Get Anime'd Unlocked: Ghost in the Shell

This is a head gun podcast.

Hello, everyone.

It's your boy, Matt Apadaka.

Good news, bad news.

Good news first.

Everything's fine.

Everyone's okay.

Bad news is Nick and Heather are both under the weather, and we couldn't record a new episode for you guys this week, but we didn't want to leave you without anything to listen to.

So we're putting out from behind the paywall for the first time an episode of Get Anime where we discuss the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell.

Now, before anybody says anything like, I don't like anime, this is supposed to be a video game podcast.

I just explained.

Nick and Heather are not feeling too good.

And that's okay.

It's fine.

Two-thirds of the show feeling sick feels like a good enough of a reason to skip a week and give you guys something in place of nothing.

So with all that said, I hope you enjoy the episode.

And if you like what you hear and would like to hear more anime talk, you can always check that out at patreon.com slash get played, the exclusive home to get anime.

But for now, enjoy the episode.

When I dance, a beautiful woman, enchanted, appears.

When I dance, the shining moon resonates.

In the night, the god descends for a secret rendezvous.

As the night turns to dawn, the mythical bird cries.

In the night, the god descends for a secret rendezvous.

As the night turns to dawn, the mythical bird cries.

Wow.

This is the opening poem translated from the ancient Japanese from the film Ghost in the Shell, 1995.

Welcome to Get Animated, the anime watch-long podcast with the hosts of Get Played.

I'm self-proclaimed Tachikoma Tank, Heather Ann Campbell.

I'm self-proclaimed.

I

don't even remember my own name.

Oh, right, Nick Weiger.

And I'm self-proclaimed.

Is she naked?

Or is that like thin clothes?

Matt Apadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Anime Podcast, where we are talking about the 1995, the seminal 1995, the inspirational 1995, the unforgettable 1995 film Ghost in the Shell, where the slogan was on the poster, people love machines in 2029 AD.

Who are you?

Who slips into my robot body and whispers to my ghost?

When this movie came out in 1995, 2029 was so far away, and now it's just six years from that.

Yeah.

And it's going to be worse.

It's not going to be worse than this future.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

I.

We'll get to it in a second.

I will get to it in depth in a second.

But like, I,

this is, this is a movie that I have a strong connection with and that I watched back in on VHS back in the day.

I saw this before The Matrix.

Hell yeah, me too.

Obviously, like, one of the big, you know, touchstone influences for The Matrix and a lot of other Western science fiction that followed.

So I kind of had, I got to be like one of those guys.

Like, oh, yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a lot like a lot like Ghost in the Shell.

But I also,

and I also had this on DVD.

And I think it's just, it's one of those films that

I'd seen a bunch and had thought about a bunch and then also hadn't really revisited in some time.

It had been a while since I'd watched this all the way through again.

Yeah.

I have a similar story about this film, which is that I had it on VHS

when it came out on DVD, got it on DVD, got it on Blu-ray as media progressed.

But one of my earliest memories of Ghost in the Shell is I had a babysitter who was

a very spiritual woman.

She used to, she had a Reiki practice.

Like she would like, Reiki is like where you like use energy to heal somebody.

She had no furniture in her house.

Like she only had a, why are you surprised?

Is there any aspect of your life that isn't absolutely insane?

I had a babysitter.

She was the girl who lived next door.

She had a normal life.

And so what happened to me right now was I heard what Heather said

and then looked over at Nick because I just knew something was bubbling.

And I watched the smile just get ever so bigger.

Okay, so anyway, this woman, she had like, she was, you know, meditating in the 1990s, which at the time was like fucking crazy.

She had like the bowl that you would tap and it would make a sound.

And

she was always

trying to lightly introduce me to Eastern philosophy, meditation, practices.

She went to India to get like her doctorate or degree in Reiki.

I don't know.

Anyway, so I'm a kid and I watched this movie.

I rented from Blockbuster and I was like, oh my God, this is insanely cool.

And I brought it to my babysitter's house one day when she was babysitting me.

And I was like, hey, do you want to watch this crazy movie?

She had a TV with like a built-in VCR.

And she was like, okay, sure.

And so we watched it.

And at the end, she went, I had no idea that animation could be like this.

Wow.

She loved it.

She was like, there are so many themes in this that I am always wrestling with that I think all of like human beings should be wrestling with.

This idea of,

you know, what is our soul and like what happens if our experience of reality is falsified in some way.

Like she was like deeply pensive after she watched Ghost in the Shell.

And I went back to like my, my parents and I was like, Yes, yeah, yeah,

I fucking got her.

Yeah.

Um,

but uh, yeah, I've been watching Ghost in the Shell my

whole life.

And I, I have

uh, a linen print of the original poster, but I also have linen, like there was art that was released in like the mid-90s by uh Masimune Shiro

that was like alternate posters for this.

And uh, I have those.

Like, I, I fucking love Ghost in the Shell.

It's rad,

And I do think it holds up.

And God, Jim does it.

To your point, Heather, it is one of those movies that I feel like had kind of a...

You know, something of like kind of, you know, obviously like a nerd culture, you know, anime, you know, weeb fandom, but also had a, had a weird, like, kind of bro fandom, at least I remember from my college days of just like, cause it's like, and this chick, she's naked.

And she's, she's got these fucking guns.

She like shoots the shit out of everybody.

It kind of works on that level, but also it is just like this deeply philosophical work that spent that talks so much about like you know what is a body what is consciousness what is it to be alive well it's a really good and we should we should quit i want to i want to get to this part of the conversation as fast as possible so let's just uh let's just get ash in here and do the quick the thing and then

you don't fucking tell me when to come

i come when i want to okay i mean I think Heather kind of just did, though.

She's kind of very much put you in your place.

I'm not going to introduce anything.

Well, that's your prerogative.

I mean, you know, you want us to get another anime video game protagonist in here?

I'd like to see you try.

Get someone from Dangen Ropa in here.

We can make it happen.

From Dangen Ropa.

It's a franchise.

I don't know that show.

Well, it's both a video game and an anime.

So, you know, that's one possibility.

Uninterested.

I'll get Shen Mu in here.

Do you want us to get Mr.

Shen Mu?

You know what?

If you want to get Mr.

Shen Mu in here, go right the fuck ahead.

Hi, I'm I'm Ash Ketchum from the hit series Pokemon.

And also the,

I mean, like, we've sold more games than any other motherfuckers out there.

That's true.

Pokemon is number one, and so am I.

And I'm here to ask you what you've been weeping.

So

I think Heather actually does have something to report.

Heather?

Yeah.

Well, it's very small.

Very small.

I'm one of those people who

has a lot.

Like, I spend spend a lot of time on my phone case.

Like

I can't just get the default phone case.

And in fact, I have a theory that Apple sells shitty phone cases to encourage the secondary market.

Like

I think that the

silicon case sucks and the fine woven case sucks on purpose.

I think that they have to do it so that you can walk out of the store with a phone case.

But I think that there is a secret agreement with these other companies that sell iPhone accessories that are like, we will leave all of the good phone cases to you.

Because you know, Apple could make a fucking great phone case.

I mean, they can make a phone that doesn't break if they wanted to.

What are you talking about?

My phone don't break.

I mean, if you drop your phone caseless, yeah, sure, yeah.

I mean, but it would be like 30 pounds and it would cost a million dollars.

Anyway, I'm willing to pay.

Anyway.

There is a, there's a, so I'm I'm shopping for my phone case

and I can't find a good phone case anywhere.

But then I remember that at the original Evangelion store in

in Japan there is a phone case brand that uses actual

PCB boards

to make their phone cases.

Wow.

And that these phone cases, when radio waves are emitted by the

by the phone, will activate the board and they will twinkle on the back of the of the phone case on connections.

Whoa.

And they've made these cases so that like you have like a what looks like a

almost like a

blueprint of the Evangelion.

You know, like it'll be like a like a like all the little lines that go out from really cool phone cases.

Unfortunately, when I was shopping for that case, I decided I didn't want an Evangelion case because I'm still broken up with Evangelion.

This is heartbreaking.

But

I did buy one of these phone cases from this company, this Japanese company, imported it.

That is a map, and you'll love this, Nick, of the Japanese Tokyo railway and subway system.

Wow, that's sick as hell.

With all of the little lights that light up for different intersections

when radio waves come out of your phone.

Fuck about that.

So I thought you'd really like that.

