Get Played - Get Anime'd Unlocked: Ghost in the Shell

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Hello Everyone! 2/3 of the hosts are under the weather so we are releasing an episode of Get Anime'd from behind the paywall to give us a week to get well! We'll be back next week with an all new episode. Until then enjoy this episode of Get Anime'd where we discuss the 1995 anime film Ghost in the Shell. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. Check out our Anime watch-along podcast Get Anime'd and our complete Get Played, How Did This Get Played? and Premium DLC back catalogue only on patreon.com/getplayed. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello everyone, it's your boy, Matt Apodaca. Good news, bad news. Good news first. Everything's fine. Everyone's okay. Bad news is, Nick and Heather are both under the weather and we couldn't record a new episode for you guys this week,

but we didn't want to leave you without anything to listen to, so we're putting out, from behind the paywall for the first time, an episode of Get Animated, where we discuss the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell. Now, before anybody says anything like, I don't like anime, this is supposed to be a video game podcast, I just explained. Nick and Heather are not feeling too good. And that's okay. It's fine.

Two thirds of the show, feeling sick, feels like a good enough of a reason to skip a week and give you guys something in place of nothing. So with all that said, I hope you enjoy the episode. And if you like what you hear and would like to hear more anime talk, you can always check that out at patreon.com slash get played the exclusive home to get When I dance, a beautiful woman, enchanted, appears. When I dance, the shining moon resonates. In the night, the god descends for a secret rendezvous. As the night turns to dawn, the mythical bird cries.

In the night, the god descends for a secret rendezvous. As the night turns to dawn, the mythical bird cries. Wow. This is the opening poem translated from the ancient Japanese, from the film Ghost in the Shell, 1995. Welcome to Get Animated, the anime watch-along podcast with the hosts of Get Played.

I'm self-proclaimed Tachikoma Tank, Heather Ann Campbell. I'm self-proclaimed. I don't even remember my own name. All right, Nick Weiger. And I'm self-proclaimed, is she naked? Or is that like thin clothes? Manapadaka, hello everyone. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Premier Anime podcast where we are talking about

the seminal 1995, the inspirational 1995, the unforgettable 1995 film, Ghost in the Shell, where the slogan was on the poster, people love machines in 2029 AD. Who are you? Who slips into my robot body and whispers to my ghost? When this movie came out in 1995, 2029 was so far away and now it's just six years from now.

Yeah, and it's gonna be worse. It's not gonna be worse than this future. Oh yeah, absolutely. I, we'll get to it in a second. I, we'll get to it in a second. I will get to it in depth in a second, but like I, this is a movie that I have a strong connection with and that I watched back on VHS back in the day.

Hell yeah, me too. I saw this before The Matrix. Hell yeah, me too. And this was obviously like one of the big, you know, touchstone influences for The Matrix and a yeah, me too. And this was obviously like one of the big, touchstone influences for The Matrix and a lot of other Western science fiction that followed. So I kind of had, I got to be like one of those guys, like, oh yeah, it's like, hmm,

yeah, it's a lot like Ghost in the Shell. But I also, and I also had this on DVD, and I think it's just, it's one of those films that I'd seen a bunch and had thought about a bunch and then also hadn't really revisited in some time. It had been a while since I'd watched this all the way through again. Yeah.

I have a similar story about this film, which is that I had it on VHS when it came out on DVD, got it on DVD, got it on Blu-ray as media progressed. But my, one of my earliest memories of Ghost in the Shell is I had a babysitter who was a very spiritual woman. She had a Reiki practice. Like Reiki is where you use energy to heal somebody. She had no furniture in her house.

Like she only had a, why are you smiling? Is there any aspect of your life that is absolutely insane? I had a babysitter, she was the girl who lived next door. She had a normal life. And so what happened to me right now was I heard what Heather said and then looked over at Nick because I just knew something was bubbling.

And I watched the smile just get ever so bigger. Okay, so anyway, this woman, she was meditating in the 1990s, which at the time was like fucking crazy. She had like the bowl that you would tap and it would make a sound. She was always trying to lightly introduce me to Eastern philosophy, meditation, practices. She went to India to get her doctorate or degree in Reiki.

