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Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Gits:SAC) (Japanese title: Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex 攻殻機動隊:STAND ALONE COMPLEX) is a Japanese anime TV series set in the Ghost in the Shell universe created by Masamune Shirow. Production of the show was undertaken by Production I.G. headed by director Kenji Kamiyama. The overarching series was sketched by original creator Masamune Shirow, unifying the standalone 26 episodes in a larger encompassing plot.

The series receives its subtitle from the structure of each episode. Each episode can be viewed independently of each other. It also alludes to the independence this series has in comparison to both the movie and manga. The individual edisodes are discretely marked 'Complex' or 'A standalone episode' in the title screen. The 'complex' episodes are closer entwined with this encompassing plot, and the 'standalone' less so.

The series also had a series of comedic shorts, Ghost in the Shell: Tachikoma Days attached to the episodes featuring the antics of the Tachikoma mini-tanks of Section 9, involving plot points from the episode it accompanies.

While finishing its run in 2003, there is currently a second season by the title of Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig currently broadcasting in Japan. The "Second Gig" has been rough sketched by director Mamoru Oshii leading to a markedly different, decidedly "Oshii" taste in the second season.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Story

Taking place in a fictional city of Japan called "Shinhama" of the year 2030, This tells the story of a secretive government task force called Public Peace Section Nine. It follows individual and isolated cases which they investigate and solve, eventually leading to the mysterious figure known as the "Laughing Man."

Public Peace Section Nine is an elite domestic anticrime unit tasked with preemptive and aggressive prevention of crime. Directly under the control of the Ministry of the Interior, they are called the "Koukaku Kidoutai" (攻殻機動隊). Their duties include response to serious cyberbrain crimes, protection of foreign national VIPs within Japanese borders, investigation of wrongdoings of those in public office, investigation of high profile murder cases and top secret assassinations. They are called out to deal with those situation and crimes that the national police cannot.

While the characters themselves are carryovers, this is a parallel universe story to the both the movie and manga. In this telling of the story, the character of Major Motoko Kusanagi does not meet the lifeform called the puppet master, as detailed in the movie adaptation. Literary references include Flowers for Algernon and, more importantly, The Catcher in the Rye.

Comparison with the Cinema Adaptation

The TV series differs from the cinema adaptation in its focus upon issues brought upon by the advance of technology. Instead of the intensely focused and personal look upon technology, presented is a look at society and technology as a larger whole. The series of 26 half-hour TV episodes has a larger budget of time to explore the concepts and ideas found in the original manga. In comparison to the film version, the series is considered by many to be easier to understand.

Stand Alone Complex exhibits the accumulated experience and expertise of Production I.G. in their application of computer generated imagery. This is evident in their digital color grading, environmental effects, and cell-shaded computer models. Their work has been highly praised for its subtle contribution to a scene, which adds greatly to the atmosphere.

Technology

Stand Alone Complex tries to depict the near future convincingly, extending trends from the current day into the future. Often a viewer can even speculate which current-day factory or design firm would be responsible for the future machines and buildings.

Of the many futuristic technologies, the cyberbrain or neural computer augmentation technology is discussed and convincingly portrayed. This is the implantation of powerful computers directly in to the brain, greatly increasing certain mental capacities such as memory. Coupled with ubiquitous access to the informational net, this is shown as a fundamental technology integral to the future Japanese society. Applications include; wireless communication just by "thinking" it, massive informational recall capabilities, digitization of printed media and the encryption thereof. The series is notable for portraying a comprehensive and believable user interface to this technology. At the same time time is spent discussing the potential drawbacks in the form of "Closed Shell Syndrome" or cyberbrain autism and "Cyberbrain Sclerosis". This technology is in many ways the crux of the series.

Nanotechnology and its medical, as well as less benign applications also figure heavily within the futurescape depicted within the show. In the fictional future date of 2030, nanotechnology and its applications are still considered to be experimental only reaching the first stages of practical usage.

An important technology used in the series is thermo-optical camouflage. Members of Section 9 as well as their Tachikoma tanks have the ability to activate a special camouflage technology which enables them to blend in with the environment, making them near-invisible to the naked eye, radar and infrared sensors. It is an active stealth system which projects ambient conditions of the opposing side, and thus rendering the masked object transparent by transmission. The system is not shown to be perfect, as it seems unable to compensate for sudden changes and physical impacts nor impervious to close observation. A faint translucent distortion is shown as the limitations of the technology. In the legal landscape of the series, usage of the technology without a warrant is heavily restricted. The members of section nine using the technology is the exception, and not the norm - further highlighting their extraordinary legal standing. Surprisingly, there is present day research into the active optic camoflage inspired by the fictional portrayal of it by the .

The use of Light Autonomous Tanks which sadly had to be left out of the GitS movie by time constraints come to their full right in Stand Alone Complex. Called Tachikoma, they are four-legged light tanks with two forearms and adhesive wire shooters. Armed with a small calibre machine gun in their right arm and a interchangeable weapons mount at their "mouth", they provide Section Nine with a quick and highly mobile weapons platform. The weapons mount is often a equipped with a grenade launcher or a chaingun.

With very advanced AI, they act as the comedic relief of Section Nine, as they are endlessly curious and innocent. As such they provide a counterpoint to the cynical and hardened humans of section nine. Two episodes are dedicated to their exploits; episode 12, "Escape From," and episode 15, "Machine Desirantes." In the later episodes, the curious nature of the Tachikoma result in instabilities in their artificial intelligence fatal to operation as weapons, leading to their disarmament and decommission from service with Section Nine.

The series feature Section Nine using a tiltwing aircraft very similar to the American-designed V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. The aircraft depicted within the show has the capacity to carry six tachikoma and a complement of personnel. Thus allowing for Section Nine to rapidly deploy a highly mobile and well armored force anywhere in Japan.

The echelon wiretap system makes an appearance in a later episode. While under the command of the United States CIA, the system is borrowed by Section Nine for a short time. The system depicted within is a more powerful and more pervasive communications monitoring system capable of real-time interception of all phone, internet, cyberbrain communication of Japan. The limitation of this system were shown to be the computational power to process the flow of information.

The subtitle, the Stand Alone Complex refers to the phenomena of emergent behavior catalyzed by parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks on a societal level. There is no original, there is no leader. What ties together the diseparate and unrelated indiviudals into the event called the "laughing man" case is the systematic motive encoded into the basic informational flow itself. This concept of a ever normalized ego into the fabric of society recall the writings of Philip K. Dick, among others.