And that is like, I think, a bullseye weeb purchase.

So I'm really excited about my phone case.

I have not weeved anything else, but I, but I spent, I'm not, I'm not, like, no exaggeration, four hours online looking for the perfect phone case.

What do we got to do to get you back

in the good graces of Evangelion?

I'm just so mad about that final movie and the third one.

I'm mad about it.

And I, and I, it, it breaks my heart because, like, I'd spent my life,

nothing, nothing in my life more than Evangeline.

I haven't put on any of my Eva shirts.

Like, I, I broke up with Eva so hard after 3.0 plus 1.0 that I, and I think in, he, you know, to his credit, it was an intentional breakup.

This was somebody breaking up with me.

And I'm in, I'm still in the post-relationship phase where I'm like, well, fuck you.

I never liked you to begin with.

But that's not true, right?

Yeah.

You know, that's not true.

I don't know.

Fuck them.

I don't know.

Heather's, I think you're projecting a little bit.

And I, and I, and I went out and dated Gundam for a long time.

That's true, yeah.

But, and I still am.

But yeah, I couldn't.

Gundam a rebound.

I was thinking back on that 3.0 plus 1.0 and just was like, I was like, I was just remembering the final scene.

I was like, that was, that was insane.

I can't believe they ended the churchology of this, these four movies that were kind of like, you know, we're going to rebuild what this, what Evangelion is.

And that's how they ended it.

That's how everything capped off.

Was like, go outside.

Yeah.

Fuck you forever liking this.

Touch grass, sweetie.

Where's the original?

Like, here's what I think.

I think that if I was, because the problem is, is that I haven't seen the series plus End of Eva since I've seen 3.0 plus 1.0.

And that is one of my favorite works of human art.

Yes.

And it ends in a way that is like, life is hard and tough and miserable and you grind through it and you might not get answers, but that's the point of living is that interrogation.

Whereas 3.0 plus 1.0 is like, do nothing.

Shit'll work out.

Talk to your dad.

And it's like, that's not that like it's antithetical to everything.

Anyway, still mad about it.

So I didn't get the Eva phone case.

I did get a Japanese Subway phone case.

I excited to see that.

I looked up what that would look like.

Not the phone case, but I wanted to see the map of

the rail system in Japan.

What are we doing over here?

Yeah, they just have actual infrastructure there.

It looks great.

I know.

It's wild.

Yeah.

That's one of my favorite parts of Persona 5 Royal is just like you have to take the train everywhere.

It's just like, oh, yeah, this city is actually built for people to walk through and drive through.

I can show you guys the case so

you can see it.

All right, Heather is bringing up the case.

Hold on.

Gonna take me a second because, you know, I'm gonna.

It's a good-looking case.

Nick, what kind of case you got on your phone?

I get a very basic.

It's a smart-ish,

I guess is the brand, and it's just a purple case.

I just like the color, but I just, I got like a fucking

just one that won't, when I inevitably drop my phone, like you were talking about, it's not going to shatter.

So I just got a pretty durable but not intrusive case.

How about yourself?

I have that Evangelion one from

Mystify.

So this is this is the oh God, hold on.

I'm a son of a bitch.

So this is the board, which is made out of a flexible PCB with LEDs built in, and that's the case.

Wow.

That's awesome.

Which has lights along the Yamanote line that light up only from the energy emitted when radio waves are in your phone.

So like all the time.

But their Eva series is really here.

Let me

let me show you guys the Eva series ones, which are fan.

They're really fantastic.

If you like that sort of thing.

Yeah.

If you like the show.

But like their Eva series ones are like...

Oh, that's cool.

Ooh.

With the

LEDs inside of the chest of the Eva.

Those are really nice.

And are they like, this is going to sound like a stupid question.

It's like the board is like encased in something so you're not like touching the board.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a board inside of the Eva.

Okay, yeah.

Here's their nerve one that has the map of nerve.

That's a pretty nice one.

But that's how I found out about this company was going to the Evangelion store in

in Japan and seeing them.

They also, and they don't have them for iPhone 15.

They do have Gundam ones, and god damn it,

they don't have them for iPhone 15.

Wow.

So that's why I weeded.

Four hours on the computer looking for a good phone case.

Well, it seems like you came out on the other side of it with

a great little case for yourself.

Yeah.

Guys,

closed.

You were like, I chew to choose this one.

We both had one.

That's my, that, do not.

He was actually doing a Ralph Wiggins.

I don't give a shit.

Sort of like a microphone.

I know exactly.

It's the Simpsons.

I'm not an idiot.

But I say

who gets chosen.

Okay, sorry.

And if you guys don't have anything you want to weave, then I choose no one.

Let's, let's, here's what we, yeah, here's what we should do.

We should go into Ghost in the Shell, Ash, because, Ash, you seen Ghost in the Shell?

Yeah.

Okay, just gonna leave it at that.

Okay.

Well, I fucked that girl.

Jesus.

Oh, my God.

I don't believe you.

No.

Ghost in the Shell was

released in 1995, directed by Momoru Oshi.

The screenplay is by Kazunori Ito, and it was based on the manga by Shiro Masamune.

And it is,

I don't know, it's one of those,

I mean, it's the,

what does the word masterpiece add to the conversation, but it does feel like a masterpiece to watch.

It is just such an incredible, you know, artful piece of cinema.

And also just like such an important part of both kind of like, you know,

animation,

anime specifically, and science fiction, the genre, and its filmic representation.

I mean, this is a movie which, you know, it comes out years before The Matrix, right?

And the Wachowskis say, apparently,

like, I'll pull from, let's see, where's this legacy section here?

Design.

Fucking God, hold on.

I should

reception.

Themes.

No, well,

I'll just paraphrase.

The Kowskis, creators of The Matrix and its sequels, showed it to producer Joel Silver and said, we want to do that for real, which is

awesome pitch.

I mean, it's an awesome pitch.

It's in line with adding an S and a dollar sign to Alien.

Yeah.

Speaking of, James Cameron has credited Ghost in the Shell as a source of inspiration for Avatar, which tracks because of like the way that ghosts are transferred into avatar bodies.

Sure.

Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence and Surrogates

have all drawn parallels according to Wikipedia.

But the only ones that are directly quoted as being like this fucking movie is The Matrix and Avatar.

You can see a lot of it, though, with like, hey, we just came off of Cyberpunk Edge Runners and all the dismemberment via gunfire feels very ghost in the shell.

Yeah.

And, you know, the

another recent example, and I don't, I don't, I'm not a fan of the show, but HBO's Westworld had a lot of these same sort of themes, and the Android fabrication just feels directly lifted on.

I mean, the Westworld opening credits season one just feels like you could put,

and I'm sure somebody has on YouTube, could put the Ghost in the Shell making of cyborg tracks.

Stop.

Stop.

That's so bad.

Sorry, I didn't mean to press play

over here.

It's the worst thing that has ever happened to our show.

But he also,

you have to give him, you have to give him credit where credit's due.

No, I don't.

He gave it, he did that with his full heart in it.

He did.

He did.

He gave 1%.

It's a great track.

But yeah, so that track is written in ancient Japanese.

It's not like a modern Japanese.

So to translate it, you have to go through a few steps.

And if my translation was off, somebody somebody can tell me and that's fine and i don't mind i did my best it's like old english it's like you know it's not a commonly used version of voidal sleek the thal like that right right right but uh in beautiful japanese poetry

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Let's talk about Ghost in the Shell.

Okay, so I

watched the original version.

Like I said, I seen this movie before.

I watched the original version with the subtitles.

I also...

watched Ghost in the Shell 2.0, which is the 2008 re-release remaster, which I'd never seen.

Heather, have you seen this?

Yes.

It's mostly inoffensive, except for a few sequences, most notably the opening sequence, which has been redone inexplicably in 3D CG.

Sucks.

It looks like shit.

And it's a real bummer because some of the stuff is just like they're just re like the full screen like UI elements, like the maps and the GPS and shit.

Like they're just sort of show there.

They've redone that, remastered that, up resident.

It's unnecessary, but it's like fine, whatever.

But then when you resee, when you, when you watch, you know,

uh Kusanagi's

famous dive off of the skyscraper, and it's, it's like a, a, like a, a sub, uh, Final Fantasy Spirits Within, like, character model, it just, it's just like, what are we doing here?

It sucks.

Yeah.

It sucks.

It looks real bad.

I re-watched this in the original release, 25th anniversary edition.

