Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 S02 review: The series fall short on the success of the most acclaimed anime franchises

Language: English The 1995 adult animated movie _Ghost in the Shell_ , directed by Mamoru Oshii , is often lauded for its ideas and concepts, its Philip K Dick-like ruminations on the nature of humanity and how cyborgs occupy the ‘uncanny valley’ between sentient beings and the rest. The franchise’s central conceit is the ‘cyberbrain’ which allows you to place your consciousness (your ‘ghost’) inside mechanical ‘shells’ — or cybernetics-enhanced human ones. But what’s often overlooked is how that movie’s distinctive, hallucinogenic visuals influenced directors as disparate as the Wachowski Sisters, James Cameron and Michael Bay. The first 5 minutes of Ghost in the Shell has three different shots that would later be referenced in The Matrix films — protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi falling through a glass-windowed building just as Trinity would, Kusanagi emerging from a bathtub-like contraption a la Neo’s ‘reawakening’ scene and finally, Kusanagi’s ‘cloaking’ tool makes her look very similar to ‘ _The Twins_ ’, translucent villainous programs in the second Matrix film.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045’s first season (SAC is Stand Alone Complex, indicating the show’s status as a non-canonical spinoff), released in 2020, was criticized primarily because the visuals were no match for the original. In fact, the CGI animation (as opposed to the ‘classic animation’ style of the 1995 film and its sequel) resembled nothing so much as a PC game from the late 2000s—that’s how dated it looked. The second season (released on Netflix on May 23) has improved in this aspect, although not by much. The real improvement is in terms of the storyline and character development. The first season saw Public Security Section 9, the law enforcement unit led by Kusanagi (voiced by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn), re-banding to counter the threat posed by the ‘post-humans’, proto-anarchists whose motivations were not very clear. This in a world where the major superpowers are engaged in a perpetual ‘Sustainable War’ in order to counteract the devastating economic consequences of the ‘Simultaneous Global Default’ that has destroyed all forms of electronic and paper money. The visibly improved second season gives us the story leading up to the creation of the post-human movement and also moves the present-day (ie in the year 2045) plot along at a breakneck pace. We learn a lot more about the members of Kusanagi’s team, including the battle-hardened Batou, Saito the ace sniper (also the least cybernetics-enhanced character in the series) and just about everybody else. We even have a scene-stealing new character Pazu, whose interactions with Batou in particular are very entertaining—and even end up imbuing the final few episodes with a sense of pathos, which is a first for SAC 2045.

The action scenes also show a lot of progress from the first season, where the CGI animation led to a lot of stiff-limbed Hail Mary punches…and not much else. Things are much more kinetic this time around, with Kusanagi given some tasty action setpieces to show off her full range of skills. In the first episode, a gunfire-heavy sequence morphs into an unpredictable, no-holds-barred fistfight for the ages. As the season progresses, the action almost takes a backseat to the unfurling story of the post-humans—another first for SAC 2045 which started life as a hardcore action iteration of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. A small complaint about the storyline—SAC 2045 is obviously an overarching critique of militarization around the world. You’d expect plenty of America-bashing in a setup like this because the USA remains by far the biggest military spender in the world, with an unmatched arsenal. And yet, every time SAC 2045 attempts to make an allegorical reference, it seems that Japan or Russia or China are made easy targets instead of America. For example, the first episode of the second season, ‘Silly Kukushkin’, sees Kusanagi and her team in pursuit of a Russian spy named Kukushkin who appears to have vital information about the post-human movement. But before the team can reach Kukushkin, he is killed by his own government (not named, but the man’s own name makes it clear) via polonium poisoning—a clear reference to the 2006 murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was the world’s first confirmed victim of polonium-induced radiation poisoning. Now, I understand that in order to appeal to American audiences, Netflix may have asked the writers to keep the America-bashing to a minimum but c’mon — even Marvel movies manage to deliver harsher criticism of America than this (and they are often directly supported by the American military, like Captain Marvel for example). SAC 2045’s second season ties up loose ends fairly neatly and for the most part, keeps the adrenaline junkies happy. But on the whole, it is a strictly middling continuation of one of the most acclaimed anime franchises of all time. Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 season 2 is streaming on Netflix _

_Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.