Ghost in the Shell Part 2
I am a huge fan of all things Ghost in the Shell. The series, the movie, I even have the haunting opening theme to Stand Alone Complex. I added a Wikipedia reference to Ship of Theseus as an external link...Wikipedia is a kind of Stand Alone Complex in of itself.
Well, the sequal seems to be the flip side of the first movie. The first movie a cyborg police agent begins to wonder how many more artificial implants she can take before she essentially is no longer human. We are entering an age where man and machine are starting to meld. It won't be long before we can add significant artificial parts to our bodies, and even tie our brains to the Internet. At the end of the first movie the heroin, "The Major", ties into the futuristic version of the Internet and disapears. Only her disembodied consciousness remains.
In the second movie Bato, her partner, caries on his life in Section 9, a special police unit comprised of cyber specialists.
Like the movies and the TV show it starts off with a good dose of action and gratuitous violence. It is missing the sexy Major, but other than that it is good old fashioned Japanamation.
As the story progresses we start to see the man behind the tough exterior. One minute he is taking out dozens of bad guys, fighting a monstorous blade armed beast. Next he is gently pulling the ears of his fat dog out of the dog food.
These anime's are amazing. You forget you are watching a drawn image....you tend to think things like "what a great acting job". The Boto character reminds me of Edward James Olmos. He is very reserved. He doesn't emote, but underneath those still waters you can tell he is a very passionate person. Kind of an Elephant lost in the woods.
And he misses the major deeply.
Like the other shows it then takes an even deeper twist. Boto is working on a case involving "sexdroids" (kind of like Austin Powers fembots only more geisha). He discovers that the droids have human like qualities. In fact, in the end he discovers that peoples essence, their "ghost" was imprinted on the robot.
The story then starts delving into issues similar to those Kubrik explores in AI. Namely, if we make a machine with consciousness, are we responsible for it. Even Botto's dog, a genetically modified breed, is part of this underlying philosophical question.
Why do we make dolls?
Why do they sometimes creep us out?
One of the characters postulates that dolls scare us because they are simulations of people. We are creeped out by them because we see that if a doll was made well enough it could become us. Which leads to the conclusion that we are nothing but a bunch of parts. This line of reasoning is an exact mirror of the first movie.
One comes from the angle of making a human into a machine. Part 2 explores a machine becomeing human.
A beautiful pair of movies. I want to see them back to back some time.
Well, the sequal seems to be the flip side of the first movie. The first movie a cyborg police agent begins to wonder how many more artificial implants she can take before she essentially is no longer human. We are entering an age where man and machine are starting to meld. It won't be long before we can add significant artificial parts to our bodies, and even tie our brains to the Internet. At the end of the first movie the heroin, "The Major", ties into the futuristic version of the Internet and disapears. Only her disembodied consciousness remains.
In the second movie Bato, her partner, caries on his life in Section 9, a special police unit comprised of cyber specialists.
Like the movies and the TV show it starts off with a good dose of action and gratuitous violence. It is missing the sexy Major, but other than that it is good old fashioned Japanamation.
As the story progresses we start to see the man behind the tough exterior. One minute he is taking out dozens of bad guys, fighting a monstorous blade armed beast. Next he is gently pulling the ears of his fat dog out of the dog food.
These anime's are amazing. You forget you are watching a drawn image....you tend to think things like "what a great acting job". The Boto character reminds me of Edward James Olmos. He is very reserved. He doesn't emote, but underneath those still waters you can tell he is a very passionate person. Kind of an Elephant lost in the woods.
And he misses the major deeply.
Like the other shows it then takes an even deeper twist. Boto is working on a case involving "sexdroids" (kind of like Austin Powers fembots only more geisha). He discovers that the droids have human like qualities. In fact, in the end he discovers that peoples essence, their "ghost" was imprinted on the robot.
The story then starts delving into issues similar to those Kubrik explores in AI. Namely, if we make a machine with consciousness, are we responsible for it. Even Botto's dog, a genetically modified breed, is part of this underlying philosophical question.
Why do we make dolls?
Why do they sometimes creep us out?
One of the characters postulates that dolls scare us because they are simulations of people. We are creeped out by them because we see that if a doll was made well enough it could become us. Which leads to the conclusion that we are nothing but a bunch of parts. This line of reasoning is an exact mirror of the first movie.
One comes from the angle of making a human into a machine. Part 2 explores a machine becomeing human.
A beautiful pair of movies. I want to see them back to back some time.
posted by Thomas Vinson at 8:14 PM
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