny Mnemonic” (1981) and novel “Neuromancer” (1984), these count among SF’s true landmark works. Gibson’s vividly visual prose immersed the reader in Near-Future-Tech society where, though the technology was way above the reader’s head, it’s still digestible, becoming landscape unto itself. These two works proved to the roadmap for almost all Near-Future scenarios for the next forty years. Gibson’s style has been realized on film, though usually with some healthy borrowings from the unrelated film, “Blade Runner” (1982) considered the ultimate Cyberpunk film even though, ironically, it lacks essential Cyberpunk elements, like a focus on Computer Networks. That being said, Gibson’s own work has proved near-impossible to direct-translate into other mediums, perhaps because his plots are so episodically sprawling, providing only blurry narrative threads until near their conclusions.

 

“Ghost in the Shell,” for all its difficult denseness, is more linear than a Gibson -- figure out who the Puppet Master is and stop him/her. With the revelations at the end, we find that this film is something close to being an uncredited adaptation of “Neuromancer,” though in this case the main protagonists Cops instead of Criminals. That means Director Mamoru Oshii and Screenwriter Kazunori Itō achieved something that many others have tried before and failed at. (I can’t comment on the original comic here, except that I’m told its plot is different from the film.)

 

I’ve only seen two other films by Oshii, “Angel's Egg” (1985) & “Avalon” (2001), but his international reputation for Philosophically inclined film making is tremendous. Though I stated above that this film’s action is explosive, and it is, it’s also quite toned-down compared to most other anime. Oshii wanted to shift the focus to what it meant for our Identities as we become more intimate with our Technologies than our fellow humans.

 

We begin with a self-isolating Heroine. Her image is hyper-sexualized but we gradually learn she has no substantive sexuality. She defies, or really is indifferent to, gender roles, and is emotionally detached to the point that she initially seems without desires. We’re asked to identify with her, the team member not only with the fewest human body parts, but the fewest human personality attributes. She becomes the clarion call to embrace a Post-Human Future that may well be upon us soon (though probably not as soon as the film predicted, the year 2029).

 

As hyper-sexualized as Kusanagi’s image is here, she’s toned down from the original Magna, in keeping with the film’s serious tone. The film is devoid of the comic’s humor, but retained the original’s obsessive density of detail, the gorgeous animation was guided by Hiroyuki Okiura, who was also the Key Animator on “Akira.” That’s not the only reason comparisons to “Akira” are inevitable, but it should be stated that with every appropriate comparison, “Ghost in a …” did the same thing radically differently. The animation style here is shaped by the subjects, notably Computer Networks and Cyberspace, and used some of the then-latest technologies, mixing hand-drawn and CGI seamlessly in a way that was neither appropriate, or even possible, for the earlier film “Akira.”

 

“Akira’s” score is rightfully praised, as is that of “Ghost in a…” Both were drawing from, and reinventing, much older musical forms to create something timeless-enough to still sound futuristic years after the release date. But they’re not the same: Tsutomu Ōhashi’s “Akira” is hard-driving and heavy on the percussions, reflecting that the film was concerned with Adultescent Characters, was more action-filled, and about an exterior world transforming. “Ghost in a …” is about Adult Characters, has somewhat less action, and inwardly focused, so its Composer, Kenji Kawai, chose ambient-inspired orchestrals mixed with choral timbres that suggested religious ceremonies. Most of the music in “Ghost in a…” is understated and calming, a bold choice for an Action-film, but that just makes the appearance of dissonance that much more jarring. Ironically, though the score was universally hailed, Kawai has expressed doubts about it.

 

The film’s centerpiece is a more-than-three-minute scene with neither thrilling action nor dialogue. It shows Character Kusanagi commuting to work. The beautiful music, and the richly detailed cityscape she passes through, hold our interest, even though it seems as if Oshii stopped the story. Then we realize he didn’t. This film is about Kusanagi’s interior journey and increasing embrace of the Alternate Universe of Cyberspace. Though there are scenes in Cyberspace, when exploring the woman’s soul, that device isn’t used. Instead, through music and images of the external world, Director Mamoru demonstrates Kusanagi’s identity crisis. During her commute, moving forward along a familiar path, Kusanagi keeps seeing twins of herself. This is because her face is artificial, a factory produced, mass-marketed, item that in no way reflects any personal identity. Kusanagi lives in a world where the eyes are not necessarily the window of the Ghost.

