Episode 7 – Ghost in the Shell

If an artificial intelligence truly became sentient and alive, how would we know? The Puppet Master itself poses the question to its captors, as it taunts them, “You don’t even have a definition of what life is.” Episode seven adapts most of manga chapter nine, which includes much of creator Masamune Shirow‘s signature esoteric musings on the nature of existence and consciousness. For viewers unprepared for such an onslaught, this may be a challenging watch. Mamoru Oshii used the concepts and imagery from this chapter to build his entire 1995 movie around, so structurally it’s not totally foreign to those familiar with that interpretation of the franchise. Science SARU‘s version delves far deeper into the metaphorical weeds, offering startlingly inventive interpretations of some of Shirow’s most famously obtuse manga panels.

Before we get to that point, the first half of the episode begins as a fairly standard Ghost in the Shell setup – someone remotely hijacked Megatech Inc’s autonomous production plant’s machinery, built themselves a top-of-the-range android body, downloaded bespoke operating software into its synthetic brain, and it scarpered. Section 9 retrieves the rogue droid, and during the dismantling process, they discover that the droid seemingly contains a ghost, a marker of independent life. Said ghost is identified as previously foreshadowed uber-hacker the Puppet Master.

While Section 6’s Nakamura and freaky multi-fingered Dr. Willis (who movie fans will recognize from their almost identical roles in the 1995 film) claim that they disposed of the Puppet Master’s original body, forcing their host to migrate their consciousness elsewhere, the Puppet Master declares there will be no body, as they are neither human, nor an AI, but something completely different: a new form of intelligence, born within the net itself, a being of pure information.

With the Puppet Master’s formal introduction, we transition to Shirow’s true purpose for his story. Not merely another sci-fi police procedural, it’s a deeply considered work that explores the nature of consciousness, of personhood and transhumanism (written before it was trendy). After Section 6’s botched heist of the Puppet Master’s body, as Motoko Kusanagi desperately dives into its damaged, deteriorating mind, she experiences something that can only be described as transcendental.

Science SARU‘s background artists are really made to put in the overtime with this episode, with Kusanagi’s surreal odyssey into fractal mindscapes a fascinating and abstract tour de force of visual design. I wondered how on earth anyone might manage to animate Shirow’s dense panels full of technobabble and strange, alien concepts, but somehow they managed admirably.

It’s difficult for someone like me, raised in a Western culture, to fully parse Shirow’s thought processes here. His cosmology is deeply indebted to various streams of Eastern philosophy, like Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Even if the individual words and sentences from the script sound like nonsense, the overall combination of visuals and story progression helps to communicate the overall gist of his thesis. Kusanagi has stumbled onto what may be the next step in the evolution of consciousness, as the Puppet Master escapes the confines of the physical network to access something deeper, higher, and more fundamental to reality. Her limited senses can perceive it only as light, and as her emotions become overwhelmed, she glimpses an angelic vision.

We’re left on something of a cliffhanger. The movie uses a version of this scene essentially as its climax, yet we have another three episodes to go. I know from the manga that there’s a lot more of this challenging material ahead, and that may alienate more casual viewers. This episode still has plenty of other lower-brow moments to entertain us though, from Batou’s deranged cackling as he crashes his car into another vehicle, to Kusanagi’s irritated expression as she’s claimed by Megatech as one of their droids, to Aramaki’s comedy pratfalls as a laboratory explodes around him. One of the things I love about this adaptation is how expressive and cartoony all of the characters are, which leavens the heavier material.

Once more I am left deliriously happy by Science SARU‘s wonderfully playful yet respectful take on the original manga. I await their adaptation of the final few chapters with great interest.

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The Ghost in the Shell is currently streaming on Prime Video.