Not to mention the internet, personal computers were not that popularized back in 1995, which is the year when the movie ‘Ghost in the shell’ was first on screen. Therefore, perhaps for most of the audiences watched this film back in that time, things like the skyscrapers with a sense of despair, thermoptic camouflage as well as cyborgs with brains that are always connecting to the internet would make audiences feel new and surprised. Many conceptions of the future were also generated from this kind of films. Animation in this case, paved the way for presenting visual products which contain more imagination. This also ultimately cause impact on the mass’s notion of animation’s child-orientation. Anime is not just for immature, it can also carry things like philosophical ideas, and do more than traditional films can do.
Some people used to say, that a good film or a good book should not be limited by time. A good film should be something that is produced in 100 years ago and can still be enjoyed by the public in 100 years later. By this definition, the film may not be classified as a good one. In the year of 2015, which is 20 years later of the film first on screen, audiences will find that we are already not far away from to the future that was depicted 20 years ago. The Internet is generalized in today’s world, cyber-attack can be launched in every terminals just like in the film when the garbage man was using telephone booths to hack into internet. Machines are also advanced to a stage that can support human being’s lives. For examples, the artificial heart and artificial limb. It is only the matter of time when the cyborgs in the film come into reality, or maybe, it is already exist somewhere in the world now. However, this film did bring something more than an imagined image of future and visual feast to us. That is the critical question we will have to face sooner or later: where will this technological advancement lead us to? In the film, cyber terrorist ‘puppet master’ committed his crimes by hacking into different people’s brain, and hence manipulate them. Both mob with sub machinegun and the garbage man were the victims of puppet master’s act. The garbage was firmly believe that he has a family, and he was helping the hacking because he wanted to hack into his wife’s brain to find out what she is thinking. However, after when the garbage man is arrested, the police officers told him that all his memories is being made up and does not exist. This means that in the future, human memories could be processed like data. In another famous anime , the younger brother of Edward, Alphonse Elric, who lost his entire body in a taboo alchemistic act also raised similar issue. Alphonse’s soul was affix into an armor by his brother. However, without a human body, Alphonse started to doubt what he is, he also doubted that whether his memory is true or was being made up by his brother. The advance of technology is indeed exciting. However, if the not yet to come true cases mentioned above have come into reality, what will it means to all of us?
If human can produce a robot, and make the robot have human’s emotion, make it looks like human, act like human, live like human, and think like human, the meaning of human being will need to be redefined. Like in the movie, the main character, Kusanagi, who has a full-replacement cyborg body wondered:’ that perhaps the real me died a long time ago, and I am a replicant made with a cyborg body and computer brain. Or maybe there never was a real “me” to begin with.’ When the technology is advanced to a degree where the human becomes replaceable, then that will also be the time of extinction of human being, or maybe, the evolution of human being. One scene in the film also reflected this idea. When Kusanagi tried to reclaim the body of puppet master, she got involved into a fight with a tank. The tank’s machine gun was shooting at a wall with a tree map of evolution from the bottom up, and the shooting stopped right before it reach the top. It perhaps is a hint of now with the technology, human is facing the new round of evolution. In addition, in the film when people found out puppet master was not a human but just a program, and the program itself is requesting political asylum as an autonomous life-form. Officer from foreign ministry found it unacceptable, he said:’ ridiculous! You are merely a self-preserving program!’ However, puppet master refuted:’ life is like a node which is born within the flow of information. As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system, man gains his individuality from the memories he carries. While memories may as well be the same as fantasy, it is by these memories that mankind exists. When computers made it possible to externalize memory, you should have considered all the implications that held.’ Base on this statement, life can be considered as an intangible thing, often referred as soul or spirit that carries information or, memories. Or as what the film’s title stated, ghost. Human body or Cyborg body is no more than a shell. It is the ghost that makes life count. Therefore, it is not a serious matter whether the memories that ghost carry are true and original or inveracious and garbled. As long as it is something with memories and thinking capability, it should be deemed as a life-form. The long-standing philosophical debate of ‘what is life?’ has again bring up to the table. We human will sooner or later reach the point where this really comes to bother our lives, the thing is would we be ready? All in all, in the age when computers and the internet had just emerged while the majority of the world population had not yet know such things, the author of already include the pioneer ethical and philosophical thinking that would rise along with new technology into his anime plot and escalate his production onto a worth-thinking level. One can say the author is foreseeing and truly remarkable.
The use of music in this film is also worth discussing, though most of the audiences only get the impression of epic and holiness through the melody of the music in the very beginning and the scene of the boat is wandering in the future water town. Fewer people know the meaning of the lyrics. One line from the lyric is ‘Yo wa a ke, nu e do ri na ku’, translation of this piece is ‘The night clears away and the nue tori (chimera bird) will sing’. In Japanese fairy story, when tora tsugumi, which is one kind of the nue tori start to sing, it would be considered as the omen of mutation. Go back to the lyrics, it says the night clears away and the nue tori will sing. This may have an implication of that the human is now in the eve of a major change. Yet whether it is a good thing for human being remained unknown.
Furthermore, there are many scenes and things in the film were relating to the element of water. In the beginning of the film, when the machine is producing cyborg, the process was in the water. When Kusanagi and her partner Batou were chasing the mob, Kusanagi fought to the mob and finally defeat him on the water. Kusanagi herself also go diving to relax, and when Kusanagi was fighting to the tank, the combat was only took place on the water. The setting of future city is like the combination of Hong Kong and Venice, water is another way for transporting in this future city. Rain, as another format of water, also often appear in the film. The use of water make the combat scene more intense, and as well make the city contain more depressive feeling, which shows a sense of doomsday complex. But perhaps water’s role was more than that, perhaps in the future, the internet is just like the water, essential and interconnected. Internet is just another component of the world, like water and dirt. Even though its appearance had once transformed the human society, but it will remain neutral and honest to us. What is also remained unchanged, may be the nature of human being. Greedy, selfish yet ambitious.