 

Water imagery is important: Kusanagi’s Cyborg body is built while being suspended in liquid. This is echoed when she goes scuba-diving just before she and Batou have their longest, and most intimate conversation. In the above-described commuting scene, she riding a ferry.

 

The way water is used may have influenced the imagery of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” (2002), but it also disappears around this film’s forty-five-minute mark. Among the things water represents is Kusanagi’s comfort in her isolation from Humanity and her relationship with Cyberspace; her act of surfacing and re-entering our more conventional Reality is key. Even though Cyberspace itself is no more than glimpsed, the ending is about her relationship with it profoundly changing, so the water images disappear as the Cyberspace because more important to the plot. It is also worth noting that though the setting is a Maritime City, but that type of shipping never works into the plot even though International Politics does.

 

There’s frequent nudity, but often it proves to be a skin-tight outfit. This blurred line between clothes and nakedness is not only to titillate, but also to demonstrate. Kusanagi’s not shy about stripping when not alone because, even when naked, it’s just her Shell, so, really, just another layer of clothing.

 

This film has proven hugely influential. Praised not only by Director Steven Spielberg (his studio made the live-action version), David Cameron, and it was central to the development of the ideas behind the Wachowskis Brothers’ (now Sister’s) “The Matrix” series (first movie 1999). Allegedly, when the Wachowskis were pitching their series to producers, they’d pop in a DVD edit of this film and say, "We wanna do that for real." There are numerous borrowings, some quite specific, like the digital "rain" of green symbols that signified Cyberspace’s architecture and the way the characters plug themselves into it through holes at the base of their necks.

 

4.  A Cyborg Manifesto

 

Way back in 1985, Socialist and Feminist theorist, Donna Haraway, wrote a surprisingly influential essay titled "A Cyborg Manifesto." It was reacting to emergence of the new Cyberpunk sub-Genre of SF, and followed two threads:

 

Firstly, was that real-world emergence of Cyborgs would serve Capitalistic oppression because it would favor a Future of Supermen created for those having Super Credit Cards. She describes this as the "informatics of domination," and the "rearrangements of world-wide social relations tied to science and technology.” Basically, the Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer.

 

Secondly, and contradictorily, the Cyborg would liberate us all because Race and Gender would disappear, and the Post-Human, but Haraway prefers the term “Transhuman,” model would prove egalitarian in ways never imagined before.

 

When discussed all these decades later, Haraway is often disparaged because, though she included both sides of the argument, she clearly favored the Utopian. That looks dim in a USA where Universal Health Care seems more-and-more remote with each passing day. (The first version of this essay was written in 2020 this while much of my country is under “Stay-at-home” orders because, collectively, we didn’t properly prepare for a Global Pandemic, many thousands are losing their work-related Health Insurance, and the Poor were dying faster than the Rich; I can’t say anything is better now). Louis Althusser would call this "an imaginary representation of the relation of individuals to their real conditions of existence," or, more simply, even if it worked for someone Tom, it was too much to expect it would also work for Dick or Harry. Haraway was cruelly mocked in the TV show “Six Feet Under” (first aired 2001) despite the series having no SF, and almost no Fantasy, elements. That mockery reflected that there was a seduction at work, wherein Information Technology presents itself as Liberating when it, in fact, all it did was Reinforce Conventional Socio-Economic Structures.

 

Haraway argued that “communications sciences and modern biologies are constructed by a common move—the translation of the world into a problem of coding…[a] world [that] is subdivided by boundaries differentially permeable to information.” As permeability does not reflect contemporary sex roles except during actual sex, the Cyborg defies "antagonistic dualisms." Our current World suffers under these Dualisms that, "have all been systematic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals... all [those] constituted as others.”

 

As Cyborgs can accept unlimited and wildly various augmentations, they transcend all perceived societal limitations. The Politics of the Cyborg is liberated from, “the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture.” The Cyborg “is a creature in a post-gender world.”

