Ghost in a Shell Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society by Kamiyama Kenji (2006)
27 July 2007A sequel to the second season of Ghost in a Shell Stand Alone Complex, this one manages to bring Motoko back into the fold of section 9, and could easily lead to another series, but this is an epic movie, and really worth checking out. I know it isn’t quite the same as the movies based on Masamune Shirow’s original manga, but it is still such a great series, with amazing characters, and a believable future world, where everyday people are cyborgized and their cyborg brains can be hacked, causing them to do evil things. This is such an amazing distopian future vision, that this becomes a must see for any science fiction fan.
Once again following the secretive Japanes Section 9, set up to protect Japan under the leadership of the old man Aramaki (Saku Osamu), with Batou (OTsuka Akio) as he tries to find out more about the missing Major Kusanagi Motoko (Tanaka Atsuko), so th emostly humanTogusa (Yamadera Kohichi) has become more cyborized and is taking more of a lead in the organization, and they try and spread out and have more people to do more at 80% efficiency, vs. their full efficiency when Motoko was in command. This time they are dealing with cyber terrorism and a General given sanctuary by the Japanese government, but things are not of course what they seem, and their is a mysterious puppeteer that Batou believes is in fact the major, and something called the Solid State Society.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Things get really bad for section nine and Togusa has his cyberbrain hacked and is going to have his daughter stolen by the Solid State Society, which turns out to be a government program, formed by someone as well as a gestalt of all the old people taken care of by the state in electronic rigs that take care of them, as they live in cyberspace. This Solid State Society steals children from the streets and who have been abused and gives them to these old people as their heirs, erasing the parent’s memories and giving the old people heirs to keep their money going, and keep their names alive.
The Major comes back to help, as they find the government organziation that is doing the kindapping, though it seems the actual culprit may in fact be a split from her own personality which the evil of her personality, and she comes back to Section 9, realizing she can’t do much on her own, and yet the Tachimochi (the robot’s that assist section 9, whose intelligence have been away helping the major, as does Batou who linked in with the robots when Motoko linked with the perp).
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More amazing story set in this brutal world, that is so easily a believable future for us if we manage to survive that long. One of the best anime series around.
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