Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (2015) Review
Authors should really consider the longevity of the titles they choose for their work. Back in 2015 when this film, the capstone to the previous Ghost in the Shell: Arise series, was released, it was, I suppose, a “new” movie. But nine years on, the name is becoming increasingly inaccurate, especially as the later SAC_2045 series got its own compilation film Sustainable War in 2022, with a further film due any day now. Additionally, viewers familiar only with Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 original Ghost in the Shell (GitS henceforth), of whom I suspect may comprise a significant number of people, may be confused if they sit down to watch this new film, only to discover a complex, dense story that requires detailed knowledge of the previous five Arise entries to fully comprehend.
The UK DVD box says nothing about the movie’s close links to Arise. Watching this alone would be like watching the final four installments of a fourteen-episode anime season. There’s no way you could be expected to keep up. In fact, even having twice over watched both this entire film and Arise, I still have some difficulty piecing together the intricacies of the plot and the motivations of the many bit-part military, political, business, and criminal factions. If I was asked to explain why the main antagonist did all of the things they did throughout the series and movie, my only answer would be a shrug. Because it made some cool scenes, maybe?
Despite a meta-plot as clear as turbid dishwater, that doesn’t mean that, when taken together, Arise and The New Movie are a waste of time. Far from it. While my feelings on Arise were mixed to say the least, at least the movie gives it a strong conclusion that ties it in (perhaps a little too closely — more on that later) with the rest of the franchise. This is also a beautiful film, with incredibly smooth, glossy visuals. GitS’ world is cleanly designed — perhaps a little too clean when compared to the griminess of Oshii’s ultra-detailed cinematic visions — but it presents an attractive near-future sci-fi world with a coherent and convincing aesthetic. Everything just fits together so well, from the hulking military mechs to the funny Logicomas, the instantly recognisable and iconic character designs to the colourful and trippy cyberspace environments said characters so often frequent.
Maybe it’s just me, but Major Kusanagi’s design looks slightly more mature compared to her depiction in Arise, and she looks closer to her appearance in other GitS media. She still sports her Arise-regulation sharp red leather uniform, and looks damned good in it. Her eyes appear less innocent now, though. She’s developed as a team leader, and her relationship with her suboordinates has grown — though they’re not always sure how to take her. She calls them “parts of a machine”, which sounds insulting, but it’s a machine she’s painstakingly hand-built, and each part is essential and complementary to the others. When Kusanagi calls you an essential component, that’s probably high praise, especially considering the prosthetic nature of her entire body.
The New Movie elaborates a little on Kusanagi’s backstory, and on the implications of Cyberbrain technology. We learned from Arise that in this continuity, Kusanagi was cyberised the minute she was rescued from her deceased mother’s womb. Turns out her parents were apparently both cyberbrain researchers who intended to find a solution to forced obsolescence. Much like any corporate-developed technology in a capitalist society, there’s a high chance that, as standards evolve and supercede one another, early adopters (or consumers who made the “wrong” choice) get left behind. Look at the battle between HD DVD and blu-ray for a recent example, or Firewire and USB, or VHS and Betamax. In this world, instead of merely being left with an ageing and useless media player and a collection of incompatible storage media, people’s cyberbrains become obsolete and they’re unable to continue to upgrade or replace body parts. They’re trapped forever in deteriorating bodies. It’s remarked upon by a supporting character that the people with the highest suidice rate are those with fully cybernetic bodies.
That’s an interesting counterpoint to a fairly throwaway comment in Arise Border 4, where hacker girl Emma states that refusal to upgrade to a cyberbrain has been classed as a mental illness. This suggests there’s a society-wide coercive culture of obliging people to accept invasive surgery so their brains can be partially cyberised. Cyberbrain adoption exposes them to the risk of enforced obsolescence, so potentially increases their risk of suicide. I’d say that cyberbrain refusal almost seems like the logical choice, no matter how many benefits having computer and internet access in your brain might be. You could argue the entire GitS franchise functions as a cautionary tale against uncritical adoption of mass cyberisation, considering how often people’s cyberbrains are hacked. You can’t be so easily controlled by a third party if you don’t have an insecure internet port drilled into the back of your neck.
Anyway, Major Kusanagi had no choice in the matter — she was forcibly cyberised as a neonate because otherwise her only other option was death. That led her to a life of dependency upon Organisation 501, who trained her for military operations, and she was paid with maintenance on her artificial body. They run what looks like an orphanage with other similarly cyberised children, whom we’ve glimpsed throughout Arise, but who become more important in The New Movie. Batou himself comments that as he’s also a full cyborg (having come close to death and losing his organic body in the war), he’s also dependent on working for government or military agencies who can afford his expensive body maintenance. Other veterans in GitS’ world aren’t so fortunate — stuck with obsolete cyberbrains and artificial bodies that can no longer be upgraded, their maintenance costs leave them without any money, and they eventually die, leaving nothing behind. That’s depressing as hell.
So what is The New Movie’s story actually about? While Arise starts in 2027, we’re now in March of 2029, in the same timeframe as first chapter of the original manga. During the events of Arise, Major Kusanagi has successfully built her team of six suboordinates — ex-Ranger and fighting specialist Batou, hacking expert Ishikawa, covert investigator Pazu, explosives expert Borma, long range sniper Saito, and ex-police officer non-cyborg detective Togusa. Although they receive jobs from Public Security Section 9 chief Daisuke Aramaki, they don’t yet officially work for him, and remain independent.
Kusanagi’s team has gradually risen in prominence and esteem, and she has just secured extra funding directly from Japan’s Prime Minister, via his son, who is also a politician. Unfortunately while Kusanagi’s team are involved in defusing a hostage situation that’s more complex than it initially appears, the Prime Minister is assassinated, along with Kusanagi’s former boss Kurutsu. All hell then breaks loose, as it seems the progenitor of Arise’s “Fire Starter” virus has appeared, and they’re in cahoots with various unsavoury underworld types.