 

Knowingly or not, this film subverts, then celebrates, Haraway’s Manifesto, sometimes in the same sentence, “You're treated like other humans, so stop with the angst!'' So, like many comic book Supermen (ahem, persons) Character Kusanagi maybe more, but forced to conform by pretending she’s less. During her longest, and most intimate, conversation with Batou, Kusanagi talks about her Cyborg-ness as an almost-slavery. Both of their bodies are owned by others.

 

Botau: "It doesn’t mean that we’ve sold our souls to Section Nine."

 

Kusanagi: “We do have the right to resign if we choose. Provided we give back our cyborg shells and the memories they hold. Just as there are many parts needed to make a human a human, there’s a remarkable number of things needed to make an individual what they are. A face to distinguish yourself from others. A voice you aren’t aware of yourself. The hands you see when you awaken. The memories of childhood, the feelings of the future. That’s not all. There’s the expanse of the data-net my cyber brain can access. All of that goes into making me what I am, giving rise to a consciousness that I call me. And simultaneously confining me within set limits.”

 

Kusanagi is a female Cyborg in a genre that favors the male going back as long as they were part of SF (the earliest example I’ve been able to find is Edgar Allan Poe's “The Man that was Used Up" (1839)). She’s both Hyper-Sexualized and Sexless, defiant of all Societal Restrictions based on Gender-Roles. Even though she a woman, she’s the team’s Second-in-Command, and all others, even her boss, Chief Nakamura (Simon Prescott), are deferential to her. The increasing unimportance of Gender in Cyberspace is made clear when Nakamura is obligated to justify pronouns when the Puppet Master is captured, "Its original sex remains undetermined and the use of the term ‘he’ is merely a nickname the good doctor has given it." The body that the Puppet Master is trapped in is female (and naked, and voluptuous) but when the Puppet Master finally speaks, the voice is male (Tom Wyner).

 

Finally, the resolution of this film grants Kusanagi a Transcendence that wouldn’t be possible without her Cyborg-ness.

 

5.  The larger franchise

 

Mamoru Oshii also made the sequel to this film, “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence” (2004, I haven’t seen it) and then revised this first film with more advanced 3-D modeling technology as “Ghost in the Shell: 2.0” (2008, but I have to say, prefer the original). All the other animes in the franchise were done by other hands, each new creators’ style was different, but all played closer to the look of this film than the original Manga. None are faithful adaptations of the original Manga, and each changed Character Histories, the World, and plot elements from the other animes (this is even evident when comparing the two Oshii films to each other). Surprisingly, they manage to do this without creating any serious confusion within the Audience.

 

The TV series, “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex” (first aired 2005) was Directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Though set later, 2030, the over-all feel is that it is a prequel. Significant differences include Kusanagi and Batou being more concerned about preserving their Human Identities, going as far as to eat food and working out on gym equipment, neither of which are necessary for their Cyborg bodies.

 

The first film mostly side-stepped the issue of wholly Autonomous AIs with any level of consciousness until very near the end, while the TV series has a talking Robot Tanks as part of Section Nine. Kusanagi is uncomfortable with them, as she sees conscious AIs as a threat her concept of her Human Self.

 

The over-all tone is somewhat less Dystopian, but the plot is more so, focused on Political corruption, the phoniness of Japan’s Democratic Institutions and the exploitation and abuse of Immigrant Refugees. Explicit parallels are drawn between this new Japan, an Economic Powerhouse because it had managed to avoid involvement both WWIII and WWIV, and the rise of Japanese Fascism in the 1930s. Though the stories are more about the external world, a great deal more time is spent in Cyberspace. One of the series Villains, is Hideo Kuze, is a Terrorist on a quest to Spiritually redeem himself and has a more-than-passing similarity to this film’s Puppet Master. Another important Villain is the American Empire. We get significant back-story on Kusanagi.

