Ghost in the Shell Review

Overall Rating 7.0 out of 10

I recommend watching, especially for intellectual kind of people.

A year before they released SEL, they made Ghost in the Shell. A somewhat spiritual predecessor to SEL.

It is about one simple (or not so simple if you are not so smart) idea.

Can you still continues to exist even if your physical body is destroyed. Can you consciousness, personality and memories, your ghost in the show terms, be copied off your brain using technology and then inserted into artificially created body. Will that still be you. Character of this show do ponder over this question.

Other characters here have some electronic implants but only main female protagonist has completely artificial mechanical body with her electronically preserved consciousness controlling it like a normal person would control a machine or something like that.

This show explores her feelings and experiences stemming from that arrangement.

This show could be called revolutionary or cutting edge. However, there are other shows that borrow this base idea and take it much much further. Therefore, this show is only as good as an entry point on the journey further into uncharted horizons of the world shaped by technology.

This show ultimately looks back. It only thinks of using technology to replicate lost human body. In its logic ghost does need a shell to inhibit. An artificial body may be, but a body. Characters here mostly nostalgic about their physical bodies.

SEL (World of Ghosts without Shell) on the other hand, take a step further and explore a world where consciousness could simply exist in the Wired without any body at all.

And that is just the beginning. It continues on and explores just what kind of previously unthinkable things could become already became (it is 2022 not 1996 anymore) a reality of our lives. A new reality shaped by internet and computers. SEL is like a multifaceted gem that shows countless surfaces and angles of such world. It would take too long to explore it all here, you would have to retell the entire show to do that.

ID-0 in another example of exploring the world where boundaries between biological and technological are blurred. This one os particularly focused on shells, or i-machines as the called them in this show. Some characters there still have physical bodies, some have lost them, others possibly never had them to begin with. None of them however think too deep about any of that. They just live with it like it is nothing special and just pursue their hobbies and passions like normal people.

It is a world where artificial body concept was completely normalized and society explores untapped possibilities that this tech could bring, such as mining orichalcum across the universe. i-machines do not replicate human body to be human like. Instead they are bigger and allow users to do more and better then with a normal human body. They are customizable to individual teste too. You can use different models as well, switch between them at will. This does open a lot of possibilities.

Overall, I can recommend Ghost in the Shell as your starting point towards other shows about futuristic life, such as SEL and ID-0. It is good by itself as well, even if somewhat gloomy and slow.