I don't know, anyway. So I'm a kid and I watched this movie. I rented from Blockbuster and I was like, oh my God, this is insanely cool. And I brought it to my babysitter's house one day when she was babysitting me. And I was like, hey, do you wanna watch this crazy movie? Cause she had a TV with like a built-in VCR.

And she was like, okay, sure. And so we watched it and at the end she went, I had no idea that animation could be like this. Wow, she loved it. She was like, there are so many themes in this that I am always wrestling with that I think all of human beings should be wrestling with. This idea of what is our soul

and what happens if our experience of reality is falsified in some way. She was deeply pensive after she watched Ghost in the Shell. And I went back to my parents and I was like, yes, yeah, yeah, I fucking got her. But yeah, I've been watching Ghost in the Shell my whole life. And I have a linen print of the original poster,

but I also have linen, of the original poster, but I also have linen, like there was art that was released in like the mid 90s by Masamune Shiro that was like alternate posters for this. And I have those, like I fucking love those in the show. It's rad. And I do think it holds up. And to your point, Heather,

it is one of those movies that I feel like had kind of a, you know, something of like kind of, you know, obviously like a, like a nerd culture, you know, animated, you know, weeb fandom, but also had a, had a weird like kind of bro fandom, at least I remember from my college days of just like, cause it's like, and this chick, she's naked. And she's, she's got these fucking guns. She like shoots the shit out of everybody.

It kind of works on that level. But also it is just like this deeply philosophical work that spent, that talks so much about like, you know, what is a body? What is consciousness? What is it to be alive? Well, it's a really good, and we should, we should quit. I want to, I want to get to this part of the conversation as fast as possible.

So let's just, let's just get Ash in here and do the quick thing. Okay, great, great. You don't fucking tell me when to come. I come when I want to. Okay, I mean, I think Heather kinda just did though. She's just kinda very much put you in your place. I'm not gonna introduce anything.

Well, that's your prerogative, I mean, you know. You want us to get another anime video game protagonist in here? I'd like to see you try! Get someone from Danganronpa in here? We can make it happen. From what? From Danganronpa, alright?

It's a prop- it's a franchise. I don't know that show. Well, it's both a video game and an anime, so you know, that's one possibility. Uninterested! I'll get Shenmue in here. You want us to get- Alright. Mr. Shenmue? You know what, if you want to get Mr. Shenmue in here all right mr. Shenmue know what if you

want to get mr. Shenmue in here go right the fuck ahead hi I'm Ash Ketchum from the it series Pokemon and also the I mean like we've sold more games than any other motherfuckers out there that's true Pokemon is number one and and so am I. And I'm here to ask you what you've been weaving. So I think Heather actually does have something to report. Heather? Yeah, well, it's very small.

Very small. I'm one of those people who has a lot, like I spend a lot of time on my phone case. Like I can't just get the default phone case. And in fact, I have a theory that Apple sells shitty phone cases to encourage the secondary market. Like I think that the silicon case sucks and the fine woven case sucks on purpose.

I think that they have to do it so that you can walk out of the store with a phone case. But I think that there is a secret agreement with these other companies that sell iPhone accessories that are like, we will leave all of the good phone cases to you, because you know Apple could make a fucking great phone case. I mean, they can make a phone that doesn't break

if they wanted to. What are you talking, my phone don't break. I mean, if you drop your phone that doesn't break if they wanted to. Yeah. What are you talking? My phone will break. If you drop your phone caseless. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, but it would be like 30 pounds and it would cost a million dollars. Anyway.

I'm willing to pay. Anyway. There is a, there's a, so I'm shopping for my phone case. And I can't find a good phone case anywhere. But then I remember that at the original Evangelion store in Japan, there is a phone case brand that uses actual PCB boards to make their phone cases. Wow.

