Cyber-top cop Batou (top) investigates beautiful killer sex robot models (bottom) known as gynoids in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. All photos from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence courtesy of Go Fish Pictures.

The 1995 Ghost in the Shell is one of the most prestigious Japanese animated features ever made. It received almost unanimous critical praise for its intellectual cyberpunk sci-fi plot. (Some critics dismissed it as an imitation Blade Runner, which it is only superficially.) It was acknowledged as one of the creative influences on the Wachowski Brothers that led to The Matrix. It won the 1997 World Animation Celebration's Awards for both Best Theatrical Feature Film and, for director Mamoru Oshii, Best Director of Animation for a Theatrical Feature Film. When it was released on video in America, it became the first anime video to reach the #1 position on Billboard magazine's sales chart (August 1996).

With all this acclaim, it is hard to realize that its American theatrical release (March 29, 1996) was an art-house limited tour in only one theater per city. Its theatrical gross was just $515,905 (according to Box Office Mojo).

Let's try again! Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was released in Japan on March 6, and will be released in America on September 17. This time the distributor is DreamWorks' Go Fish Pictures division, and it is scheduled to play in 70 theaters. This may not match the 3,043 screens of Pokémon: The First Movie's release or even the 2,411 screens of Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie, but according to the press release, this is "the widest theatrical opening release ever in the United States for an adult-themed anime film." We will take what we can get!

The first movie was based upon Masamune Shirow's award-winning 1989-1990 Ghost in the Shell sci-fi manga novel. Set about 40 years in the future, it depicts a global society so tightly integrated by the computer network and international corporations that separate nations were little more than an archaic legal fiction. Biomedical advances are so common that people routinely have skull-jacks implanted to allow them to plug their brains directly into the Internet. This future world is presented from the viewpoint of the Japanese nationalized police's Section 9, in charge of computer crimes, in several stories blending action with intellectual, high-tech white-collar crime. The central character of Section 9 is its top agent, Major Motoko Kusanagi, who appears to be an attractive young woman but is actually little more than a brain with a cynical personality installed in an artificial super-body constantly being upgraded by government techno-geeks.

Production I.G, a new studio specializing in computer graphics imagery, picked Ghost in the Shell for a theatrical feature to showcase its talents. Director Mamoru Oshii was given carte blanche by Shirow to build the movie around the subplot in which Section 9 discovers computer tampering with the minds of people plugged into the Internet. After a lot of action involving the question of whether a sufficiently sophisticated, self-aware Artificial Intelligence is morally any different from a biologically "natural" person, Kusanagi abandons her body and transfers her mind, her "ghost," permanently into the Internet.

When Shirow began new Ghost in the Shell manga stories, the fans immediately asked when these would be animated. Production I.G planned a two-part sequel for both TV and the theaters. The TV series, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, debuted on Japan's SkyPerfecTV pay-per-view satellite channel on Oct. 1, 2002, at the rate of two episodes per month for 13 months. Ratings were high enough that by the time episodes #25 and #26 aired on Oct. 1, 2003, a 52-episode sequel was in production. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex — 2nd Gig debuted on Jan. 1, 2004; episodes #17 and #18 were aired this month. In America, GitS:SAC began a bi-monthly DVD release in July 2004. It will start airing on The Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim block on November 6 at 11:00 pm.