And

yeah,

it completely holds holds up the animation is breathtaking there are a few shots in this movie that are iconic to me in a way that like like there's a shot where a double-decker bus is turning a corner and it's in the rain in Newport City and it's it's stunning it's stunning it is it is like a

I don't know probably a 70 frame piece of of art where each individual frame is a a masterpiece.

Yeah.

Speaking of, a little trivia, a little side note, in 1997,

I was at Anime Expo.

My parents dropped me off at Anime Expo here in Los Angeles, which was in the basement of a

like a Hilton or something or a Marriott.

Wow, times have changed.

Now it takes over the LA Convention Center and sells out.

And I entered a raffle

because, you know, I'm like...

Why not?

Why not?

I'll enter a raffle.

Paid a buck, entered a raffle and won.

And what I got was a piece of cell animation from Ghost in the Shield.

Wow.

That's cool.

It is from the finale of the film when Kusanagi is a child and sitting in the chair.

Wow.

And I can't believe that I have it and that it was free.

So the most disturbing image from the film, you all.

That's awesome.

That's amazing.

That's crazy.

All right.

So let's talk about the movie.

Right.

I mean, like, look,

it's so great.

And

it's so fun and kinetic, but also just like, you're just spending so much time just contemplating

humanity and existence.

And I think just a big part of it is just like the character designs are so good and so striking.

And I feel like have been so,

you know, repurposed or

other works have been inspired by them.

But Kusanagi in particular, I think, is like one of the best character designs in animation history.

And I know, having not read the manga, but you know, having some familiarity with it, they have, they aged the character up for the manga and did it a little bit more serious.

I have read the manga.

It is

so dense and it gives so much.

Like it feels like, especially since it's the 90s, it feels like the work of a prescient genius.

Because the discussions in the manga about cybersecurity and the implications of information warfare, like all the stuff that Kojima ends up like, you know, borrowing and bookmarking in Metal Gear Solid 2

are conversations this guy's having with himself

in a comic.

And

it reads like one of the best cyberpunk thrillers of all time.

And I know that, you know, Neuromancer and Snow Crash, there are precedents for Ghost in the Shell.

Like, it doesn't come out of a vacuum.

But I do think that

in the manga, there is

these robot spider tanks that have personalities.

And it's like,

what

it's like, something I haven't seen in media where it's like, well, it might help group dynamics if you gave your weapons thoughts.

That is really interesting.

And because then they would be motivated instead of just like dependent.

Because this is my first time watching it ever.

And I actually watched it twice.

I watched it on Saturday and I watched with subtitles.

And then last night you guys were texting.

I can't wait to talk about this tomorrow.

And I was like, I guess I could just put it on again.

I'll just like watch it again.

I love that.

And I watched watched it again with uh the dub

and um

i

you were just saying something about the manga and i wanted to ask a question yeah which was

so you know when we talked about akira yeah and how the akira manga how the how the film akira is basically only just like the tip of the iceberg as far as the story goes yeah so the the akira manga i am familiar with and that one is like so long i I mean, it's like six like big volumes.

Yeah.

There's a lot.

And it sounds like this is a similar term.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ghost in the shell is this is almost like a

it's almost like it's inspired by the manga.

The manga is funny.

Oh.

At times.

It's funny, but also it's like extremely philosophical, but it's a totally different tone than this movie, which was like, okay, what if what if we took these,

I, it's almost like Evangelion to robot shows was like, what would it really be like if you subjected a child to this shit?

In the same way, it's like, uh,

uh,

Oshi was like, okay,

what if we actually talked about what is happening in Ghost in the Shell and how much it would affect a person to be like,

oh shit, there's a guy over there with fake memories.

Right.

And I've been a robot my whole life.

Uh

fuck.

Yeah.

Okay.

What?

How do I have any idea that I'm real?

Uh, it's I read that that Kusanagi will like make funny faces and stuff in the manga, which is wild to think about because like she's played so straight here, but like not in like a robotic way, like seems like a human, seems like a human being.

Yeah, she'll be like pouty.

She's a little bit, she's more anime, for lack of a better.

She's like pouty and expressive and slapsticky and

angry at times.

And, you know, like in this cop drama version of Ghost in the Shell, she's just like deadpan.

Which I think works really well.

I think it's the crack choice.

I think that was a that was a great modification.

I did try to read, I tracked down the manga and you can't really find a digital version, at least I couldn't, of it in English.

I mean, I mean, if you want to borrow it, I've got it in print.

Like a hardcover binding of the collectible ghost in the shell.

Okay, great.

And I'll tell you something.

There is pornography in that manga.

Oh, no guarantees on how that manga is coming back to you.

Oh, yuck.

Well, I might read it a few times.

What is the ISBN number so I can

so in the in the manga a side hustle that Kusanagi has

is that

Kind of like the brain dances of cyberpunk.

Yeah.

You can record sexual encounters, and if your body is high-spec enough, then the input that you're receiving as data for those records is of high value.

So she uses her cyborg body to engage in pornography and sell it on the black market.

Wow.

That's wild.

But also is only doing sex with other women because the information of, because they also like

connect, they network during their sex.

So having a male presence in the orgy is distracting.

So it's all women in the orgy.

Interesting.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

And also very cyberpunk.

Yeah.

I don't, I can't, I can't see our movie version of SmackDown.

Look, it's, it's, yes, it's a, it's a different,

you know, work within the same

that that that's drawn from this source can you imagine in truth detective if he found out like in the book that McConaughey's character was just fucking on the side for money and making goofy faces all the time

I one thing I talk I liked and and Heather you talked about just like seeing the double-decker bus and I really like the like kind of like methodical like languorous pace this has like it has the sequences that are action-packed but it has a lot of just like stillness,

a lot of just waiting, a lot of just like slice of life in this reality.

One of my favorite sequences in the whole movie is there's just a long, slow montage of shots of Newport City in the middle of the film, and it's just like, you know, like a boat going down the river.

It's just people jogging with umbrellas, just a high-angle shot of a skyscraper with the rain pouring down,

you know, towards the street level.

And this is also the sequence where Kusanagi who is the you know the main character of the movie is just looking up and seeing like another version of her that just works in an office you know and and all that shit is just so great because it's just like here is here is a reality that is

where it's like almost like the like it's not even like anti uh futurist or anti-technology or anything it's just sort of like this look just laid bare like this is what this this future looks like uh and just like letting you live in it for a little bit and also while i'm rambling here that's the shit that if you are ever you know dealing with anyone in hollywood that they're like get this out of here because this has no this doesn't move the plot forward what's this doing here get this out of here this is just a waste of time but it's like but that's why you want to watch a movie like this yeah it's the famous james cameron got noted in avatar that there was too much flying and he was like we're keeping the fucking flying yeah yeah it's not the best stuff yeah it's the best stuff movies are something you look at i will say there's a canonical, an interesting canonical explanation for Kusanagi seeing herself, which as a kid, I didn't know.

I thought it was just like she sees somebody who looks like her, and then she's like, oh my God,

did that woman look just like me?

And I have a bit of an existential crisis about it.

But canonically, Kusanagi's body is a mass-produced shell, and her internals are military-grade.

So she's less likely to be basically cyberjacked on the streets and

have her internals ripped out because of how expensive they are.

So they make her a model that you can get at like Sears of the future.

That's interesting.

And that makes sense.

I mean, I always just interpret it as like, yeah, it's just that this is a mass-produced, you know, the cyborg or whatever that you would see elsewhere.

But yeah,

that makes more sense when you dig into it.

There's also interesting canon about how Kusanagi's been almost entirely like her brain and her spine are human, but the rest of her is cybernetic and has been that way since she was a child in an unnamed traumatic experience where they had to replace everything.

Because we do see like an assembly of whether it's her or whether it's a, you know, another version of her model, we do see that in that opening sequence

with the song.

And just a reminder, it's kind of like, ha, yeah,

hi-yah.

No, keep going.

Certainly, there's more to the song.

The thing is,

it's starting to sound kind of good.

No, it's not.

It's not, and it's offensive.

Let's talk about the plot of this movie.

Yes.

We open on a scene where Kusanagi is spying on

a meeting that's taking place.

It's a meeting between a programmer who is

being pressured into getting political asylum by another group.

And the implication in this world is that programmers are like nuclear bombs.

Like you cannot just get them across borders.

Like, it is a significant process.

