Ghost in the Shell (Anime)

Anime movie
title	Ghost in the Shell
Original title	攻殻機動隊
transcription	Kōkaku Kidōtai
Country of production	Japan
original language	Japanese
Publishing year	1995
Studio	Production IG
length	79 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Mamoru Oshii
script	Kazunori Ito Masamune Shirow (Manga)
production	Ken Iyadomi Mitsuhisa Ishikawa Shigeru Watanabe Yoshimasa Mizuo
music	Kenji Kawai
synchronization

The film Ghost in the Shell ( Japanese 攻殻機動隊 , Kokaku Kidōtai ) by Mamoru Oshii from the year 1995 is one of the classic science fiction - Anime and contributed to the growing international popularity of anime. It is based on the manga of the same name, Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow .

action

In the year 2029, many people had parts of their bodies replaced by artificial components, i.e. they became cyborgs in order to improve certain skills or acquire new ones. Even the brain can be partially replaced by a so-called cyberbrain . Packed in a Biokapsel, the Shell , hidden in each Cyborg human brain cells with the Spirit ( Ghost ), which contains the identity and personality. All the more dangerous is the emergence of an unknown hacker , called Puppet Masters (Engl. Puppeteer ) which overcome the safety barriers of the shell and can control the Cyborgs. His victims are manipulated with false memories, lose their identity and commit crimes for the puppet master or his client.

After he has brought various state officials under his control and manipulated politics with them, the secret section 9 of the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for cybercrime, is tasked with the search for the Puppet Master. But the captured people have no memories of their actions. Major Motoko Kusanagi, who works for Section 9 and has an almost completely artificial body, is also personally threatened: Her artificial body gives her superhuman powers, but at the same time makes her dependent on technology and a potential target for manipulation by the Puppet Master. As a human core, only her ghost remains. Often she thinks about whether she is still a human or just an artificial being with an artificial consciousness.

As it turns out in the course of the investigation, the Puppet Master is a ghost who, for inexplicable reasons, seems to have originated from the network itself. He doesn't have an organic brain in a shell or in any particular body. This being is finally tracked down by Section 9 in an accident-damaged female cyborg body. The puppet master embodied in this way applies to Section 9 for political asylum . The body is abducted from Section 6 shortly afterwards. It had created the software from which the Puppet Master was created, in order to carry out hacker attacks. Kusanagi frees the Puppet Master, also because she is interested in him because of her own identity crisis. He reveals to her that he had tried to attract Section 9 and Kusanagi through his crimes. It is his wish to merge his ghost with that of Kusanagi in order to obtain what he lacks for life . In such a fusion he sees a possibility of renewal of life, an alternative to biological reproduction, which is not possible for him or even cyborgs like Kusanagi.

Ultimately, Kusanagi probably finds an answer to her question of existence and the wish of the Puppet Master and both merge together. As a new being, after her old shells were destroyed in the liberation attempt, she is reactivated by her colleague and confidante Batou in the cyborg body of a young girl. She explains to Batou what happened, thanks him and starts a new life as a newborn.

Conception

Motoko Kusanagi's answer remains hidden from the viewer, but there is a clear indication of it. At the end she quotes the Song of Songs of Love :

“When I was a child, my thoughts and feelings were those of a child. Now I have grown up and childlike sages are far from me. We now see a dark picture through a mirror; but then face to face. Now I know piece by piece; but then I will recognize how I am known. "

- 1st Epistle of Paul to Corinthians 13: 11-12

In the new German dubbing, these lines have been slightly changed.

production

The film was produced in 1995 under the direction of Mamoru Oshii at Studio Production IG . The production company was also Bandai Visual , the implementation also took place by Tezuka Production and Tōei , among others . Kazunori Ito wrote the script based on the manga by Masamune Shirow. Hiroyuki Okiura did the character design and Hiromasa Ogura was the artistic director.

publication

Ghost in the Shell was released in Japanese theaters on November 18, 1995. Bandai Channel aired the film on Japanese television. The anime has been shown in cinemas in Great Britain, the USA, Spain and France and was shown at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.

Rapid Eye Movies released the film on 15 November 1996 in German on VHS cassette, on January 7, 2005, Ghost in the Shell of arte for the first time on German television showed. On August 1, 2005, the film was released on DVD by Panini Video .