 

The original film twice references 1 Corinthians 13 but, notably, only two lines:

11. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 

The next line may have seemed out of place in the film, but more at home in the TV series:

13. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

 

In the movie, our Heroes aren’t especially charitable. They put their lives on the line for their duty, and especially for each other, but seem somewhat detached from considerations of issues of Justice for the Downtrodden. In the TV series, are Heroes are more Justice-driven, and standing more boldly against Corruption and Government-sanctioned Terrorism against, and exploitation of, the Downtrodden. Significantly, Section Nine puts their lives-on-the-line to stop Nuclear Weapons from being used against a Refugee Population.

 

The OVA series “Ghost in the Shell: Arise” (first episode 2013) was Directed by Kazuchika Kise. It features Kusanagi wearing the Shell that looks like a girl just entering puberty even though the Ghost inside it is an adult woman. How young she appears is meant to be both titillating and discomforting, especially because she’s finally seen engaging in sexual activity. (In this series she’s heterosexual and monogamous, but I understand in the Magna version she’s bisexual, leaning towards lesbian, and fond of group sex in Cyberspace.) She’s given a much different biography than implied in the film and laid out explicitly in the earlier TV series. She also displays increasing sympathy for Radical Politics. Though this story takes before what’s listed above, 2027, but it feels as if it took place later.

 

Then came the live action film (2017) directed by Rupert Sanders. This film was a near-disaster, and there are three things that most demonstrate this: (1.) Accusations of “Whitewashing,” which were only half-fair (2.) muddled storytelling, which fed the WWhitewashingallegation (3.) and an empty resolution.

 

(1.)     Before the film came out, many were enraged that the Japanese heroine was suddenly White, played by Scarlet Johnsen. Whitewashing is increasing becoming an issue in cinema as characters from one media migrate into another and change Ethnic identities (Jennifer Connolly in “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), Emil Hersh in “Speed Racer,” almost everybody in “21” (both 2008), almost everybody in “The Last Air Bender” (2010), and almost everybody in “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2104)). It’s a legit complaint, but made less so here because of some plot points that directly address that -- except that regarding those plot points, well…

(2.)     The action has shifted from Japan to Hong Kong. The permeability of National borders is an issue in all of this Franchise’s iterations, but was supposed to be more pointed here, which seemed to want to make an issue of American Hegemony. White Johansson’s character is actually Asian but given an Ethnically White Shell as evidence of the Foreign Influence. This is an Asian country under the alleged rule of Communist China, but the USA dominates and English is the “Lingua franca,” so Hong Kong is essentially a White-man’s protectorate again, aggressively erasing the Native Identity. These are substantive, and subversive, ideas, but don’t expect the film to meaningfully explore, or even demonstrate, them. Basically, this film’s Whitewashing should more accurately be called Brain Bleaching.

(3.)     The original film’s main Villain proves to be a little less Villainous in the end, as is true of the most similar character in “Stand Alone Complex.” The live-action film wanted to make the Villain a little of both but ultimately gave us not enough of either. As a result, the resolution is not as bold, and really, barely a resolution at all. I think that was a tactic to leave a door open for a sequel, but as movie barley broke-even, that didn’t happen.

 

6.  Japanese-ness

 

There’s something worth exploring in this series’ “Japanese-ness.” I’ve read about Japan, have Japanese friends, and once enjoyed an extended stay there, but if I called myself a “Japan expert” I’d be lying. Still, I think I know enough to making reasonable statements regarding Japan’s relationship to the West and how that is reflected in their media (and ours).

 

Film critic Rey Chow coined the phrase, the “King Kong syndrome” (from the title of the classic 1933 film) to describe the Western tendency to view the whole of the non-West, as the “site of the ‘raw’ material that is ‘monstrosity,’ [which] is produced for the surplus value of spectacle, entertainment, and spiritual enrichment for the ‘First World.’”

 

Japan, which has produced almost as much King-Kong-related cinema than the USA, fits into this scenario in a matter much different than most other non-Western nations. It is natural-resource-poor and vulnerable to natural disasters and foreign intervention like few other Nation States yet has also showed a history of achieving beyond its apparent limits and coming back stronger from disaster in a manner that impresses even its strongest critics.