Well, it would be like nuclear scientists post-World War II or something.

You knew how to make a rocket, you know, you were valuable, and other countries would try to kill you, even.

Yeah.

Can I also say,

I love in movies when a character is like, I have diplomatic immunity.

Oh, my God.

It's so fair.

What a great device.

You already know that, like, it's going down.

Yeah.

If you have to pull out the, I have diplomatic immunity card, it's fucked already.

So, in the uh,

as Kusanagi, our major, our main character, is waiting to

do a strike on this meeting, she's also kind of listening to the sound of the entire city.

And her partner, Bato, uh, is like, hey, there's a lot of noise in your head.

Yes.

In the dub version, she says, must be a loose wire.

In the subtitled version, she says it must be that time of the month, which

is

an ironic anti-joke about her own body.

Right.

Yes.

And it is such a loss, like right out of the fucking gate to lose that idea that this woman, this woman is incapable of experiencing her own womanhood as like her third line in the film.

It's like such an important line, and it is such a shame that it's cut.

But that feels like that comes from just like a Western executive being like, well, people need to know she's a robot.

If you say that, they're going to be confused.

So she says, she says it's a loose wire.

So we know she's a robot.

We literally got wires coming out of the back of her head, and then you see her being built.

But

there's also a part in the dub where she says, beep, boop, beep, boop, I'm a robot.

Yeah, that's unnecessary.

It's a little on the nose.

I can already tell it's going to be a hard episode for me.

And she moves around like this.

The more, there is an inverse relationship between the importance that I feel about a thing, like the amount that it means to me, and the less enjoyment I have recording.

Hey, I love this movie.

I loved it too.

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So, uh, the police move in to stop this, uh, this,

pressured extradition of a programmer.

The diplomat makes up a bullshit excuse.

Like he's like, oh, he's already signed the paperwork.

I'll have it to you in a couple of days.

And then Kusanagi leaps, like she takes off her jacket so that she's naked, leaps off of a fucking building and blasts this dude, this diplomat, through the wall of the

skyscraper as she's on her way down, which as an idea, what a shot.

It rocks.

This is really cool.

So good.

And as they rush the window, they look down at the city and she is using her

therm-optic camouflage to disappear.

She covers her face and

becomes the lights below.

Holy fucking shit, what a cold opening.

It looks really good.

It's a great opening.

And I think this is maybe for people who haven't seen this, this is maybe like the sequence they know, like her diving off of the building.

This is the Akira slide.

Yeah, and it, it, yeah, it, it looks fantastic.

I mean, in addition, just like the movement, the way that's animated, I just like the palette of this is so great.

And,

you know, so much of it kind of like lives in that sort of like those violets and purples.

Uh, it, and yeah, the violence is so visceral.

I don't know.

I love all of it.

What I like about the palette of this film is that so many cyberpunk stories have just taken Blade Runner's palette.

Right.

You know, like cyberpunk is just like purple and pink and neon green, and it looks, it looks like Blade Runner.

Although Edge Runner stows in that famous yellow.

Yeah, Edge Runner's is a little different.

But this is a this is a film about dirty colors.

Like it is, it is a lot of like

tones.

It's not neon.

It is like ocean colors.

And I think that that is a really, like you, you, if you see a shot of Ghost in the Shell out of context, you can identify it because of that watery look.

Well, I also just think the mechanical design of just like everything kind of looks like

unfinished or like the prototype got shipped, you know, there's all these like loose cables and like extraneous, you know, piping that's on everything.

It all just like looks like just like so cluttered and, you know, like like overloaded power strips everywhere.

There's a term in science fiction production design, greeble,

which is just like if you're looking in the background of something and there's just like some unspecified device,

you know, or or or you know, instrument or something.

You're like, what the fuck is that?

And it's just like, it's just a grebel.

It's just something to inform the world that, like, okay, we don't maybe don't ever learn its purpose in this, in whatever we're, we're watching, but like, we, we, the, the world feels bigger because it's part, it's there.

And this, this is just full of greebles.

So we're introduced to the chief of section 9,

Aramaki.

And

Aramaki and his team, after the opening credits, which are the assembly of Motoko Kusanagi or a

like-bodied cyborg.

We see her alone in her apartment where she stares out the window.

It's really fucking poetic.

It's beautiful.

We go to their work.

And there is

one of the minister's interpreters is having their brain hacked.

And we see this woman with her head cut open, all these wire, as they're trying to counter hack this woman who is being hacked by the puppet master, who's our big bad for the film.

Togusa, who is one of Kusanagi's partners,

drives Kusanagi to

to try and catch this puppet master hacker who is hacking from separate locations so that he is less traceable.

And they presume that this woman, this minister's interpreter, is being hacked so that she can infiltrate this secret meeting that's coming up.

Togusa kind of got the

kaji hair from Evangelion, the same sort of look, the sort of, you know, the mullet that's pulled into a ponytail.

He's also got like less, you know, cybernetic enhancements, so what cyberpunk would call cyberware than everyone else.

He's kind of like the most like a person, like just like a straight up, like, you know, off-the-shelf human and is also like a

just a, just basically a beat cop who Kusanagi wants to have as a partner.

I don't know.

I love their conversation when he's basically like, why do you want me?

And she's basically, because you are, like, why do you want a normal cop like me?

And she's basically, because you are normal like you.

And his value is just in how ordinary he is.

In the dub, she says, over specialization breeds in weakness.

It's slow death,

which is

her way of saying, I'm sure you've heard about the banana problem.

Like we used to have one kind of banana, and then a virus hit that banana or a fungus or something.

And so all the bananas everywhere died.

She's trying to

incorporate different strengths into her team by having different variations on weaknesses.

And he carries carries a revolver.

Like unlike the rest of them, everybody's got these like automatic guns with huge clips that like push you back when you're firing.

And he's carrying a regular revolver and that ends up being a strength later in the film.

Yes.

So

we meet the hacker who is a garbage man.

And at first, it just seems like a separate scene.

You're like, what am I watching?

This garbage man is going through a divorce and he's like trying to hack his wife's brain to like be like, what?

Why are you smiling?

I just think this scene is funny because like it's just like such a normal thing for him to be talking about.

He's like, yeah, I'm getting a divorce.

It's just like part of it.

Yeah.

And it will, but it is just like two working class dudes.

And it's like, oh, you're just talking about your life.

It like feels like, yeah, like Heather was saying, disconnected because it feels like it's just like, okay, this is, this is just what a guy would be talking about.

Yeah.

The shit he's going through.

But he's also just using like a terminal, like a public access terminal that's on the street that I guess would is kind of the equivalent of a mailbox in this reality.

but those are what he's stopping by in order to execute these hacks.

Yeah, along his route, he stops at a phone, he hacks his wife's brain.

Yeah, he hacks his wife's brain, uh, does a little bit more digging and rooting around, and then goes to the next location.

And it's a perfect roving hack.

Yeah, uh, Bato and Ishikawa, two people in section nine, arrive at that phone booth moments after the garbage man has left and are like, well, fuck, he's fucking gone again, uh, because they don't yet know who it is that's doing this.

They think they are chasing the puppet master.

But when they when a guy leaves his apartment and is like, ah, fuck, I missed the garbage truck, everybody draws the connection.

Oh, that's why the location keeps changing.

It's a dude on his garbage route.

They trace all the different garbage trucks and they create a

trap to catch this garbage man.

But when the garbage man's partner is called by the

by headquarters and is like asked hey why do the police want to know your route

this garbage man's like shit i have to warn the dude who gave me my hacking software right which

is

if you watch it like straightforward you're like why would he know where that guy is but the truth is this dude doesn't know anything yes he's just trying to get to that guy because that's what he's programmed to do and that guy was like a guy who like was was it they met in a bar bar and like he told his whole life story to and he was sympathetic to and he gave him a solution.

Like that's that's the context that he at least has.

Things I love in this in this sequence.

One is just like, and it is just such a,

you know, again, another prescient thing about app capitalism.

And when the garbage man is like, come on, we're already 40 seconds late.

Like it's just that there'd be that level of precision towards keeping workers in line in this in this future.

And then the

other thing is like there's just like a nice bit of sound design where when the guy who's the old guy who's coming out with his garbage, he's like, I missed the garbage man,

you just hear doors like close and the car start up like off camera.

And then that's like, it's just such an efficient way to pace through this sequence.

And then we see them peeling the fuck out in pursuit.