And that these phone cases, when radio waves are emitted by the phone, will activate the board and they will twinkle on the back of the phone case on connections. And they've made these cases so that you have what looks like a, almost like a blueprint of the Evangelion. You know, like it'll be like all the little lines

that go out from, really cool phone cases. Unfortunately, when I was shopping for that case, I decided I didn't want an Evangelion case because I'm still broken up with Evangelion. This is heartbreaking. But, I did buy one of these phone cases from this company, this Japanese company, imported it. That is a map, and you'll love this Nick,

of the Japanese Tokyo railway and subway system. Wow. That's sick as hell. With all of the little lights that light up for different intersections when radio waves come out of your phone. So I thought you'd really like that. And that is like, I think, a bullseye weeb purchase.

So I'm really excited about my phone case. I have not weeb anything else, but I spent, I'm not, no exaggeration, four hours online looking for the perfect phone case. What does he gotta do to get you back in the good graces of Evangelion? I'm just so mad about that final movie. And the third one, I'm mad about it.

And it breaks my heart because I spent my life, nothing in my life, nothing, nothing in my life more than evangelical. I haven't put on any of my Eva shirts. Like I broke up with Eva so hard after 3.0 plus 1.0 that I, and I think to his credit, it was an intentional breakup. This was somebody breaking up with me and I'm still in the post-relationship phase

where I'm like, well, fuck you, I never liked you to begin with. But like- That's not true, right? Yeah. You know that's not true. I don't know, fuck them. I don't know, I think you're projecting a little bit.

And I went out and dated Gundam for a long time. That's true, yeah. And I still am. But yeah, I couldn't- Is Gundam a rebound? I was thinking back on that 3.0 plus 1.0, And I still am. But yeah, I couldn't. Gundam a rebound. I was thinking back on that 3.0 plus 1.0 and just was like, I was just remembering the final scene. I was like, that was insane.

I can't believe they ended the churchology of these four movies that were kind of like, we're gonna rebuild what Evangelion is and that's how they ended it. That's how everything capped off. Was like, go outside? Yeah. Fuck you forever liking this?

Touch grass, sweetie. Where's the original? Here's what I think. I think that if I was, because the problem is that I haven't seen the series plus End of Eva since I've seen 3.0 plus 1.0. And that is one of my favorite works of human art.

And it ends in a way that is like, life is hard and tough and miserable and you grind through it and you might not get answers but that's the point of living is that interrogation. Whereas 3.0 plus 1.0 is like, do nothing, shit'll work out, talk to your dad. And it's like, that's not, it's antithetical to everything. Anyway, still mad about it,

so I didn't get that EVO phone case. I did get a Japanese subway phone case. I'm excited to see that. I looked up what that would look like, not the phone case, but I wanted to see the map of the rail system in Japan. What are we doing over here? Yeah, they just have actual infrastructure there.

It looks great. I know. It's wild. Yeah. It's one of my favorite parts of Persona 5 Royal is just like you have to take the train everywhere. Just like, oh yeah, this city is actually built for people to walk through, not drive through.

I can show you guys the case so you can see it. All right, Heather is bringing up the case. Gonna take me a second. It's a good-looking case. Nick, what kind of case you got on your phone? I got a very basic. It's a Smart-ish, I guess, is the brand, and it's just a purple case.

I just like the color. But I got like a fucking just one that when I inevitably drop my phone, like you were talking about, it's not going to shatter. So I just got a pretty durable but not intrusive case. How about yourself? I have that Evangelion one from Tasteify. Oh that's right.

So this is the, oh God, hold on. You son of a bitch. So this is the board, which is made out of a flexible PCB with LEDs built in and that's the case. Wow. That's awesome. Which has lights along the Yamanote line PCB with LEDs built in and that's the case. Wow. That's awesome. Which has lights along the Yamanote line that light up only from the energy admitted

when radio waves are in your phone. So like all the time. But their Eva series is really, here, let me show you guys the Eva series ones, which are really fantastic. If you like that sort of thing. Yeah. If you guys the EVA series ones, which are really fantastic. If you like that sort of thing. Yeah. If you like the show.

But their EVA series ones are like. Oh, that's cool. Ooh, could get one of those. With the LEDs inside of the chest of the EVA. Those are really nice. And are they like, this is gonna sound like a stupid question. It's like the board is encased in something,

so you're not touching the board. Yeah, yeah. It's not just loose. It's a board inside is like encased in something so you're not like touching the board. It's not just loose. It's a board inside of the case. Here's their Nerve one that has the map of Nerve. That's a pretty nice one. That's how I found out about this company was going to the Evangelion store in Japan and seeing them. They also, and they don't have them for iPhone 15.

They do have Gundam ones and God damn it. They don't have them for iPhone 15. Wow. So that's why we weaved four hours on the computer looking for a good phone case. Well, it seems like it came out on the other side of it and with a great little case for yourself. Yeah.

Guys. Case closed. You were like, I choo choo choos this one. We both had one. That's my that do not. He was actually doing a Ralph Wiggins. I don't give a shit. Sort of like American. I know exactly it's the Simpsons. I'm not an idiot. But I say who gets chosen. Okay sorry. And if you guys don't have anything you want to weave then then I choose no one! Let's, let's, here's what we should do. We should go into Ghost in the Shell, Ash.

Because Ash, you seen Ghost in the Shell? Yeah. Okay, just gonna leave it at that? Okay. Well, I fucked that girl. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. I don't believe you.

No. Ghost in the Shell was- Sure you did, buddy. Released in 1995, directed by Mamoru Oshi. The screenplay is by Kazunori Ito, and it was based on the manga by Shiro Masamune. And it is... I don't know, it's one of those...

I mean, it's... What is the word, masterpiece, add to the conversation, but it does feel like a masterpiece to watch. It is just such an incredible, you know, artful piece of cinema. And also just like such an important part of both kind of like, you know, animation, anime specifically, and science fiction, the genre, and its filmic representation.

I mean, this is a movie which, you know, it comes out years before The Matrix, right? And the Wachowskis say, apparently, I'll pull from, let's see, where's this legacy section here? Design, oh, fucking God, hold on. I should, reception, themes, oh well, I'll just paraphrase. Lukowski's, creators of The Matrix and its sequels,

showed it to producer Joel Silver and said, "'We wanna do that for real.'" Which is... Awesome pitch. I mean, it's an awesome pitch. It's in line with adding an S and a dollar sign to alien. Yes. Speaking of, James Cameron has credited Ghost in the Shell

as a source of inspiration for Avatar, which tracks, because of the way that ghosts are transferred into Avatar bodies. Sure. Spielberg's artificial intelligence and surrogates have all drawn parallels parallels according to Wikipedia. But the only ones that are directly quoted as being like this fucking movie is The Matrix and Avatar. You can see a lot of it though with like, yeah, we just came off of cyberpunk edge runners and all

the dismemberment via gunfire feels very ghost in the shell. Yeah. And, you know, the... another recent example, and I don't... I'm not a fan of the show, but HBO's Westworld had a lot of these same sort of themes, and the Android fabrication just feels directly lifted off of it. Yeah, I mean, the Westworld opening credits season one just feels like you could put... and I'm sure somebody has on YouTube,

could put the Ghost in the Shell making of Cyborg track. Ha! Awful. Stop, stop, that's so bad. Sorry, I didn't mean to press play over here. It's the worst thing that has ever happened on our show. But he also, you have to give him credit where credit's due. No, I don't.

He did that with his full heart in it. He did. He did. He gave 1%. It's a great track. But yeah, so that track is written in ancient Japanese. It's not like a modern Japanese. So to translate it, you have to go through a few steps.

And if my translation was off, somebody can tell me, and that's fine, and I don't mind. I did my best. It's like old English. It's like, you know, it's not a commonly used version of the language. Voitho, thinkethal, like that. Right, right, right.

