Kenji Kamiyama had already proven that he had what it took to exceed expectations.
He was a rare figure in the anime industry, one of the very few who had successfully moved up from background work to screenwriting to now directing. For years he had worked under one of anime’s most respected auteurs, Mamrou Oshii, learning how to do everything from scriptwriting, to pitching projects, to animation directing. By the end of the 1990s, Kamiyama was prepared to take the next step in his career, leading the production of an anime series. And Production I.G. would hand him the opportunity, one which couldn’t have been more high profile. For he was tasked with directing the first-ever TV anime set in the world of Ghost in the Shell.
Prior to the release of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 20 years ago this month, GITS came in two forms: Masamume Shirow’s highly entertaining, detailed and respected 1989-1997 manga – Shirow was one of the premier sci-fi mangaka of his era – and Oshii’s 1995 adaptation, seen as one of the defining anime films of the 1990s, the rare non-Ghibli movie to make an impression outside of Japan. In greenlighting a new GITS TV series, Production I.G. ran the risk of tarnishing the reputation Shirow and Oshii built for the title. It didn’t help matters that Oshii would have no involvement in the new series either (he was on a hiatus from directing anime, but also it was unheard of for a film director to revert back to TV at that time).
But after securing an astounding 800 million yen investment (a little over $5.5 million dollars today, the most expensive season of TV anime ever produced at the time), I.G. decided that it was time for GITS to enter the ever-competitive TV anime landscape, and that Kamiyama would be the one to follow up a masterpiece.
What was planned was a series that would serve as simply a relative to the manga and the film. But Kamiyama would end up delivering a series that would exceed the astronomical expectations placed on it due to its predecessors, the rare reboot that can be argued as being a superior vision to the lauded works that came before it.
A Massive Risk
The first season of SAC begins in the year 2030 and is split between the individual missions conducted by the members of Japan’s Public Security Section 9 – an elite government task force composed of former military personnel and police operatives – and the organization’s investigation into a “Super Class A” hacker known as The Laughing Man. Named after the J.D. Salinger short story of the same name, The Laughing Man is a mysterious figure who threatens the police commissioner that he has three days to unveil a conspiracy between the Japanese government and a number of micromachine companies. Almost 40 people are arrested as part of a plot to assassinate the commissioner days later, with the authorities under the assumption that The Laughing Man had hacked their cyberbrains to carry out his plot. However, all arrested parties are found to have been acting as individuals, engaging in a social phenomenon that gives the series its title.
The two events lead Section 9 to attempt to uncover the mystery behind The Laughing Man. But the more they learn about the hacker, the more they begin to untangle a conspiracy that leads the group to become targets themselves.
Production I.G. was taking a massive risk handing their highly anticipated and extremely expensive series over to such a novice.
Kamiyama’s only previous directorial credit prior to SAC was a trio of 12-minute comedic shorts, so Production I.G. was certainly taking a massive risk handing their highly anticipated and extremely expensive series over to such a novice. However, Kamiyama held the utmost respect for the world of GITS and wanted to replicate the kind of anime his mentor Oshii produced: anime that focused on realistic characters and settings, that had strong stories with heavy themes, and that purposefully averted typical genre designs and narrative tropes. If there was anyone at Production I.G. besides Oshii who best understood how to depict GITS, it was Kamiyama.
On top of directing, Kamiyama also served as head writer, deciding to split the series’ 26 episodes into two distinct types: “Complex,” which would follow The Laughing Man case, and “Stand Alone” episodes, or one-off missions. Wanting to pay homage to both the manga and the film in equal measure, Kamiyama worked to reincorporate elements of the source material (humor, personality) that Oshii ostracized for his feature film adaptation, while still maintaining the visual style Oshii delivered in his version. Kamiyama would bring in creator Shirow himself to develop plots for the series’ stand alone episodes, and the author also assisted the production by providing designs for the Tachikomas, the A.I combat vehicles that have the firepower of an armored tank yet move with the grace of a pro figure skater. (The Fuchikomas seen in the manga but not the film could not be used due to licensing issues.) To pay tribute to Oshii’s film, the look of Stand Alone Complex is more in line with the 1995 film than the more overtly cartoonly designs seen in Shirow’s manga.
In contrast to how other anime series are produced, Kamiyama and his writing staff were given a considerable amount of time to work out the storyline for SAC before moving on to the scripting and animation phases. “Usually in TV anime, we only have three months from the time the project starts till it first shows up on TV,” Yoshiki Sakurai, a writer on SAC, told Anime News Network. “But in this case we took five months just for the synopsis.”
The series’ construction of splitting episodes between one-off missions and an overarching storyline is similar to Shinichiro Watanabe’s 1998 classic Cowboy Bebop. Kamiyama has never stated publicly that he was inspired by Watanabe’s cross-genre masterpiece, but the similarities do go one step further as Yoko Kanno, who composed Bebop, was brought in to provide the soundtrack for SAC. Kanno’s score, a psychedelic mish-mash of various genres, wonderfully captures both the futuristic and action-heavy tone the series was aiming for. After two years of planning and preparation – an unheard of amount of time in TV anime production – Kamiyama and his staff got to work on shaping a version of GITS that could earn its place next to both the beloved manga and Oshii’s magnum opus.
Something Familiar, Something New
By restoring some of the humor and personality that didn’t make it into the theatrical version, while making space for the highly intense action and philosophy from that same film, Kamiyama and his staff delivered a version of GITS that felt both familiar and new. Thanks to the advantages a TV series can provide creators, Kamiyama and his writers were able to present these familiar characters in a fashion that stayed true to their manga and film interpretations, while providing them with a new level of depth that made them more complete as individuals.
Major Motoko Kusanagi, the face of the franchise and the protagonist of both the manga and the film, is neither the spunky, bratty, promiscuous character presented in the manga, nor the overly stoic and introspective soldier undergoing an existential crisis from Oshii’s adaptation. In Stand Alone Complex, while maintaining the fearlessness and imposing presence one would have if they were the most highly advanced cyborg in existence, she is more than just a Terminator with a cooler hairstyle. The Major is sarcastic, witty, charming, and at times even vulnerable. She prefers going to the movies alone, has an affection for children who have to receive prosthetics (as she was as a young girl), enjoys a drink after a hard day’s work, and (in a nod to the manga) it is implied that she has a personal relationship with two women.
The image of the Major dropping from the top of a large building in the opening of the 1995 film is iconic in the world of anime. However, Kamiyama’s interpretation, this amalgamation of her previous forms, is the definitive version of the Major for many fans.
The same could be said of the rest of Section 9, as SAC provided us with a real opportunity to get to know the series’ many side characters: Batou, the hulking figure with goggle-like eyes; Togusa, a former police detective who, aside from a cyberbrain, has no cybernetic implants or prosthetics; the extremely calculating and pragmatic Chief Dasiuke Aramaki; cyber experts Borma and Ishikawa; tactical sniper Saito; and Pazu, a man of few words. Not all get the same level of screen time or character development, but in SAC we see just how everyone plays a part in each operation, and the series gets to explore some of the relationship dynamics between the characters.
In a deviation from the original comic and the film, The Major, the face of the franchise and main character of both, is not the focal point of the series. While she is still an integral part of the main storyline as well as the series’ many action scenes, the extremely powerful and intelligent cyborg shares the spotlight with Batou, Togusa (who actually solves The Laughing Man case), Aramaki, and most surprisingly, the Tachikomas.
The Heartbreak of the Spider Tanks
Starting off as comic relief, these spider tanks with the personality and curiosity of sugar-rushed six-year-olds – and the voices to match – have one of SAC’s most compelling arcs, providing the series with the kind of existential discussions about identity, life, and death that Oshii likes to focus on in his work.
Toward the end of the series, a trio of Tachikomas, having been kicked out of Section 9 by the Major because she feared their newfound individuality would end up being a deterrent in battle, sacrifice themselves to save Batou. Their combined selfless action to save the person in Section 9 they were closest to leads The Major to reconsider her opinion on the adorable killing machines and wonder, if she were given the chance to dive into their A.I., whether they had developed to the point where they would have a ghost (soul or spirit).
The stand alone episodes are enjoyable and allow for the characters and the world to breathe in a way not possible in the film – and not focused on in the manga. But they’re not what made this series the classic it has become. The Laughing Man storyline, a mixture of government corruption, betrayal, and social commentary, still stands as one of the strongest anime plots of the past two decades. It’s an intelligent, mature, and thoroughly captivating story, one that has a remarkable central figure, stunning twists, great action, and a satisfying and refreshing conclusion.
After Stand Alone Complex
SAC operated at a level above any other anime series released that year, or for the next few years to come. It would arrive in the U.S. in 2004, premiering on Adult Swim, giving many of us who were too young to purchase a copy of GITS on VHS the opportunity to experience its unique world for the first time. In Japan that same year, Kamiyama would return to direct the second season of SAC, titled 2nd GIG, while also bringing in Oshii (instead of Shirow this time) to supervise the storyline and develop a lot of the series’ episodes. SAC 2nd GIG is just as intelligent and entertaining as the first, and were it not for Masayuki Kojima’s adaptation of Monster, it would have easily been viewed as the best anime series of 2014.
Kamiyama’s two post-GITS series, 2017’s Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and 2091’s Eden of the East, while clearly different concepts (Moribito is action-fantasy and Eden is a political comedy/thriller), share similar themes with SAC. Both series were seen as unique entries in the TV anime sphere, featuring intelligent and expansive world building and characters who, much like The Laughing Man, end up being labeled as enemies of the state by the powers that be even though their causes are for the public good.
In 2020, 14 years after the release of the TV movie Solid State Society, Kamiyama would return to the world of SAC to direct the first season of SAC_2045 for Netflix – a poorly received, unnecessary sequel that featured flat, lifeless, and horrifically uninspiring 3D animation. Currently, the director is working on his next project, a 2D/3D hybrid prequel to The Lord of the Rings titled The War of the Rohirrim for Warner Bros. Animation, which is planned for a 2024 release.
Ghost in the Shell no longer carries the cultural weight it once held in the anime community. While once it was on par with the likes of Evangelion, GITS has faded thanks to entries in the franchise that range from adequate (Arise) to deplorable (2045, the 2017 live-action film). However, two decades on, Stand Alone Complex is still viewed as one of the pillars of TV anime. Kamiyama’s dedication to both the source material and his mentor’s classic adaptation led to a series that remains a true high point of the Ghost in the Shell mythos.