But yeah,

it's really dense and cool how all this is

played out.

So our garbage man gets to the dude who provided him with the ghost hacking software.

Oh, by the way, ghost is basically the idea that every person has this irreducible part of themselves that makes them a person, almost like a soul.

And so when we're talking about ghost hacking, it's like soul hacking.

It's like getting so far into your subconscious that you can investigate or rewrite parts of a person's core essential being.

So if he's ghost hacking his wife, it's kind of fucked.

Yeah.

It's so much cooler to say ghost than soul.

Yeah.

And also that, you know, because I'm sure localizing this, I was reading something about the localization, and there's things like, you know, in Japanese, the same word means both a doll and puppet.

So like that's like a tough thing to make

congruent in English.

And I'm not quite sure what the language is for

the ghost aspect.

But it also just hearing ghost, it feels a lot more ambiguous, which I think is intentional.

Like, we're not supposed to have an idea of, like, okay, I know what the soul is

in some sense, but no, it's supposed to be a little bit more mysterious here.

So, this garbage man deviates from his route.

He gets to the guy who gave him the ghost hacking software.

Kusanagi and Bato show up at the same time.

And this dude, who is also hacking,

opens fire with high-velocity bullets, which he preps for by bracing himself in an excellent little piece of animation.

He goes in a slight, a slight squat.

His shoe squeaks on the asphalt, braces his gun, and then

opens up with these high-velocity bullets.

Basically firing like anti-tank munitions from a submachine gun.

So it's like he's completely overpowered by this.

Then he pulls on a thermoptic.

camouflage coat and we see the weaknesses of that system and why Kusanagi has opted to just get naked.

Because as this guy runs away and Bato and Kusanagi give chase, he makes his way through

like a crowded market.

He's opening fire on civilians.

And Bato

uses his augmented vision to try and track this dude.

They chase him to the edge of the city where Kusanagi in full thermoptic

fights him.

So what you see on screen is a man fighting nothing.

Yeah.

in the water.

You see her shadow, and that's it.

It's rad.

I mean,

this is just an awesome fight sequence.

It's utterly unique.

It's like honestly stopped me in my tracks when

I watched it the first time.

I couldn't believe that that's even possible, that they pulled that off.

It looks great.

And also, why haven't we seen it?

Again?

Yeah.

That is really interesting to think about.

This movie is such an easy thing to rip, or not easy to rip off, but such an obvious thing to rip off if you want to do something that was cool looking.

It might be easy to rip off.

Like it's it maybe it just takes one person to do it and you're like, oh, I could just do it this way.

And then that's it.

You'd think that you'd be seeing that in a lot of ways.

I guess we've seen it in the predator.

And that was probably first, actually.

I mean, but not the same way.

Like you don't see the predator.

It's a little less impressive to me now that the predator did it.

Yeah, now I'm realizing the invisible man kind of had a version of this back in the 30s.

So, okay.

So also, earlier when you said the banana problem, I was thinking about saying that I had one of those ones and it was that the minions ate them all.

Continue.

I was going to say a Donkey Kong thing.

Let's keep going.

You still said it.

It's kind of the premise of Donkey Kong Country.

All his bananas are gone.

I know.

I still said it, but it wasn't at the...

It felt less appropriate to do then because you were really on our role.

Let's figure it out.

But no, we were going to stop down there.

After Kusanagi beats the shit out of the guy invisibly,

we discover along with him that he is also not the puppet master.

He is up the daisy chain of people who have been hacked to hack other people, to hack other people, et cetera, et cetera.

And this guy doesn't know his own name.

He has no memory of his family.

He's been ghost hacked just like the garbage man who's like

interrogated at section nine.

And he's like, you know, what do you mean I don't have a wife?

And it's like, you don't have a wife.

You don't have a kid.

You live alone.

And he's like, no, no, I live alone because

I'm trying to get back together with her.

And they're like, no, you've always lived alone.

And then he says, sorry.

No, I was going to say, like, just we're this part, we're not very far into like the story of this movie.

Right.

Like, we're still getting the opening beats of this.

This is enough

for it to be like.

One of the great stories in movies.

This is so good.

This is, I mean, and Total Recall predates it.

So, but, but I mean, like, that basically is, it's one of those things where just so many ideas are jam-packed into this thing that, yes, any given one of them could be an entire premise for something as it is used in total recall.

It's just the idea of false memories is just

like, if this, then what else into the, uh, into an entire story.

Like, I understand the impulse to have wanted to adapt this into a live-action property.

Oh, yeah.

Because it makes a lot of, it makes a lot of sense visually.

It makes a lot of sense, like the storytelling, just to expand the

viewer base of this story.

It's very good.

It sucks that they did it the way that they did it.

That was their opening night first showing, and it just broke my heart in a whole million pieces.

I never saw it.

I heard it was bad.

It is.

Can we back up real quick while we're stopped down a little bit?

Because

I just wanted to touch on a couple of things.

One is

just in terms of things that are awesome in this movie, Kusanagi.

And,

you know, when she's in the car with Togusa, and she has the moment where she's like, I'll drive, just jacks herself into the wires and then just takes control of the wheel from sitting in the passenger seat.

That's fucking, it's just, it's just awesome.

It's just a cool idea and it's realized so well visually.

Also, I just think the idea of GPS, like maybe this was known in 1995.

I was, you know, I was a teenager.

I don't remember it.

It was certainly ahead of the time in terms of when it was.

Here it's ubiquitous.

And this reality, and in our reality gps is ubiquitous the idea that you would know where someone is at all times you could geolocate them you could track them in real time um and you can use that for navigation but here it is certainly ahead of its time that that's such a strong element uh in how everything is connected in this world uh but i also just want to say I love how it comes out that this guy has been had his brain basically erased because his bateau is like the guy is like the guy who had the submachine gun and gets his ass kicked by invisible Kusanagi is like,

what are you going to interrogate me?

And he's like, why would we interrogate someone who doesn't even know his own name?

Like, Bateau has already figured out what the fuck is going on.

He's already figured out that there's two levels of, you know, brainwashed

now guys who are relegated to being simpletons because they have their entire identities

replaced just so they could be in service to the puppet master.

He's already figured out this is going on before he's even

had asked this guy a question.

It's just, it just is like, oh, it's crazy how pervasive this must be.

It, it,

it also, like, when he's being interrogated, the garbage man, and they're, and he's like, well, how do I get rid of this?

Yeah.

Tokus is like, you, you can't.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the worst shit.

It's like, it's like, no, you'll always remember your wife and kid who don't exist.

There is no cure.

Yeah.

It's so brutal.

And makes me think like, you know, like in all these braindance, cyberpunk, strange days ideas where you fully experience somebody else's life for a short amount of time, that those would just be built in, those would be memories that you would have from that point forward.

I wonder if you could, in this reality, like purchase memories that you would want instead.

No doubt.

I'm sure that's been commercial.

I would like, if that happened to me, if I got like hacked and then I got false memories implanted, I would just like then try to buy the memories closest to what is actually true.

Yeah.

And then just kind of go from there.

Yeah.

But that would also be false.

It'd be false, but it'd be like, but I wouldn't know.

Yeah, you could buy, here's what you could do.

You could buy a memory that was pretty close to, I've been a bachelor for 10 years and I've lived in my apartment.

There's probably a service that would, that would provide that.

They'd come film your room.

They'd be like, okay, okay, okay.

We'll put a Scarface poster up, put a Boondock Saints poster.

And then you would hire them to rewrite your past and also rewrite the memory of having gone to them so that you could then just wake up the next day and be like, oh, it's my shitty life again.

Yeah.

Yeah, no friends.

So Kusanagi and Bato go out scuba diving.

And we see a cool moment where Kusanagi's like fucking in the ocean and sails up to the surface, seeing her reflection in the water.

Another entire scene of fucking American executive would say, get this the fuck out of here.

What does this do?

Yeah.

Plot.

There are a lot of scenes in this movie, or a lot of sequences rather, where it's just like no talking.

Like where it's just like, like this one in particular, just like seeing stuff.

But even the dialogue they have on the boat, like none of this necessarily adds any plot momentum.

It's all just like about, you know, just talking about the nature of consciousness.

Well, it sets up her big quest.

You could, you could, if you got the note, you could be like,

she makes a choice in the final act that is dependent on her having this conversation with Bato in the audience.

And that conversation, so she comes up from scuba diving and Bato's like, what the fuck you doing, man?

