Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)

Following the success of the originalGhost in the Shell in 1995, further animated explorations in the franchise began in October 2002 when the series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex began airing on Japanese television. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who had made his directorial debut with MiniPato a year earlier, the series delved deeper into the world of Section 9, yet it took place in a different narrative universe. In many respects the television series was closer to Masamune Shirow’s original manga than Oshii’s film adaptation. Rather than the pan-Asian Hong Kong-influenced aesthetics of the film, the setting for Stand Alone Complex was undoubtedly Japan. In twenty-six episodes, the series took Shirow’s original ideas for the Ghost in the Shell manga and incorporated them with other contributions from the staff, including staff writer Jun’ichi Fujisaku, who had previously worked on Blood the Last Vampire and who would go on to write a series of novels based in the Stand Alone Complex universe. In early 2004, a second series of the Ghost in the Shell television series began airing, again directed by Kamiyama. This time around it was called 2nd Gig and featured contributions from Oshii, who contributed to the overall structure and was credited with “story concept.” Although Oshii was now popularly associated with Ghost in the Shell, he had not wanted to interfere with what Kamiyama was doing until specifically asked to contribute by Production I.G’s cofounder Mitsuhisa Ishikawa.1