 

Japan’s Bakumatsu period was between 1853 and 1867, and marked the ending of its 250-year-old isolationist foreign policy, the Sakoku, and radically rearranged it form of rulership, from a Feudal Shogunate, the Tokugawa, to a Modern Empire, the Meiji government. Though this opening up came only after the threat of force by the West, Japan never became a Colony as so many others did. After that, it took Japan less than fifty-years to replicate every aspect of Western modernity: cutting-edge Science, Medicine, and Technology. It leapt forward centuries in development virtually overnight and became a major Imperialist player with one of the world’s most awesomely powerful and Technologically advanced Militaries. It proved essential in helping the Western Allies defeat Germany in WWI (1914 - 1918) and became a founding member of the League of Nations -- but also marginalized by the Western powers’ refusal to incorporate a statement of basic Racial Equality in its Charter of 1919.

 

Japan’s post-WWI economic growth was aided tremendously by having been largely untouched by that War, but its own lack of resources threatened all its gains. This led directly to their Invasion and Occupation of Northern China and withdrawing from the League of Nations in 1932, then the Fascists gaining Monopoly of Power in 1933. These were among the most important causes of WWII, which erupted before that decade was out (1939 – 1945, though Historians of the Pacific Theater would push the start-date back years earlier). This time, Japan sided with the Germans and proved the only Nation State able to execute a significant Military strike on USA soil in more than a century.

 

Japan went down in stunning defeat when struck when with Nuclear Weapons in 1945.  This would prove, to date, the only time Nuclear Weapons were used in combat.

 

After that, Japan was an occupied Nation until 1952. Their entire Governmental System was created by outsiders from the USA (Japan’s Democracy was inflicted, not fought for), much of their culture was rewritten (for example, equal legal rights for women). Friendship was achieved with those who Invaded them, but less-so with those they, themselves, had Invaded. And her rebuilding was breathe-takingly fast.

 

SF was part of Japan’s media long before WWII, and it could be argued Japanese SF literature long pre-dated Western SF; there’s a sub-genre of Buddhist devotional literature called the Mirai-ki or “Chronicles of the Future” created by Shōtoku Taishi (574-622 CE). Their first “King Kong” film appeared only two years after the Hollywood original, “Wasei Kingu Kongu” (1933, it wasn’t a remake, but a parody, and now considered a lost film). Still, SF’s overwhelming popularity would not come until the post-Occupation period, but since then, Japan has showed a greater passion for SF than its Western counterparts.

 

Absorbing the Western SF model required significant stylistic changes, much like how Western literature earlier moved away from the Epistolary novel to a presumably more direct and flexible third-person-omniscient. Japan’s more traditional Shi-shōsetsu, or “I-novels,” were semi-autobiographical and confessional, but that mostly gave way to the Shinjinuri, or “New Breed,” which reflected the new culture that the youth were experiencing. The parents of these youths parents viewed them as more demanding and outspoken and was even reflected the changes in the food diet as the Japanese children were growing up to be taller than their parents.

 

The movie “Godzilla” (1954) is important here. It was obviously borrowing from “King Kong,” but made the Monster even bigger and more destructive. The first film in the series was dark, grim, and marketed to an adult audience, unlike the later juvenilia. Importantly, the Monster was released by Atomic Bomb tests, and in scenes cut from the USA version, tens-of-thousands are made homeless and became Internal Refugees, and a child dies of Radiation Poisoning. The emerging Francise featured a wide array of exotic Giant Monsters, playing on the audience’s perverse glee in watching them knock over buildings with the back of their hands (or tentacles, or whatever). It has been observed there’s a weird optimism hidden in the mass destruction – for there to consistently be a Japan for these Monsters to destroy, then Japan must be quickly rebuilding, over, and over, and over, like they did after WWII, Earthquakes, Tidal Waves, etc. “Stomp Tokyo” is now a running joke in the Western SF community.

 

Sharalyn Orbaugh wrote, “I would contend that, in general, Japanese popular-culture forms work through issues of apocalypse, survival, and the impossibility of establishing innocence far more often and in terms of greater moral complexity than those of North America.”