Like, you're, you're in a

body that would sink to the bottom like a brick.

Why would you go scuba diving?

And she's like, well, I feel a lot of experiences when I'm down there, loneliness, sadness, longing, and a little bit of hope.

They have, he, Bato has a beer and asks her if she's drunk because of the way she's talking.

And she's like, no, what's the point of drinking when your body can regulate your alcohol?

Like, to the, like, you don't, you have to choose to get drunk, and then you also kind of choose to not be drunk.

Right.

Um, but yeah, she talks about her experience of consciousness and identity and what makes herself and her ghost herself,

um, and then quotes the Bible.

Um,

you know, when I was a child, I put away childish things.

Um,

but uh,

the two of them hear a voice together, which is like, says something like, for right now, right now we are only seeing through darkly colored glass.

And Bato's like, was that you?

And we see a shot of Kusanagi who looks sick or

pensive.

She's unreadable.

And another thing that happens in this film is that she doesn't blink hardly ever because the director wanted to make her seem more like a doll.

Another also a detail that's in AI.

Yeah.

So, so

this, this, on this, on this boat, they, like, I think we, just to talk about

the, because I, I, this is another, this is another sequence that has some like nudity, and just to talk about like how nudity is used in this movie, like, first off, it's all completely desexualized, but so much of it is, like, I feel like

used in a way for

when a an android when a non-human being is viewed as like like just purely like an object or purely as

you know

whatever a product and I think part of Bateau is like his characterization is that he views Kusanagi as more human and you can see that in terms of like in the sense of how he maybe he's also in love with her but like he averts her eyes when she's like stripping down here He also puts his coat on her.

Puts his coat on her at the end, yeah.

At the end of the fight in the water.

But these are the only parts where it's like, like, that's the only character, and that's all, that's the only character who treats any of the cybernetic creatures as having any sort of like, you know, entitled to any sort of privacy or dignity over their bodies.

And, you know, so much of the rest of it is just like, whatever,

these characters being treated as mannequins because they're dehumanized.

yeah it's um

god there's so much it's so good it's so fucking good it's so good do you think about do you ever like like with this movie did you because i was starting to think about how annoying the discourse would be if this movie was released as is now about just like like her like why is she naked all the time this is like and and did the the the

idea of it being gratuitous thrown around because i don't think it's gratuitous i think it's like

i i i think it's like kind of pointed in terms of how it's like talking about the idea of like what it is to have a body and what it is to have any sort of like autonomy over your body.

Like, are you entitled to it if someone else creates you?

She doesn't feel so.

I have two things to say about this, which is that she doesn't feel like she gives a shit about her body.

Like, it feels like she's like, you wouldn't, you don't always put a cover on your car.

And she treats her body almost like it's a vehicle for her mind.

Um, the other thing is, I saw a lecture about this film in college, and the lecturer was like some

Asian studies film professor and

they said that

this film is divorced from the male gaze and that I disagree with because

if you read

If you read the manga, it's so gratuitously sexual.

And the motivation for Kusanagi to get naked is to sell the comic.

Yeah, you've

said you said that there's pornography in it.

Yeah, there's straight up pornography in it.

And I think that this film sort of

pendulum swings between these two ideas, which is that it is thematically consistent for Kusanagi to be like, I don't give a shit.

And it's just a body.

And it's just a robot body.

And if the best way for me to get my thermoptic camouflage to work is to be completely naked then who cares

and then there is also the titillation of seeing a naked woman on screen um

and

i i don't know it's it's interesting and complicated to have all of the things happening at the same time Yeah.

And I don't think that the live action version, which does not show,

which does not show Scarlett Johansson fully nuked, uh, accomplishes that same sort of, she's divorced from, from her, from her form.

Um,

I think also it being, this is another thing where it being animation makes it feel a little bit less loaded, you know, because it's not like, okay, we're subjecting a human being to their actual body being displayed in this way, and we're just saying it, it's a, it's a cyborg.

It's like, okay, well, this is animation, you know.

So

we cut to a robot on the street, like a naked woman on the street who gets hit by a truck.

Yeah.

Like that's our hard cut to the next thing.

And it turns out that Megatech, which manufactures all of the robot what?

Probably a good company.

Megatech.

Sounds like a standing corporation.

They're just fine.

I don't, I don't.

Okay.

Yeah, you're right.

Halliburton doesn't sound like a bad company.

It sounds like somebody who makes soup.

I was going to say it sounds like fish.

Yeah.

Halibuton.

me.

So

what has happened is

the manufacturer of the bodies used by Section 9, Kusanagi's body, Bato's body, Megatech, has suddenly created a cyborg without any like.

Just to pause real quick.

Bato is human, though, right?

He's had his body heavily modified.

But he...

He says, like, you know, all of us have our augments done by Megatech.

Yeah, he has been heavily replaced by, you know, he's chromed the fuck up, to borrow from Cyberpunk.

So

this, Megatech started up in the middle of the night, created a robot, cyborg, that then ran off on its own, got hit by a car, and is delivered to

Section 9.

And what's baffling is that this robot that has never been human seems to have a ghost in it,

which is upsetting to the team and specifically to Kusanagi, who's been dealing with these existential questions of her identity.

Because if a robot can have a ghost, then what proves that she was ever human to begin with?

Right.

So she's like, I really want to get into that robot.

I want to dive in.

I want to talk to it.

I want to figure out what it is.

But then section six, Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows up and they're like, we need this robot.

It's our project.

This is the puppet master.

And we've been tracking this for a long time.

And this, this is an AI program.

And we want this body because the puppet master has been lured into this body and trapped there.

And we did it.

We got him.

And then the robot comes online and is like, wrong.

I'm not an AI created by anybody.

I was a program created to surf.

the net and became self-aware and then in the sea of information gained consciousness and chose by myself to put myself into this body so that I could achieve a goal.

Also, talking with a male voice.

Yeah.

Yes.

Meanwhile,

meanwhile,

the rest of Section 9 has sort of been excused because the bigwigs showed up from Section 6.

Togusa goes down to the parking garage and does a bit of like good old-fashioned detecting, sees these two cars that were bringing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dr.

Willis

to get the puppet master.

And he checks the pressure sensors on the parking garage and determines that they were not alone.

Yeah,

it's awesome.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

It's fucking awesome.

And the elevators taking like extra time for the doors to close, knowing how sensitive they are.

Like, yeah, you piece this circumstantial evidence together.

I do want to back up and talk about the

dude who,

and it's one of to me one of the the lasting images from this movie but the american guy who's uh got the cybernetic fingers that turn into tiny little fingers so he can type super fucking fast looks so fucking cool yeah it's it i've always wondered if it would be easier to type

if you had like each of your fingers turned into five like tiny fingers yeah

if every key on the keyboard was one of your fingers i think the the then the stopping like the uh you know assuming you had via the cybernetic implant the dexterity to be able to type like that, I think it would be faster, yeah, because you wouldn't have to have any wasted movement going back and forth between different keys.

It would just then the limiting thing would be your own brain power, which would also probably be cybernetically enhanced.

But anyway, that looks fucking cool.

Also, just like in terms of the body being just so degraded here, she's a fucking torso, just like ripped as shit,

completely topless, fucking titties are out, and then like people are just like clinically just sort of standing around her.

You know, there's no dignity being afforded to this life form that has consciousness.

Yeah.

There's, there's also, I want to go when the puppet master is speaking about its own identity, there's several layers of obfuscation that it peels away.

One is that section six is like, we lured the puppet master, who's a person, into this robot body to capture him.

And then the robot's like, no, you're not going to find a corpse because I never was a person.

Then they're like, that's an AI that we designed.

It's like, no, I was not an AI.

My own consciousness arose on my own.

And everybody in the room is interrogating this torso.

And it's like, well, you can't prove that you're alive.

You, you, like,

that's ridiculous.

And the robot's interrogating them right back and saying, like, you can't prove that you're alive.

Like, effectively, DNA is

what takes a memory of existence and brings it to the next generation.

And without DNA, like, that

this accumulation of data would be a dead end, but that human beings as data, as

DNA data are no different than this thing that has arisen from the data of the net.

And it's a, it's a wild little conversation.

It's really, I mean, it's not like the only time we've ever heard this in science fiction, but it's a great, it's a great distillation of that conversation and certainly better than any of the ones had in iRobot starring Will Smith.

That book is good.

The Asimov book is good.