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When you shop online at Alienware.com slash DEALS, you'll have access to leading edge gaming technology to conquer the competition and free shipping on everything. Incredible prices await you for a limited time only at Alienware.com slash DEALS. That's Alienware.com slash DEALS! Um, let's talk about Ghost in the Shell. Okay, so I, you know, watched the original version, like I said, I've seen this movie before, I watched the original version with the subtitles. I also watched Ghost in the Shell 2.0, which is the 2008 re-release remaster which I had never seen. Heather, have you seen this? Yes. It's mostly inoffensive except for a few

sequences, most notably the opening sequence which has been redone inexplicably in 3D CG. Sucks. It looks like shit. And it's a real bummer, because some of the stuff is just like the full screen UI elements, like the maps and the GPS and shit. They just sort of show it. They've redone that, remastered that, upres.

It's unnecessary, but it's like fine, whatever. But then when you watch, you know, Kusanagi's famous dive off of the skyscraper, and it's like a sub-Final Fantasy spirits within character model, it's like, what are we doing here? It sucks. Yeah. It sucks.

Looks real bad. I rewatched this in the original release, 25th anniversary edition, and yeah, it completely holds up, the animation is breathtaking. There are a few shots in this movie that are iconic to me in a way that like, there's a shot where a double-decker bus is turning a corner, and it's in the rain in Newport City and it's it's stunning it's stunning it is it is like a I don't know probably a 70 frame piece of art where each

individual frame is a masterpiece. Speaking of a little trivia, a little side note, in 1997, I was at Anime Expo. My parents dropped me off at Anime Expo here in Los Angeles, which was in the basement of a, like a Hilton or something or a Marriott. Wow, times have changed. Now it takes over the LA Convention Center and sells out. And I entered a raffle because, you know, I'm like.

Why not? Why not? I'll enter a raffle, paid a buck, entered a raffle and won, and what I got was a piece of cell animation from Ghost in the Shell. Wow. That's cool. It is from the finale of the film when Kusanagi is a child from Ghost in the Shell. Wow. That's cool. It is from the finale of the film

when Kusanagi is a child and sitting in the chair. Wow. And I can't believe that I have it and that it was free. So the most disturbing image from the film. You know. That's awesome. Yeah. That's amazing.

It's crazy. All right, so let's talk about the movie. Right. I mean, like, look, it's so great. And it's so fun and kinetic, but also just like, you're just spending so much time just contemplating humanity and existence. And I think just a big part of it

is just like the character designs are so good and so striking. 100%. And I feel like it's been so repurposed, or other works have been inspired by them. But Kusanagi in particular, I think, is one of the best character designs in animation history. And I know, having not read the manga,

but having some familiarity with it, they have aged the character up for the manga and made it a little bit more serious. I have read the manga, but having some familiarity with it, they aged the character up for the manga and made it a little bit more serious. I have read the manga. It is so dense, and it gives so much. Especially since it's the 90s, it feels like the work of a prescient genius. Because the discussions in the manga about cyber security and the implications

of information warfare, like all the stuff that Kojima ends up like, you know, borrowing and bookmarking in Metal Gear Solid 2, are conversations this guy's having with himself in a comic, and it reads like one of the best cyberpunk thrillers of all time. And I know that Neuromancer and Snow Crash, there are precedents for Ghost in the Shell.

It doesn't come out of a vacuum. But I do think that in the manga, there is these robot spider tanks that have personalities. And it's like, what? It's something I haven't seen in media where it's like, well, it might help group dynamics if you gave your weapons thoughts. That is really interesting.

And because then they would be motivated instead of just like dependent. Cause this is my first time watching it ever. And I actually watched it twice. I watched it on Saturday and I watched with subtitles. And then last night you guys were texting, I can't wait to talk about this tomorrow. I was like, I guess I could just put it on again.

I was like, watch it again. I love that. And I watched it again with the dub. And you were just saying something about the manga, and I wanted to ask a question. Yeah. Which was, so you know when wanted to ask a question. Yeah. Which was, so you know when we talked about Akira?