 

Japan didn’t host a SF convention until 1962 and had only 200 attendees. On its heels though, there appeared a SF character who would eventually reshape their mass media, the landmark Children’s Anime, “Astro Boy” (1963). The boy was an Android replica of a child killed in a car accident. He’s soon abandoned by his “father,” a Scientist whose mental health was deteriorating even before Astro Boy’s creation. Set in the then-Future year of 2000 and featured an unusually complex Future World for children’s TV. Robots with consciousness were common, but are an underclass, abused by the Humans they were obligated to serve. In Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” (1818), the Creature was similarly abandoned to a cruel World by his father, becoming a Monster, as were most later examples of Robots and Cyborgs in Western SF. But Astro Boy is an adorable Hero, committed to the good of Mankind no matter how badly we treat him. (Kusanagi of “Ghost…,” who has no family, echoes much of this, but with more than a little bitterness).

 

Shirô Masamune noted, “From childhood Japanese children are educated in robots/robotics. Starting with [the cartoon characters] Astro Boy and Arare-chan, and progressing to Doraemon—these are all robots. Japanese children give robots names and see them as friends, and are raised from the beginning with an image of robots that portrays them as extremely useful.”

 

Sharalyn Orbaugh observed that the Japanese speak of “sociotechs” and “humanitechs,” and noting that the “Japanese even call their country ‘The Robot Kingdom.’” Meanwhile, I’ve seen numerous instances of commentators here in the USA smugly referring to the Japanese as “Robots.”

 

The sub-genre of Cyberpunk is mostly an export from North America, but the Artists and Writers who consumed it in Japan did far more devoted to it than we were in the West. I think the Japanese audience responded to, in part, a Japanese-obsession displayed by the Writers from North America evident in even the earliest of the sub-genre’s short-stories and novels. As the sub-genre was born, Japanese Banks were lending the USA more than Japan borrowed from the USA and investing more in our Companies and Real-Estate than we were investing in theirs. This generated a great deal of Paranoia, and a lot of undisguised Racism. Michael Crichton’s best-selling non-SF Crime Thriller, “Rising Sun” (1992), was published after Cyberpunk was popularized and the “Ghost in a ….” Magna comic was published, but before this film was made. Crichton’s novel wallowed in these Paranoid fears but also was explicit in its admiration of what it thought was the Japanese Spirit and Culture. Ironically, the novel came out just as Japan entered a serious economic crisis, referred to as the “Lost Decade,” which made much of the Paranoia moot.

 

I think it is significant that the original Manga comic of “Ghost in a …” appeared in 1989, just before Japan’s financial crash. Japan was still riding high, but the most observant of the populace knew the precariousness of the economic situation. The comic’s internal history attributes Japan’s future prosperity not to the then-current gravy-train flowing forever, but future disasters affecting most of the rest of the World.

 

Like all other Nations, Japan lies to itself, specifically and about WWII. Japanese Historians who try to address the realities of the Rape of Nanking (1937) have been threatened by politically-well-connected thugs, and for generations the High School history books consistently cast Japan as the victim in WWII, not the aggressor it clearly was. Major reforms on school books were instituted in the late 1990s, but I must admit that I haven’t seen excerpts of the later books in translation, so I’m uncertain how far the reforms went -- Except regarding one important issue: The continued, and aggressive, embrace of the dubious Historical speculation that the dropping of the two Atom Bombs was not a Military, but Political decision; that it was not meant to end the War, but to send a warning to Russia.

 

Japan is also as Racist a Society as the USA, but with a shift in emphasis. Our racism is generally built around enforcing, through both official and unofficial pressures, segregation within an inescapably, multi-ethnic, society. Japan’s racism is built around maintaining a monoethnic society, so a hold-over of the Sakoku.

 

One would be as hard pressed to find Japanese mass-media acknowledging of the plight of the Immigrants and Refugees, mostly Korean and Chinese, in Japan. Worse, there are hundreds of thousands who were born in Japan, even multi-generational Japanese, but are still considered as a class of Immigrants known as Tokubetsueijūsha or “Special Permanent Resident.” Though achieving full citizenship is possible, the process is immensely complex and expensive. That makes this series even more remarkable for, in its SF setting, it took on both the plight of Immigrants and Refugees, and War Crimes head-on, and much of it pre-dates the school textbook reform by almost a decade.

 

This is what SF is truly about, to tell you about today through a tale of the Future.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvBVDibOrgs