The anime industry has its fair share of famous legendary titles and one of those is Ghost in the Shell which continued to be well-received even years after its first release. There are films, animated series, video games, OVAs, and manga series created in its name. In a rare interview, the creator of the tile, Masamune Shirow revealed where the greatness of the title is inspired from.
The Ghost in the Shell creator, Masamune Shirow, does not usually go for interviews but this time, he had one with theghostintheshell.jp about the inspiration behind the title and its origins. Masamune reveals what inspired him to do The Ghost in the Shell:
In the winter of 1970, an idle observation computer game called "Life Game'', or a type of automatic drawing art, was introduced to the world. Later, inspired by this, I created the framework of the story worldview in the early 1980s ("story worldview" refers to the Masamune Shirow world that continued from BLACK MAGIC and ORION. (There are many works that have not yet been published.) In 1985, he published a manga called Appleseed, and with the help of various connections, he was able to begin publishing overseas, mainly in English-speaking countries. In this work, the story already includes various full-body armored cyborgs, partially mechanized people, wide-area surveillance networks by artificial satellites and public security, people with mechanically enhanced brains, two-way simultaneous communication, digital and analog methods. hacking, etc. have appeared, and these are not elements that were started from Ghost in the Shell.
The Ghost in the Shell has been a fan-favorite over the years and finally revealing where it all started, Masamune also shares the origins of The Ghost in the Shell:
It's about going back in time from Appleseed and seeing what things were like 100 years ago, so I had some idea of what it would be like. However, to this day, I have never submitted anything to a magazine in order to become a manga artist, nor have I ever worked as an assistant to a manga artist, nor have I received any medals or crowns in this field. It's obvious now, but back then, from the perspective of the publishing world, doujinshi didn't exist, so there was no flow from doujinshi to magazines. The design for Ghost in the Shell had been completed before that short story, and since it coincided with the production of other works at the time (referring to ORION), he brazenly said, "It would be difficult to serialize it in a weekly magazine.'' These were GUN DANCING and PILE UP, which were published in the extra edition of Young Magazine Pirated Edition. We had prepared several projects that had the same story and worldview for Ghost in the Shell, but we submitted the one that takes place in Japan and is set in a similar time period as The Ghost in the Shell. This is because I thought it would be more versatile and compatible with other projects I had.
Various versions of The Ghost in the Shell are the 1995 movie of the same name and the sequel titled Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, the television series in 2002 titled Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and its sequel Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, a live-action film starring Scarlett Johansson in 2017, and the Ghost in the Shell: Arise OVA.
What is The Ghost in the Shell about?
The Ghost in the Shell first released as a manga series in 1989 and it was created by Masamune Shirow. It follows the story of Public Security Section 9 which is a fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization and it is led by the main character of the series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. The story is set in the Niihama Prefecture in Japan during the mid-21st century.
Throughout the story, Section 9 deals with political intrigue and counter-terrorism but each scenario becomes more difficult than another with the involvement of the corrupt officials, companies, and cyber-criminals. The narrative focuses on the post-cyberpunk version of a possible future surrounded by computer technology where the public is with cyberbrains. The main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is a cyborg who tries to escape being hacked into.
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