The original Ghost in the Shell (1995) broke new creative ground and home video sales records, but didn’t make a dent at the box office. © Manga Entertainment.

The TV series, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is a more straightforward police procedural series about the detectives of Section 9 and their cases. It is intended to be seen as a "parallel world" version of movie stories, neither a prelude nor a sequel. Kusanagi is still one of Section 9's top cops, but several others are elevated to major roles as well. More background is given on how she came to be "a brain in a tin can," and her feelings about it are not so morose.

The true sequel to the 1995 movie is Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. It is a direct sequel, not counting a three-year gap from 2029 to 2032. Kusanagi has been missing for three years, but her ex-partner Batou is confident that she is alive and well within the Internet. Batou, a brawny muscleman, is as cynically intelligent as Kusanagi was. He is only about 50% human; the rest is cyber-enhanced prosthetics with weaponry hidden inside him. He is now the top cop of Section 9, and his new partner is the rookie, Togusa, who is the star of the TV version.

Batou and Togusa are assigned to a case in which an experimental model of female robot servants manufactured by the Locus Solis mega corporation have been going berserk and killing their new human owners. The owners include politicians and important industrialists, so Section 9 must determine whether the murderous glitch is an accidental programming error or deliberate sabotage. The latter seems likely when Locus Solis's inspector who approved the deadly "gynoids" (a.k.a. sexaroids) is murdered by a Yakuza gang before he can be questioned. The Yakuza's crime boss was one of the recipients of a killer sexaroid, and his successor was never told what the top-secret link between the gang and Locus Solis is. Batou's and Togusa's investigation leads to the same type of computer/mind manipulation that Batou and Kusanagi had experienced three years earlier, involving the criminal implantation of false memories into innocent people to dupe or kill them. As the case grows more violently deadly, it appears as though some "guardian angel" is protecting Batou. It is not giving away much to reveal that Kusanagi has been watching over her old friend, and that she makes a dramatic reappearance at the climax.

Writer/director Mamoru Oshii creates a future where technology and nature collide.

Production I.G again uses Ghost in the Shell as a showcase for its latest spectacular advances in computer animation. The opening sequence could almost be a "live action" shot from Blade Runner, except that the buildings are higher and the futuristic sleazy urban ghettos even more detailed. Batou, without Kusanagi to hold him back, seems to be a trigger-happy nutcase running wild through an extremely cerebral, emotionally frozen scenario. The movie is intellectually admirable but there is little emotional comfort in it. My impression is that Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty would have loved it.

A special preview of Innocence was held at the DreamWorks studio with Producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (the I in Production I.G) and director Mamoru Oshii present. Oshii answered a few questions for AWM.

AWM: The presskit describes how you developed the plot around human dolls because of your interest in the ball-jointed dolls of Polish-born surrealist artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975). Masamune Shirow is not mentioned. How closely did you work with him, as the creator of Ghost in the Shell, on Innocence?"

MO: I only met with Shirow-san about 10 minutes before the production of the movie began. We just had a brief discussion, and that was it. There was no collaboration between us. Shirow-san is a most ideal creator of manga compared to any others I have worked with, because he will let me do whatever I want to do.

AWM: How closely did you and the TV production team for Stand Alone Complex work together? Did Production I.G decide from the beginning that the Ghost in the Shell sequel should be both a TV series and a second feature, or did it start out as one or the other and later turn into both?

MO: They were both planned at the same time. I was not involved with the TV creation at all, although in the second season of Stand Alone Complex, the 2nd Gig, I was involved in writing some plots.