Be careful what we say about him.

He's got an itchy hand.

An itchy slapping finger.

So

nobody can determine why.

The puppet master chose to come to Section 9 and somebody makes a joke.

Maybe he likes somebody there, which is actually kind of on the nose.

Yeah, 100%.

While Togusa

is saying, hey, there's more people who are using thermoptic.

They came out of the car.

We've got them from the pressure sensors.

That's when Section 6

throws off smoke bombs, grabs the body, and escapes

with the top half of the puppet master into their cars.

Everybody gives chase.

And Togusa goes out into the alley, fires a bunch of rounds into the car, and it turns out that that his revolver can be rapidly reloaded with a tracer bullet, and he fires it into the license plate so that they can tail this car, which is great.

But also,

how is it that you wouldn't have like a,

in this world, that you wouldn't have essentially cameras on every car in existence constantly telling you where the cars were?

I think it's a little bit

anticipated a lot of things, but also I think the idea of

surveillance capitalism,

this reality we live in now where cameras are omnipresent.

Cameras are fucking everywhere.

We have like four cameras pointed at us right now, like as we're recording this.

Plus,

we've got cameras on our laptops.

That's true.

So we've got

one in this room alone.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven cameras on the phones, eight cameras on the phone.

Then Matt's got multiple monitors.

There's two right here next to me.

910.

There's one on my computer.

There's one on my phone.

12.

Yeah.

There are 12 cameras on the four of us right now.

Yeah.

So, so I mean, 13th.

There's a 13th one right here, actually.

That's maybe a thing that I think that's maybe an element they didn't anticipate, just the idea that cameras would be fucking everywhere, that everything you'd be doing at any point in public would be recorded on video, and anything you said aloud would be recorded on audio.

But I don't know.

I do think, again, a lot of the stuff of just like constant net connectivity and

GPS, all that shit feels, does feel

ahead of its time.

So

the Puppet Master smuggled into a car.

There's a car chase that happens.

They switch the bodies into another car,

which they don't know.

Section 9 doesn't know which car is the decoy car and which car is the one carrying the Puppet Master.

So Bato goes after one.

Kusanagi goes after the other in a helicopter.

That car

heads off to an abandoned museum on the outskirts of town where Bateau's car gets stopped on the highway and he just fucking murks the dude inside.

Oh, yeah.

It's pretty nasty.

He fucking blows the guy up, realizes that Kusanagi is on her own after the puppet master, and he's worried about her.

So he grabs one of these cars that's on the road and immediately books ass out to this museum where she has

requested light backup.

Yeah, it's, look, I think that that murder is, you know, a little over the top.

And I think Dogus is like, kind of like, hey, you know, come on, man.

But, but, or whoever shows up is like, come on, what are you doing?

Because he just fucking immediately kills the guy.

They're bad guys.

But the thing I love is that they've kind of got the view screens of what looks like a windshield is actually like a camera actually is like, and it turns to static because it's just like a camera view of

the outside.

I don't know.

That's just, it's just cool looking.

So, Kusanagi drops in on this

getaway car that presumably has the puppet master inside.

And it is in the dead center of this abandoned museum

that's slightly flooded, like it's just a leaky room.

It's apparently modeled after an actual like 19th century museum in london i think and then something in the room opens fire on her and just destroys the column that she's hiding behind yeah and that's when she realizes that there is a tank a fuchikoma tank a spider tank uh protecting the car in thermoptic camouflage she demands from her um helicopter dude shoot out the glass schist in Fenste?

Is that how you say it in German in Die Hard?

Shoot the glass?

Oh, yeah.

I don't remember.

Yeah, I don't know.

Well, he says it in English to a German guy because that guy doesn't know either.

So they shoot out the glass, which deactivates the thermoptic camouflage on the tank, and then we see a fucking tank.

I love when a character who's extremely capable is a step ahead of the audience.

Because, like, you know, when she's like, shoot the glass,

you're like, to what end?

And then obviously the glass all falls down and it's on the thermoptic camouflage of the tank and then exposes this gigantic

this huge mechanical

megalith that's on that's straddling

a car.

It's like it's a fucking metal gear that's straddling this escape car.

But like that sort of thing, like her being that perceptive.

Again, it's like the same thing that I love about Bateau earlier when he's like, you don't even know your fucking name.

You know, it's like, oh yeah,

he knows something that we don't because they live in this world and they're they're extremely capable.

So Kusanagi goes from pillar to pillar as this thing is opening up on just the most explosive rounds on her.

And I think if there's one scene that to me evokes the Matrix, it's this one.

Sure.

Because you see the column fight

in when Neo is infiltrating the building that Morpheus is in, where those columns are being destroyed in a very similar, visually, thematically similar environment.

Yeah, the cement just like just flaking away by the bullet from her.

So she finally exhausts the ammo on the tank as it shoots up

the

tree of life on the wall.

You know, it's, you know, a little on the nose, but I like it.

She's like, finally, you're out of fucking ammo.

Takes off her clothes, thermoptics up,

leaps across the...

crosses the distance between her and the tank, jumps on top of it, and tries to tear it open with her hands.

And she is so desperate to stop this thing so that she can interrogate the puppet master and learn about herself that she destroys her own body trying to open up the tank.

Just an amazing bit of animation here.

Just the musculature straining and then like use exerting so much force from your body that your limbs are ripped from your torso.

Just like what to see that in motion.

It's just,

I don't know.

It's like, holy shit, that looks incredible.

We've been watching a lot of like

pretty gnarly,

cool shit.

Cool stuff.

Like a lot of stuff like this happening in Cyberpunk Edge Runner.

It's just a lot of dismemberment or, you know, heads exploding and things like that.

But seeing this was like that stuff

100% couldn't happen

without

this shortening first.

It looks so good.

They did such an incredible job.

It's fantastic and sad.

Yes.

Her body drops to the ground.

The tank picks it up and is crushing her skull in its outstretched claw when Bateau

opens fire on the tank with a shoulder-mounted anti-tank gun that he had to stop by his apartment to pick up.

And he saves.

Kusanagi and her first question is, is the puppet master okay?

And he's like, yes, you're lucky.

The body's undamaged.

And she's like, I have to dive right now.

Jack me in.

And he's nervous, but he'll monitor the connection through a wire.

Meanwhile,

Section 6 has sent snipers to their location to destroy the bodies of both Kusanagi and the Puppet Master because they are now aware of this.

The reason that the Puppet Master went to Section 9 was to talk to Kusanagi.

Yeah, Kusanagi earlier is to

her helicopter support is like, basically, when she figures hit, she's like, get the fuck out of here.

And then the chopper talks to her again, and she's like, I thought I told you to leave.

And she's like, the chopper's like, I am going to leave, but just so you know, there's three other helicopters on the way.

Okay, I'm leaving now for good.

And then those three helicopters show up.

So yeah,

they've got their own mission.

They're all going to set up,

you know, they're trying to dispatch or to take out the two of them.

So

when Kusanagi joins up with the Puppet Master, they exchange...

They don't exchange bodies, but they merge slightly so that they have access to each other's consciousnesses.

And the Puppet Master uses...

Kusanagi's face and throat to talk, whereas Kusanagi is still contained within the Puppet Master's robot body, speaking entirely through essentially cyber telekinesis.

Yeah, so you're hearing Kusanagi's voice coming out of the Puppet Master's, you know, again, these are two disassembled torsos,

and

also Bateau has pulled his coat over

a Kusanagi only for modesty.

I think, again,

it's pretty straightforward, but it feels like kind of pointed in terms of like who he thinks is alive and who actually deserves

some dignity.

So the Puppet Master of the Sun.

And Puppet Master is speaking in a male voice from Kusanagi's mouth.

So it is very, from a viewer, it is very disconcerting.

So

Kusanagi says basically, what do you want?

And it's like, well,

I am alive.

I have a ghost.

But there are two things that I cannot do that living things can, and that's reproduce and die.

And it wants to merge with Kusanagi in order to create a new entity, something both of them are not capable of doing, which is why that fucking sentence in the beginning is so important.

Yes.

Because like, she also cannot reproduce.

And that only, you only know that from this sentence that was censored by the fucking executives who dubbed this shit.

So.

Thanks, Clinton.

So,

so.

What was the guy that did the Mortal Kombat

trials?

Oh, Senator Joe Lieberman.

Yeah, Joe Lieberman looking ass.

Fucking Al Gore's losing running mate ass.