At the end of December 2014, a 25-year anniversary edition of the film was released on DVD and for the first time also on Blu-ray in German from Studio Nipponart . On this edition, the old and new synchronization can be selected and a booklet and making-of are included.

synchronization

The first German dubbed version of Ghost in the Shell was created by Splendid Synchron GmbH from Cologne for publication on VHS cassette. The Berlin dubbing studio Hermes Synchron GmbH prepared a new translation for the DVD release of the film . In this wrote Claudia Urbschat-Mingues dialog book, and Andreas Pollak led the dialogue director. The same speakers were used for this, who were later engaged for the television series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex .

role	Japanese speakers ( seiyū )	German speakers (old dubbing)	German speakers (new dubbing)
Motoko Kusanagi	Atsuko Tanaka	Luise Charlotte Brings	Christin Marquitan
Batou	Akio Ōtsuka	Volker Wolf	Tilo Schmitz
Togusa	Kōichi Yamadera	Gregor Höppner	Klaus-Peter Grap
Aramaki	Tamio Ōki	Hans-Gerd Kilbinger	Hasso Zorn
Ishikawa	Yutaka Nakano	Volker Wolf	Erich Rauker
Puppet Master	Iemasa Kayumi	Renier Baaken	Detlef Bierstedt

music

The score was composed by Kenji Kawai . The main theme of the film is a choral chant ( 謡 , utai ) in three parts - Making of Cyborg , Ghost City and Reincarnation - which contrasts with the science fiction theme of the film. On the one hand, this uses a melody based on traditional Japanese folk songs ( 民 謡 , min'yō ) supplemented with influences from Bulgarian folk music , since traditional Japanese music has no chorals, and is sung by the Min'yō singer group Nishida Kazue Shachū. On the other hand, the lyrics, which are the same for all three parts, are kept in old Japanese as in the anthology of poetry Man'yōshū from the 8th century and, despite the (partly futuristic) title, the text is a wedding song. The soundtrack was released on CD on November 22, 1995 in Japan.

The piece was sampled by the German drum and bass musician Makai in “Beneath The Mask” and was released on the Precision Breakbeat Research label. Also Deadmau5 and Klangkarussell used the sample in "Intelsat" and "star children".

The first song Making of Cyborg is used in the opening credits, the second Ghost City within the actual film and the third in the credits Reincarnation . In the international film version, the end title was replaced by One Minute Warning from “The Passengers”. H. replaced the rock band U2 and Brian Eno . The Japanese song was used again in the new German dubbed version.

reception

Reviews and analysis

Patrick Drazen describes Ghost in the Shell as a "groundbreaking film" , as a thematic continuation of Appleseed , another work by Oshiis, and as a reaction to the crisis in the Japanese economy and politics in the early 1990s. The sects appearing at the time, such as Aum Shinrikyo, also had an influence on the film. In the film, the scene on the boat and the subsequent trip through the city's canals bring the question of identity to the point. Drazen sees the film on the one hand in the tradition of the topic of human-like machines, for example in the story Konjaku Monogatari from the 12th century. On the other hand, Ghost in the Shell sets itself apart precisely because the machines, in contrast to earlier stories, can hardly be distinguished from humans. Kusanagi finds the answer to her questions in a "cyborg version of sex" by uniting with the Puppet Master and creating a new being that is born on the World Wide Web . The pop-cultural proof of her humanity is shown to the audience at the end of the scene with the puppet master through her tears.

Daniel Kothenschulte describes the film, alongside Akira , as one of the "door openers" of the anime in the West.

According to the lexicon of international film , the film is characterized by “philosophical questions about the meaning of existence in an increasingly virtual world” and “impresses with its stylistic consistency and meditative narrative rhythm” .

In 1997 Ghost in the Shell received the International Fantasy Film Award - Special Mention at the international film festival Fantasporto .

Influence on pop culture

The story of Motoko Kusanagi and her hunt for the Puppet Master has significantly influenced the genre of science fiction film . The Wachowski siblings , the creators of the Matrix trilogy, expressly refer to themselves as Ghost-in-the-Shell fans and in the first part of the Matrix they revisited many elements from Ghost in the Shell . US director James Cameron was also enthusiastic about the film. Also on I, Robot had Ghost in the Shell , especially the second part, big impact.