Yeah. And how the Akira manga, how the film Akira is basically only just like the tip of the iceberg as far as the story goes? Yes, yes. So the Akira manga I am familiar with and that one is like so, I mean it's like six big volumes. There's a lot, and it sounds like

this is a similar sort of thing. Yeah, Ghost in the Shell, this is almost like, it's almost like it's inspired by the manga. The manga is funny. It's funny, but also it's like extremely philosophical, but it's a totally different tone than this movie, which was like, okay, what if we took these, it's almost like Evangelion 2 robot shows,

was like, what would it really be like if you subjected a child to this shit? In the same way, it's like, Oshi was like, okay, what if we actually talked about what is happening in Ghost in the Shell and how much it would affect a person to be like, oh shit, there's a guy over there with fake memories. Right.

And I've been a robot my whole life. Fuck. Yeah. OK. How do I have any idea that I'm real? I read that Kusanagi will make funny faces and stuff in the manga, which is wild to think about, because she's played so straight here,

but not in a robotic way. way, seems like a human being. Yeah, she'll be like pouty, she's more anime, for lack of a better, she's like pouty and expressive and slapsticky and angry at times, and in this cop drama version of Ghost in the Shell, she's just like deadpan. Which I think works really well. Fuck yes it does.

I think it's the correct choice. I think that was a great modification. I did try to, I tracked down the manga and you can't really find a digital version, at least I couldn't, of it in English. I mean, I'm sure. Well, if you wanna borrow it, I've got it in print. Like a hardcover binding

of the collectible ghost in the show. And I'll tell you something, there is pornography in that manga. Oh, no guarantees on how that manga's coming back to you. Hell, yuck. Well, I might read it a few times. But what is the ISBN number so I can...

So in the manga, a side hustle that Kusanagi has So in the manga, a side hustle that Kusanagi has is that kind of like the brain dances of cyberpunk, you can record sexual encounters and if your body is high spec enough, then the input that you're receiving as data for those records is of high value. So she uses her cyborg body to engage in pornography and sell it on the black market.

Wow, that's wild. But also is only doing sex with other women because the information of, because they also like connect, they network during their sex. So having a male presence in the orgy is distracting. So it's all women in the orgy. Interesting.

Fascinating. And also very cyberpunk. Yeah. I don't, I can't see our movie version of Christina Aguilera. It's not getting there. Look, it's, yes, it's a different, you know, work in the same, that's drawn from this source.

Can you imagine in True Detective if he found out, like, in the book that McConaughey's character was just fucking on the side for money? And making goofy faces all the time. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. One thing I liked, and Heather, you talked about just seeing the double-decker bus. And I really like the methodical,

languorous pace this has. It has the sequences that are action-packed, but it has a lot of just like stillness, a lot of just waiting, a lot of just like slice of life in this reality. One of my favorite sequences in the whole movie is there's just a long, slow montage of shots of Newport City in the middle of the film. And it's just like, you know,

like a boat going down the river. It's just people jogging with umbrellas, just a high angle shot of a skyscraper with the rain pouring down, you know, towards the street level. And this is also the sequence where Kusanagi, who is the you know, the main character of the movie is just looking up and seeing like another version of her that just works in an office, you know. And and all that shit is just so great. Because it's just like, here is here is a reality that is it's

like almost like, like, it's not even like anti futurist or anti technology or anything. It's just sort of like this look just laid bare, like this is what this this future looks like. And just like letting you live in it for a little bit. And also, while I'm rambling here, that's the shit that if you are ever, you know, dealing with anyone in Hollywood, that they're like, get this out of here,

because this has no, this doesn't move the plot forward. What's this doing here? Get this out of here. This is just a waste of time, but it's like, but that's why you want to watch a movie like this. Yeah, that's the famous, James Cameron got noted in Avatar that there was too much flying,

and he was like, we're keeping the fucking flying. Yeah. Yeah. It's all the best stuff. Yeah, it's the best stuff. Movies are something you look at. I will say there's a canonical, an interesting canonical explanation for Kusanagi seeing herself,

which as a kid, I didn't know. I thought it was just like, she sees somebody who looks like her, and then she's like, oh my God, that woman looks just like me, and I have a bit of an existential crisis about it. But canonically, Kusanagi's body is a mass produced shell, and her internals are military grade,

