Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg agent in Section 9, and her partner, Batô, track a hacker known as The Puppet Master who can control not only machines, but humans.
A prime example of Cyberpunk, Ghost in the Shell takes place in the near future, and includes robots, cyborgs, computers, huge corporations, untrustworthy governments, and hacking. It is Anime (Japanese animation for the two or three of you who might read this and not know), and while the detail in characters’ faces is low and there are still too many repeated still-frames, for 1995, it looks very good. The plot is complicated and the themes even more so. “Ghosts” are souls or personalities (it is never explained) and shells are bodies (cyborg or human). The question posed by Ghost in the Shell is what does it mean to be human, to be alive? It doesn’t answer, except to say your “shell” doesn’t count. The combat looks good and the characters are interesting and developed (and there is no wide-eyed, unfunny clown character, who leaps up and down, as in so much Anime).
Then there is the talking. These characters talk and talk and talk. If something could be explained by showing it or by talking about it, Ghost in the Shell uses the latter technique. Exposition scenes dominate all others and characters sit or stand, unmoving, for many minutes telling the audience what is going on. Good films manage to convey information while things are happening, as part of the plot. But Ghost in the Shell comes to a grinding halt over and over to supply more chatting. It’s got to be a lot cheaper to animate than having characters do things. There’s so much that’s done right; it’s a shame that director Mamoru Oshî and writer Kazunori Itô forgot such a basic rule of storytelling.