Kurutsu’s 501 organisation has been bought by Hamiradara Industries (a company previously involved with some of Arise’s plot), so Kusanagi once again ends up fighting her former colleagues. The annoying grumpy purple-dreadlocked-guy gets his ass handed to him — again, and more limbs are ripped off. Kusanagi’s prosthetics have really taken a beating throughout this entire story arc, more than ever happened in any other instances of the franchise.
Most of the action scenes are pretty great, and the initial hostage rescue scene takes a horrifying turn as some of the hostages get infected with the Fire Starter virus and turn on their captives, in a creepy inversion of Border 4’s Christmas Massacre. An extended battle on and around a docked ship is a highlight, with an enormous fire-spewing mech beating off the Logicomas attached to its body. Could I tell you why there was a battle on a ship, and what relevance it had to the rest of the story? Not a chance in hell. Was it cool? Yes.
Despite Kurutsu’s apparent early death, we discover she was yet another remotely controlled body (of which there have been so many, another overused trope), and that the intelligence controlling her uses many other bodies, including a physical copy of Major Kusanagi, complete with identical haircut and red clothing. She’s a direct inversion of Kusanagi herself, as when Kusanagi fought as “Scylla” during the Qhardistan conflict, she controlled multiple bodies, but suffered an identity crisis, which led to her focusing her energy — and identity — in one physical “shell”. Kurutsu’s true identity is a disabled girl from Kusanagi’s orphanage, whose body cannot be cyberised, despite the use of micromachines (she may have Cyberbrain Sclerosis, a condition explored in SAC, and we know that micromachines don’t actually work for it…)
This pale girl is able to control bodies remotely, but her ultimate goal appears to be to ascend to the “third world”, which seems to mean the sea of information in the global network. That’s her solution for all of the people whose bodies cannot be upgraded due to poor choice of cyberbrain — they should leave their bodies behind and ascend to a new state of being. I’ve got to wonder who’s going to be responsible for paying the surely extremely sizeable data hosting costs. I’m not sure I’d want to upload my soul to Amazon’s cloud platform. Sounds like a deeply disturbing Black Mirror episode. (Yes, I was one of those people who did not find the episode San Junipero to have a happy ending. That shit was disturbing as hell. A digital corporately-owned afterlife? No thanks.)
For some reason, the girl — I think her name is “Chris” — decides to ascend to the next life by submerging herself at the bottom of a massive pit. I’m not sure why an orphanage has such a facility. None of her climactic scene and its setting makes the slightest bit of sense, but I suppose it looks cool. Kusanagi even speaks to her tenderly, despite her being responsible, you know, for the deaths of countless people, and the invasive hacking and false memory implantation of hundreds more. Even if her goals were apparently noble, her method of achieving them was not. I still don’t understand why she did all of the things she did. Oh well.
The final scenes of the film pay slavish homage to the opening scenes of the original manga — again. This is the third time in anime we’ve seen Kusanagi drop from a skyscraper rooftop and assassinate some shady businessman/politician. First time was in the 1995 movie, then at the end of 2nd Gig, and now here again. I get that it seems clever and fun to tie Arise into either the manga or movie continuity, but SAC already did this. It feels completely extraneous and kind of redundant in this Arise continuity. We know it’s a prequel, we don’t need to retread this exact same scene again. There’s even a mid-credits scene of Kusanagi and team waiting for orders among the cherry blossoms. Where even are they? Why are they waiting around? It makes no sense in the context of the preceding film, and only exists as a superfluous easter egg for long term manga readers. Again, why do this when 2nd Gig ended with the exact same scene?
There’s also the scene where the remaining orphanage kids ask Kusanagi to help them make a future, but her response is that they have prosthetic bodies and ghosts of their own, if they want benefits from society, they must contribute. This is lifted directly from the manga, however this scene is also adapted in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innnocence. Arise probably would have worked best without recycling references to the manga like this. Instead it comes across as unoriginal, which isn’t fair when there’s otherwise a lot of other interesting material to appreciate.
Overall, The New Movie exceeded my expectations, and almost makes Arise retrospectively worthwhile. I’m still mystified by many of the storytelling aspects, and I think that’s down to a mix of overcomplicated plotting, too many incidental characters and conflicting factions, and poor communication on behalf of writer Tow Ubukata. Too verbose where it could have been simple, and underwritten where more detail would have been preferable, its the sign of a writer who hasn’t quite worked out how to streamline a vast quantity of ideas into a coherent story. Thankfully Ubukata’s later work for Psycho-pass, although similarly complex, is easier to digest. I’m glad Kenji Kamiyama returned for 2020’s SAC_2045, though, even with its various faults.
That’s me done with the Arise continuity for now. The prequel manga ~Sleepless Eye~ is available to read on Kodansha’s K-Manga app, but that’s region-locked to the US. If I can work out how to use a VPN to get past the restrictions, I’ll try and review it, but I’ll move on to some other things in the wider GitS franchise now. I’ll be back soon!
Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie
Chief Director: Kazuchika Kise
Director: Kazuya Nomura
Writer: Tow Ubukata
Character Design: Kazuchika Kise
Based on: The Ghost in the Shell manga by Masamune Shirow
Music by: Cornelius
Studio: Production I.G.
JP distributor: Toho
JP theatrical release: 20th June 2015
UK distributor: Manga Entertainment
UK DVD/blu-ray release: 9th May 2016
Runtime: 100 minutes
Languages: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio
BBFC rating: 15