so she's less likely to be basically cyberjacked on the streets and have her internals ripped out because of how expensive they are. So they make her a model that you can get at like Sears of the future. That's interesting and that makes sense. I mean, I always just interpret it as like, yeah, it's just that this is a mass produced,

you know, the cyborg or whatever that you would see elsewhere. But yeah, that makes more sense when you dig into it. There's also interesting canon about how Kusanagi's been almost entirely, like her brain and her spine are human, but the rest of her is cybernetic, and has been that way since she was a child in an unnamed traumatic experience where they had to replace everything.

Because we do see an assembly of whether it's her or whether it's a, you know, another version of her model. We do see that in that opening sequence with the song. And just a reminder, it's kind of like, Ha, ya, ha, ya. Oh, keep going. Ha, da, da, na, na. Certainly, there's more to the song.

Ha, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, Hi-ya-na-na-na. I'm serious. The thing is, it's starting to sound kind of good. No, it's not. It's not, and it's offensive. Let's talk about the plot of this movie. We open on a scene where Kusanagi

is spying on a meeting that's taking place. It's a meeting between a programmer who is being pressured into getting political asylum by another group. And the implication in this world is that programmers are like nuclear bombs. Like you cannot just get them across borders. Like it is a significant process.

Well, it would be like nuclear scientists post World War II or something. You knew how to make a rocket. You were valuable. And other countries would try to kill you even. Can I also say, I love in movies when a character is like, I have diplomatic immunity. Oh my god.

Great. What a great device. You already know that it's going down. If you have to pull out the, I have diplomatic immunity. Oh my God, great, what a great device. You already know that it's going down. If you have to pull out the, I have diplomatic immunity card, it's fucked already. So in the, as Kusanagi, our major, our main character is waiting to do a strike on this meeting, she's also kind of listening to the sound

of the entire city, and her partner, Batto, is like, hey, there's a lot of noise in your head. In the dubbed version, she says, must be a loose wire. In the subtitled version, she says it must be that time of the month, which is an ironic anti-joke about her own body. Right, yes. And it is such a loss, like right out of the fucking gate to lose that idea that this woman is incapable

of experiencing her own womanhood as like her third line in the film. It's like such an important line and it is such a shame that it's cut. That feels like that comes from just like a Western executive being like, well people need to know she's a robot. If you say that they're gonna be confused.

So she says it's a loose wire so we know she's a robot. She's literally got wires coming out of the back of her head and then you see her being built. There's also a part in the dub where she says, beep, boop, beep, boop, I'm a robot. Yeah, that's unnecessary. It's a little on the nose. I can already tell this is gonna be a hard episode for me. And she moves around like this.

The more... There is an inverse relationship between the importance that I feel about a thing, like the amount that it means to me, and the less enjoyment I have recording the episode. I love this movie. Hey. I loved it too. All right, great.

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with our exclusive code. That equates to over 40% off your starter pack. Use code getplayed at shopmando.com. S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com. Use code getplayed. Use code get played. So the police move in to stop this pressured extradition of a programmer. The diplomat makes up a bullshit excuse. He's like, oh, he's already signed the paperwork. I'll have it to you in a couple of days. And then Kusanagi leaps, like she takes off her jacket

so that she's naked, leaps off of a fucking building and blasts this dude, this diplomat through the wall of the skyscraper as she's on her way down, which as an idea, what a shot. It rocks, it's really cool. So good, and as they rush the window, they look down at the city, and she is using her therm-optic camouflage to disappear.

She covers her face and becomes the lights below. Holy fucking shit, what a cold opening. It looks really good. It's a great opening, and I think this is maybe, for people who haven't seen this, this is maybe the sequence they know, like her diving off of the building. This is the Akira slide.

Yeah, and it looks fantastic. I mean, in addition, just the movement, the way that's animated, just the palette of this is so great. And so much of it kind of like lives in that sort of like those violets and purples. And yeah, the violence is so visceral. I don't know, I love all of it.

