Talking with the digital life form, Kusanagi responds to its philosophical pleas by agreeing to live on in a merged body with it. As she closes in on the Puppet Master its body is taken to Section 9's headquarters as per its own designs and when Section 6 seeks to smuggle it away, Kusanagi ensures their seeming retrieval of the Puppet Master only to have them tailed and their forces hunted down and killed so she may confront the Puppet Master. Brutally dispatching a smug foreign diplomat seeking to smuggle away a Japanese programmer, Kusanagi takes to the Puppet Master case with her usual efficiency, making sure to utilize her subordinates' capabilities to the fullest.

Major Motoko Kusanagi is the pragmatic and insightful field leader of Section 9.

And with all that talk with Kusanagi about 'merging'.

Ho Yay: The Puppet Master is referred to as 'he,' but is eventually seen in a female body and with (in the 2.0 remake) a female voice.

In Japan it was nothing unheard of and was, well, slow-paced and artistic, rarely a recipe for a box office hit.

Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In America, it's a bona fide classic, one of the earlier examples of serious, artistic animation.

Fandom Rivalry: With the 2017 film, which had its fans even if they were few.

It’s a warmer expression than she has given the entire film prior. Motoko’s severed head lies tilted in the water, revealing a smile on her face. Merging with 2501 is necessary for Motoko’s self-preservation, literalized as she’s shot by government officials immediately after. 2501 appears to be, in part, an externalization of Motoko’s inner turmoil that she is afraid but simultaneously excited to embrace. The film’s final scenes see Motoko Kusanagi finally diving into Project 2501, who reveals they knew Motoko long before she knew them. Motoko is deeply drawn to 2501’s inner peace despite their bodily discordance, and presses her supervisor to let her dive into 2501’s mind in the hope of better understanding herself. Project 2501 embodies Ghost in the Shell’s rejection of essentialism, instead arguing that society should embrace the flexibility of information. Still, Project 2501 insists on their own humanity by asking for political asylum. They’re a manifestation of data without biological lineage or memory, therefore having no tangible identity thus being a post-gender concept. The Puppet Master introduces themselves as Project 2501, a consciousness born from the Internet’s sea of information. The internal voice that spoke to Motoko at sea externalizes its presence through a female presenting body. She is symbolized as a mannequin in a shopping window - a lifeless doll in an inescapable cage.

The next scene emphasizes Motoko’s somatic hyperawareness as she returns to a city plaguing her with reflective mirrors and look-alikes. This resembles transgender people’s fear of being medically gatekept by callous authorities. If Major ever wanted to undergo physical change to affirm her humanity, she would need to forfeit her augmented parts to the government that employs her. She drinks beer, but explains she’ll never feel drunk or hangover because of the augmentations. Major finds herself constrained by the control authorities impose on her.

The Puppet Master tells Motoko she’s looking through a mirror that reveals a dim image. About a third into the film Motoko hears the voice of the Puppet Master - the political terrorist her department was hunting down. Motoko does not realize it, but she negotiates her dysphoria underseas for it is that exact internal conflict that defines her as consciously human. What she does is inherently dangerous, but as Motoko floats up and sees her reflection until it breaks - a shot recycled from Oshii’s Angel’s Egg (1985) - she transcends her physical boundaries in ephemeral sensation. It’s seemingly the only natural part of the world left, far away from New Port City’s decadent slums and dystopian skyscrapers. Motoko remedies this corporeal crisis through contradiction as she dives into the sea at night.

Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg - a human brain in a robot body - desperately clamoring to confirm her fleeting experience as a conscious ghost rather than a mere shell. Mankind is reduced to a science of individual parts where memories become replaceable, meaning that identity comes to be intangible. Its Japan of 2029 flickers with collective cynicism as its residents’ techno-evolution has been hijacked for empty consumerism and branded billboards sprawl across slum buildings. Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell is that of modernist ruin, picturing a decaying late-stage capitalist technocracy led by a slew of conspiracist diplomats.

Directed by Mamoru Oshii, manga by Masamune ShirouĬontains spoilers for Ghost in the Shell (1996)

The ghost in the shell 1995