Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex



Back when I first got into anime the primary audience was teenage boys, and the titles available reflected that. Y’know, back when we called anime “Japanimation” and we used to buy untranslated tapes at conventions because that’s all that was available. And we were lucky to get those! You young whippersnappers have no idea how easy you have it with your DVDs and subtitles.

My point is that most of what was available fell into one of two boy-centric genres: Mecha and Gore. Mecha describes all the shows about giant robots. Gore refers to all the shows that delivered over-the-top bloodshed. Sure, you could find gentler stuff like Urusei Yatsura, but I guarantee you’d find nerds at a sci-fi convention clawing each other’s eyes out over the last copy of Fight! Iczer One (“Naked women piloting giant robots!”), not Ranma ½.

In recent years the pendulum has swung the other way. Now I go to conventions and visit the anime room and most of what I see is colorful comedies and romances. The audience is more than likely young women. I think this is partly a change in American fandom, and partly a change in what the Japanese companies are producing. Mecha shows seem to be on the decline, and even the venerable giant robot franchise Gundam is aiming for a more feminine audience, judging from the way that the new series Gundam Seed is much more concerned with having characters talk about their feelings than showing giant robot battles.


Robot dentistry!

Thank goodness for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. This recent TV series is hardcore cyberpunk/mecha at a time when no one is making cyberpunk/mecha series.

It’s a sequel to the movie Ghost in the Shell (1994)*, an anime classic about agents working for the secret Section 9, a branch of the Japanese government that deals with unusual or sensitive crimes. The action is set in the year 2030, and mostly centers on Maj. Kusanagi, a fully cybernetic woman, Bartou, a gung-ho cop, and Togusai, a slightly naïve investigator. Together they try to control the chaos in a future where people’s brains can be hacked into, people can buy light-refracting camouflage, and giant robot tanks run loose on the highways.


"When did the world become a video game?"

I’ve seen the first six episodes of the series, and there are some episodes that are self contained, like one where a dying weapons designer angry at his religiously restrictive parents downloads his consciousness into a nearly unstoppable spider-tank, but several of the episodes deal with a corporate terrorist known as the Laughing Man. The Laughing Man held a CEO hostage at gunpoint, committing this crime in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses and even TV cameras, but he simultaneously hacked all the “cyberbrains” of people and cameras in the area so his face was blocked out by a computer graphic of a laughing face. After that little escapade he blackmailed a few companies, then disappeared for a while. Now he’s back, and he’s somehow inspired unrelated, and apparently un-hacked, people to do his bidding. How is he doing it? Perhaps an even bigger problem for Kusanagi is that she can’t be sure the Laughing Man ever existed in the first place.

The series has fairly high production values, and though the action scenes are brief they are well done, and the series does a good job making the detective parts of the story suspenseful. There are a few odd touches, like the fact that Kusanagi’s standard outfit could be best described as “hooker from the future” (or “Shania Twain in concert”), but overall Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is the best new anime series I’ve seen in a while.


"If you need me, I'll be standing on the corner."

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is available on DVD, or you can catch episodes late some nights on Cartoon Network. Don’t worry about watching it in English; judging from the mouth movements, this series was designed to be seen in English, as was the Ghost in the Shell movie.

* I think it’s supposed to be a sequel, but there is conflicting information. The movie took place in 2029; this TV series takes place in 2030. The movie ends with Kusanagi quitting Section 9 (and the physical world), so her presence in the TV series is problematic. I’m not sure why they didn’t set the series before the movie, where it would fit perfectly.

Posted: Tue - December 7, 2004 at      

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