Oshii has in the past described himself more interested in visual style and action sequences rather than story, and whilst Ghost in The Shell upholds this somewhat, Oshii sells himself short, and the film is by no means a hi-octane action-fest.

Oshii’s film strips away the meandering nature of the manga, distilling its core themes of identity and isolation into a lean cyberpunk thriller that, twenty-two years later, still retains the visual innovation and atmospheric storytelling that sees it hailed on a regular basis as one of the greatest anime films of all time. However, Shirow’s genius lies in the detail that his future vision depicts narrative and plot seem like a secondary bi-product to his characters and their technology. There is a more quirky nature to the manga and this is largely missing from Mamoru Oshii’s film. The original 1995 anime film is an excellent adaptation of Shirow’s somewhat rambling source material, and dials up the mood and atmosphere of the manga, whilst reducing the political intrigue. Culled chapters from this sequel were themselves released in 2003 as Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor. A sequel was serialised in 1997 for the same magazine, entitled Ghost In The Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface. The latter was hailed for its stark vision of the future, endorsed at the time by the likes of acclaimed American director, James Cameron (of Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar fame). A cyberpunk science-fiction fable about a government special forces cyborg unit, Ghost In The Shell started life in serialised format for Japan’s Young Magazine from 1989 to 1990, duly released in collected form the year after, achieving enough initial popularity and success to build its legacy upon. This year sees Ghost In The Shell, the manga (a Japanese comic for the uninitiated), turn twenty-eight years old. The impending release of Hollywood’s take on author-artist Masamune Shirow’s defining work – and the subsequent animated adaptations – sent me back to his original manga, and the very first anime feature, director Mamoru Oshii’s seminal 1995 film of the same name.

Ghost in the shell 1.5 manga