So it's whether or not the Puppet Master is lying to her or not, its offer is extremely tempting because this is something that Kusanagi can't do either.

And when Bateau begins to protest, the Puppet Master cuts him off.

from Kusanagi's feed so that he can talk to, or it can talk to Kusanagi directly and says, like, pitches its sail.

If we merge, you will no longer exist.

You won't have gone away, but like the way that DNA replicates by combining, we will have created a new entity out of our varying consciousnesses, which will then be able to continue forward as an entirely new life form.

And that's the only chance we'll get to do it.

Yeah, basically describing having a child.

Like, we'll put our forces together and we'll make something new, but we'll be either of us.

That will be us,

but also not us.

And also, we will die, but we will continue.

It's interesting because I feel like

this conversation that the,

or this idea, this pitch from the Puppet Master, the reason it's so interesting to me.

Or it makes, it makes this character a good villain because it's interesting.

Like, because it's like, it's not a hard no of an idea necessarily.

It's like, oh, it's like, I don't know.

Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's a compelling idea.

It's also,

you say villain, but this is the part where like you're like, huh.

Has this just been a misunderstood existence the entire time who's trying to achieve

freedom?

And we have misinterpreted those actions as violence.

Yeah, I guess villain's not the right word.

I'm thinking of it more like, like Killmonger in the Black Panther movie, for example.

Like he's not like, he's doing something quote-unquote bad, and the residents of Wakanda view what he's doing as bad, but then he stops and explains what he's doing and why.

And you're sort of like, oh, well, like, that makes a hundred percent sense.

Yeah.

Although, I think that Marvel was not expecting, I think that Disney Marvel was not expecting that to kind of resonate with the audience.

I think they were kind of like trying to present Killmonger as a pretty unambiguous bad guy, and then just like, you know,

or they were not conscious of the

they were not conscious that that would be

what the audience would take away from it.

Maybe that's not giving the film enough credit.

But this to me is like not a straightforward protagonist-antagonist tale.

And that's partly why it's kind of like, you know, it's, I think that's why The Matrix is much more commercially successful deriving from this idea is because it's like,

I love The Matrix.

It's awesome.

I love all those movies.

It's a dumbed-down version of the kind of stuff that's in here.

And there is some, there is not a lot of ambiguity there.

It's like pretty straightforward who is just and who is not.

Both movies, though, don't have enough about the Merovingian.

I don't know.

I think

it's such a cool idea.

And it also kind of just speaks to what this, I think this, this,

it's just kind of talking about in the age of computerization, like, what are machines?

What, do, do machines have any rights?

Does like, you know, we have, we have industrialized the world and

we employ all of

these different devices to help us achieve our own goals.

At what point do these devices achieve any sort of sentience and deserve any sort of autonomy and self-direction?

And here, this is a future where that's just like having to be grappled with directly.

And we're pretty clearly heading on that trajectory, right?

Like there's already talk of like, do I have certain

there are people who have talked about certain programs they think have achieved sentience,

certain software applications.

Which is crazy because

I wasn't expecting a Google AI program to

achieve sentience before me.

And I fully doubt that I'm self-aware.

So

as these snipers close in,

Bato

unlock he through brute force manages to cover Kusanagi's head as they open fire to destroy both the puppet master and Kusanagi.

The puppet master is fully destroyed.

Kusanagi's head flies across the room.

Beto shouts at it, and we hear Kusanagi's voice just say, Beto.

And then we cut to a child with Kusanagi's head on it

that

Bato

disturbingly says this was the only body I could find on short notice in the black market, which is rough.

All that upsetting.

But it is

really

poignant because the thing that is now Kusanagi's consciousness is part puppet master, part Kusanagi.

Bateau is like, what are you going to do?

Now, and she's like, I don't know.

She goes out onto the hilltop and looks at the city and says, the net is vast and infinite.

Meaning, there's all sorts of shit you can do once you're a little uh robot girl with a half half ai brain half uh cop brain

do you think she becomes megan

yeah she might be a megan

uh it's a apparently this is a their difference from the manga in the manga bateau has puts her head on a male body which is a very different you know sort of resolution or at least leaves you with a different feeling interesting yeah i

in both cases though, it's like the comment is the same.

The idea that, like, what, you know, again, like, what is a fucking, what is your soul?

How connected is it to your physical form?

If your physical form changes, you know, what, what, what does that affect to the, the, the, uh, how does that affect the, your internality?

I like that the title,

like, well, ghost in the shell.

Everyone sort of thinks about a person and personhood as

a combo.

It's one.

Your soul,

your brain, your body, that's all one thing.

And this

suggests, and

what am I trying to say?

This positions them as two separate things.

Yeah.

And I think that's very interesting.

I think

it's neat that the matrix is an allegory for the trans experience.

Yes.

Because you can easily draw a line from that to the concepts of ghost in the shell, where it's like, I am a ghost in a body.

In a shell, yeah.

And whether or not this body is the right body for my ghost is sort of indeterminate until I consent to the body.

And that's

fascinating and cool.

Your Viking trivia for the day is, I believe the Vikings had, believe there were four spirits inside of every person,

which is these guys fucking crazy.

They thought too much.

They need to calm down.

Yeah, there's too many.

That's too many.

That's too many things going on.

I think it was four.

I'd have to look that back up.

But yeah, so this is

Ghost in the Shell.

Just a remarkable piece of art.

Incredible.

As a director, Oshi directed a non-canonical sequel called Ghost in the Shell Innocence, which is a further exploration of the sort of existential themes of this movie.

He also went on to direct another cyberpunk live-action film called Avalon,

which is

after this, I was like, oh, I got to follow everything this dude does.

Avalon is about a woman

who who is

in a

competitive video game

that is like a

battle royale.

It's just like Fortnite.

It's a battle royale where you get points and then you can spend that money in the real world, which is a dystopian nightmare.

And Avalon has one of the craziest third acts of any film I have ever seen.

Wow.

But we should watch, we should watch Avalon at some point

because it touches on a lot of these same themes.

It is not animated, so I don't know where we would watch it.

But

yeah, this becomes like

a continuing area for this director to explore over the course of the next 10, 15 years.

And then

he was also on

Kojima's podcast.

That's cool.

I'll have to go back and listen to that.

Because Kojima's like, oh, man,

you and I used to be friends, and we haven't talked in a long time.

She's like, you've been busy, dude.

Wow.

Sorry, we're both busy being two huge freaks.

Yeah.

Two huge freaks.

Incredible movie.

You know, it's like I said,

like we all said earlier, it inspired a lot that came afterward, but also I think is like a nice, like, you know, it's kind of like the middle of

where cyberpunk was going, right?

Because it comes after, as you were saying, Neuromancer and Blade Runner and clearly seems to draw some inspiration from Blade Runner at least.

And I don't know.

It's just,

it's a great essential part of that, that whole continuum.

Yeah, one of my favorite things to do when I watch movies is to eat

themed food, which I've talked about on the

Get Played podcast.

When I was playing Red Dead, I had to eat a lot of cowboy food, and that's why I had to stop playing.

But I came up with a pretty good themed ghost in the shelf food.

What's that?

It's macaroni and cheese with ghost pepper sauce.

So it's ghost in the shells.

Very good.

Cute.

That is very good.

I thought you were going to say like gray food.

So you, I wouldn't, I bet you could.

Oh man, would that be fucking, it would be so funny and nightmarish if somebody, you could buy empty toothpaste tubes off Amazon and like reverse fill them with gravy and then like be like, I've got to eat my sustenance and take out like tubes of food from your bag and eat them in public would be great.

And someone would ask what you're eating.

It's like, oh, I'm eating a delicious steak dinner.

It's like, you're not eating a steak dinner at all.

What are you talking about?

This is a fork and knife I have and a steak I'm biting into.

No, I'm sucking it out of a tube, dog.

I'm really glad that I finally saw this.

I was so happy to not only watch it twice, but just to see it at all.

And I'm glad we got to talk about it.

All right, folks, thanks again for bearing with us while we rest up and come back to the pod feeling so much better next week.

We'll be back with an all-new episode next week.

And again, if you feel like checking out Get Animated, you can do so at patreon.com/slash get played.

And just want to remind you all that Get Played's music is done by Ben Prunty, and the art is by Duck Brigade, and our producer is Rochelle Ranch Chen.

And you know what?

We all got played this week.

That was a hit gum podcast.