The music video "King of My Castle" by Wamdue Project consists of sequences from the film Ghost in the Shell . Sly & Robbie also used sequences from the film in the music video "Zen Concrete" .

Remastering

A remastering of the film was released in 2008 under the title Ghost in the Shell 2.0 .

A large part of the animations for the film were digitally recreated or upgraded as CGI . The soundtrack by Kenji Kawai was also remixed to 6.1 channels and the soundscape adapted to that of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence . In the course of this, the Japanese version also received a new synchronization.

The film was released on July 12, 2008 in Japan in selected cinemas in five cities and was released there on December 19, 2008 on DVD and Blu-ray; in Germany, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Studio Nipponart at the end of January 2015 .

Actual filming

Director and producer Steven Spielberg licensed the rights to a feature film in 2008. It was released nine years later as Ghost in the Shell (2017) starring Scarlett Johansson and directed by Rupert Sanders .

literature

• Brian Ruh: Ghost in the Shell (1995) . In: Stray Dog of Anime. The Films of Mamoru Oshii. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2004, pp. 119-140. ISBN 1-4039-6334-7
• Thomas Schnellbächer: People and Society in Oshii Mamorus Ghost in the Shell - Technical Gimmick or Committed Visions of the Future? In: Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens / Hamburg , vol. 77, no. 1, 2007, pp. 69–96.
• Susan J. Napier : Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation . Palgrave, 2001. (English)
• Patrick Drazen: Anime Explosion! - The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation . Stone Bridge Press, 2003. (English)
• David Werner: Japanese Comics in German Child and Youth Culture. The presence, influence, and educational qualities of anime and manga . Master's thesis, Bielefeld University, Faculty of Education, 2007.
• Ulrich Janus, Ludwig Janus : Ghost in the Shell - The Individuation Process in Japanese Manga . In: Blade Runner, Matrix and Avatars. Psychoanalytic considerations of virtual beings and worlds in film , Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2013, pp. 163–176, ISBN 978-3642256240 (book), ISBN 978-3-642-25625-7 (PDF).

Web links

Wikiquote: Ghost in the Shell  - Quotes

• Ghost in the Shell in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Ghost in the Shell in the online movie database
• Ghost in the Shell - Official Website (English)
• Entry at Anime News Network (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See, for example, Alexander D. Ornella: The networked subject . A theological approach to the understanding of subjectivity under the conditions of information and communication technologies, Münster, Lit 2010, p. 168.
2. ↑ "In childhood, even words are childlike; if thinking is childlike, views are childlike. But when you grow up, you throw off what is childlike." 42 min. previously it is formulated: "As if we were looking into a mirror, what we see remains blurred."
3. ↑ Ghost in the Shell movie data . Online film database, accessed September 16, 2010 . 
4. ↑ Ghost in the Shell movie data. Anime News Network, accessed September 27, 2010 . 
5. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Ghost in the Shell. Retrieved March 6, 2018 . 
6. ^ Review of Ghost in the Shell - Ultimate Edition . Anime on DVD, accessed September 16, 2010 . 
7. ↑ Sound Current: 'Kenji Kawai - Game and Anime Intersections'. In: Game Set Watch. February 24, 2010, accessed September 21, 2014 . 
8. ↑ コ ン サ ー ト 情報 . In: Cinema Symphony. Retrieved September 21, 2014 (Japanese). 
9. ↑ 樋 口 沙 絵 子 の オ ー ル ナ イ ト ニ ッ ポ ン 「攻殻機動隊 ス ペ シ ャ ル」 . Retrieved September 21, 2014 (Japanese, transcript of a radio interview with Kenji Kawai). 
10. ↑ Drazen, 2003, p. 334
11. ↑ Drazen, 2003, pp. 338-341
12. ↑ German Film Institute - DIF / German Film Museum & Museum of Applied Arts (ed.): Ga-netchû! The Manga Anime Syndrome. P. 50
13. ^ Chat with the Wachowski Brothers, November 6, 1999