Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society

Anime movie
title	Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society
Original title	攻殻機動隊 SAC Solid State Society
transcription	Kōkaku Kidōtai SAC Solid State Society
Country of production	Japan
original language	Japanese
Publishing year	2006
Studio	Production IG
length	105 minutes
genre	Science fiction
Rod
Director	Kenji Kamiyama
script	Kenji Kamiyama, Shotaro Suga , Yoshiki Sakurai
production	Mitsuhisa Ishikawa , Shigeru Watanabe
music	Yōko Kanno
synchronization

Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society ( Japanese 攻殻機動隊 SAC Solid State Society , Kōkaku Kidōtai SAC Solid State Society ) is a Japanese anime film from 2006 that appeared on the television series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and thus based on Masamune Shirow's Ghost-in-the-Shell universe.

action

The action takes place in 2034, two years after the events in Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd GIG . Major Motoko Kusanagi has left Section 9 special forces. Her former subordinate Togusa is the new leader of the task force, which has now grown to 20 members.

A series of suicides in the vicinity of the murdered ex-dictator Ka Rum leads Section 9 on the trail of a mysterious hacker named Puppeteer and a planned terrorist attack using micro-machine viruses. While securing the viruses, Batou meets his former supervisor Major Kusanagi, who takes a container with samples of the virus and leaves Batou with a warning of further investigation into the Solid State Society . Batou initially does not tell his superiors about this meeting.

The emergency team discovered 16 kidnapped children who were intended to be carriers for the spread of the virus. The children's identities were changed by manipulating their memories. The alleged parents are all frail elderly people who are connected to a health surveillance system. Research indicates that there appear to have been over 20,000 child abduction cases in the past two years, suggesting that the conspiracy discovered is far larger than assumed. When a container with micro-machine viruses was handed in by strangers to a government building and the kidnapped children disappeared without a trace during a distraction by the puppeteer, Batou told Togusa about his encounter with Major Kusanagi and his suspicion that she might be the hacker they were looking for.

A follower of Ka Rum is arrested by Batou and Saito while trying to assassinate MP Hitoshi Munei, who is believed to be responsible for killing Ka Rum. He claims that the puppeteer is not a human, but a system for kidnapping children incorporated into the Solid State Society. According to him, the health surveillance system is identical to that of the Solid State Society, leading investigators to suspect that the Japanese government itself may be involved in the conspiracy.

At the same time Togusa follows the trail of one of the 16 children to his alleged guardian. The terminally ill man explains that the children would be placed in the care of the elderly to protect them from abuse and mistreatment. This is the goal of the Solid State Society. Before he dies, he warns Togusa to stay out of her affairs if he does not want to end up in another suicide case. Togusa realizes that after the death of his guardian, the child will be put up for adoption, which was the Solid State Society's plan from the start.

The puppeteer hacks into Togusa's cyberbrain and forces him to drive his daughter to a cyberbrain implantation clinic. Togusa realizes that this must also have happened with the real parents of the kidnapped children: They all forced their children to have their own implantation, which aroused no suspicion. The memories of parents and children could then be deleted and the children handed over to a new guardian. Togusa is given the choice to save his daughter from this fate by suicide. However, he is stopped by Major Kusanagi, who has secretly followed him. Kusanagi explains that she had tracked down the kidnappings some time ago and used Togusa as a decoy to reveal the puppeteer's identity. It is about the collective consciousness of the people connected to the surveillance system. This decentralized network is controlled by a hub cyberbrain that is located in the building from which the monitoring system is managed.

Major Kusanagi rejoins Section 9 to help capture the puppeteer. The investigation is focused on the ultra-conservative MP Hitoshi Munei, who, as de facto in charge of the health surveillance system, is running it as a brainwashing facility to create a new leadership elite. The team speculates that the assassination attempt on Munei was arranged by the puppeteer because the brainwashing activities are inconsistent with the goals of the Solid State Society, which houses the kidnapped children in the surveillance system. The analysis of the building data shows that the kidnapping system was already integrated in the planning phase; the puppeteer must therefore be one of the designers of the building.

Despite the expected political entanglements, Section 9 penetrates the administration building to prevent the hacker from escaping. Questioning Munei reveals that he thought the children were orphans in his facility and had no knowledge of the kidnappings. A Munei employee named Koshiki then reveals himself to be the creator of the Solid State Society and then shoots himself in the head with a pistol. Major Kusanagi connects to the dying man's cyberbrain to talk to him before his consciousness dissolves.

Koshiki, the alleged puppeteer, cites the rising number of the elderly and unemployed, falling birth rates and the death of countless children through abuse as the motivation for his actions. The Solid State Society aimed to put these wasted resources to good use. Munei should be eliminated as his plans for a political elite conflicted with the Solid State Society's goal of helping children achieve free will.

The final investigation reveals that the real Koshiki had passed away unnoticed two years ago. The person on Munei's staff was just a cyborg body that was originally used by Koshiki and later came into the possession of the puppeteer. Its true identity is not finally clarified.

Production and publication

Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society was - like the previous television series - produced by the Japanese anime studio Production IG , which had a budget of 360 million yen (about 2.8 million euros ). It was again directed by Kenji Kamiyama , and the characters were designed by Takayuki Goto and Tetsuya Nishio . The music for the film comes from Yōko Kanno . The opening title "Player" is sung by Origa with Heartsdales, the closing title "Date of Rebirth" by Origa alone.

The film premiered in Japan when it was broadcast on the pay-per-view network SKY PerfecTV! on September 1, 2006, it was released on DVD on November 24, 2006. In 2011, a 3D post-production was released in Japan and Hong Kong . In German-speaking countries, Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society was only released on March 27, 2015 as a DVD and Blu-Ray edition by Nipponart . A re-release took place in 2018, but once again it did not contain the 3D version.

Voice actor

role	Japanese speaker ( seiyū )
Batou	Akio Ōtsuka
Boma	Taro Yamaguchi
Daisuke Aramaki	Osamu Saka
Ishikawa	Yutaka Nakano
Motoko Kusanagi	Atsuko Tanaka
Paz	Takashi Onozuka
Saito	Tōru Ōkawa
Togusa	Kōichi Yamadera

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society - Overview. Production IG, accessed January 7, 2010 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society - Staff & Cast. Production IG, accessed January 7, 2010 . 
3. ↑ Information on Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society. Anime News Network, accessed January 7, 2010 . 
4. ↑ Nipponart.de: DVD-Edition ( Memento of the original from May 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Nipponart.de: Blu-Ray-Edition ( Memento of the original from May 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• Ghost in the Shell: SAC Solid State Society in the Internet Movie Database (English)