"Ghost in the Shell" (Anime)

[pkristen]

Movie. Originally reviewed August 7, 2001

Summary
In futuristic Hong Kong, the mysterious Puppet Master is committing a series of ultimate computer based crimes: hacking, sabotaging, and deprogramming of people. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg cop, is on the trail to capture him. However, there seems to be a strong and strange interest the opponents seem to have with each other.

Review
Needless to say, I picked this one up more for the fact that it’s an anime classic that had a strong central female character. However, something about it just didn’t entice me to get around to watching it after having it for a few months.

I agree that it’s visually captivating and intellectually challenging to a degree, but did I LIKE it? No, in fact I thought it was rather “bleah.” I think it’s mainly because human characterization and interaction are the foundations of any story that interests me, and this one had the angle of computers trying to become sentient. None of the characters were truly interesting enough for me to actually care what happened to them other than just sit back and watch the story unfold.

It just depends on what you consider to be good and exciting about an anime. In this case, it felt short of my personal standards.

Lesbian Analysis
I’m only writing this part here based on just taking a step back from the story and looking at its basics.

True, Motoko is extremely independent, and one could argue almost hermitic in her personality. She does have a blurry relationship with her male cyborg teammate Bateau, but it’s clear that the interest level is much higher on his side of the relationship.

The climatic arc of the story is around whether or not Motoko would be willing to “merge” with the sentient computer program “Puppet Master” in order to further their own existences in a human-like fashion.

Now, if the Puppet Master were truly human, then yes, we’d have to think of this as a male-female dynamic. However, during the latter part of the story, “he” is inhabitating a female shell, significantly during the “procreation” discussion. And in the beginning, even the police who are searching for the culprit admit they default as labeling it “him” due to lack of gender specific data. And yes, the voice casting was male.

This just brings up the point of whether or not sentient programs truly have a gender, which in turns determines the orientation based on interactions — after all, there’s nothing that I saw that indicated the Puppet Master would have acted any differently if it had been downloaded into a male shell. Just because the desire to procreate is there, it doesn’t mean the program is truly “male.” After all, I know many, many lesbians who wish they could have children without the literal input of a male participant.

Personally, I’m thinking this discussion just goes beyond the scope of this website, and therefore I’ll leave my comments at that. I’d flesh it out more if I truly liked the show, but I didn’t so….