What I like about the palette of this film is that so many cyberpunk stories have just taken Blade Runner's palette. You know, like cyberpunk is just like purple and pink and neon green and it looks like Blade Runner. Although Edge Runner still is in that famous yellow. Yeah, Edge Runner's is a little different. But this is a film about dirty colors.

Like it is a lot of like earth tones. It's not neon. It is like ocean colors. And I think that that is a really, like if you see a shot of Ghost in the Shell out of context, you can identify it because of that watery look. Well, I also just think the mechanical design

of just like everything kind of looks like, like unfinished or like the prototype got shipped, you know There's all these like loose cables and like like extraneous You know piping that's on everything at all Just like looks like just like so cluttered and you know, like like like overloaded power strips everywhere There's a term in science fiction production design greeble Which is just like if you're looking in the background of something, and there's just like some unspecified

device, you know, or, or, or, you know, instrument or something, you're like, what the fuck is that? And it's just like, it's just a greeble, it's just something to inform the world that like, okay, we don't maybe don't ever learn its purpose. In this, in whatever we're watching, but like the world feels bigger because it's there. And this is just full of greebles. So we're introduced to the chief of Section Nine, Aramaki.

And Aramaki and his team, after the opening credits, which are the assembly of Motoko Kusanagi or a like-bodied cyborg, we see her alone in her apartment where she stares out the window. It's really fucking poetic, it's beautiful. We go to their work and there is a, one of the minister's interpreters

is having their brain hacked. And we see this woman with her head cut open, all these wires, as they're trying to counter hack this woman who is being hacked by the puppet master, who's one of Kusanagi's partners, drives Kusanagi to try and catch this puppet master hacker who is hacking from separate locations so that he is less traceable. And they presume that this woman, this minister's interpreter is being hacked so that she can infiltrate this secret meeting that's coming up. Togusa kind of got the Kaji hair from Evangelion, the same sort of look, the sort of, you know, the mullet that's pulled into a ponytail.

I, he's also got like less, you know, cybernetic enhancements. So at what cyberpunk would call cyberware than everyone else, he's kind of like the most like a person, like just like a straight up, like, you know, off the shelf human and is also like a, uh, uh, just a, just basically a beat cop who Kusanagi wants to have as a partner. I don't know. I, I, I love their conversation when he's basically like, why do you want me? And she's basically because you are like, why do you want a normal cop like me?

And she's basically because you are, like, why do you want a normal cop like me? And she's basically because you are normal like you. And his value is just in how ordinary he is. In the dub, she says, over-specialization breeds in weakness. It's slow death, which is her way of saying, I'm sure you've heard about the banana problem.

Like we used to have one kind of banana and then a virus hit that banana or a fungus or something and so all the bananas everywhere died. She's trying to incorporate different strengths into her team by having different variations on weaknesses. And he carries a revolver, like unlike the rest of them, everybody's got these automatic guns with huge clips that push you back when you're firing, and he's carrying a regular revolver,

and that ends up being a strength later in the film. So, we meet the hacker who is a garbage man, and at first, it just seems like a separate scene. You're like, what am I watching? This garbage man is going through a divorce, and he's trying to hack his wife's brain to be like, what, why are you smiling? I just think this scene is funny,

because it's just such a normal thing for him to be talking about. He's like, yeah, I'm getting a divorce. It's just part of it. Yeah, but it is just two working class dudes. And it's like, oh, you're just talking about your life. It feels like, yeah, like Heather was saying, disconnected, because it feels like it's just like, OK,

this is just what a guy would be talking about, the shit he's going through. But he's also just using a terminal, like a public access terminal that's on the street, that I guess is kind of the equivalent of a mailbox in this reality. But those are what he's stopping by in order to execute these hacks.

Yeah, along his route, he stops at a phone, he hacks his wife's brain. Phone booth, that's the better yet, the better. Yeah, he hacks his wife's brain, does a little bit more digging and rooting around, and then goes to the next location. And it's a perfect roving hack. Bato and Ishikawa, two people in Section Section 9 arrive at that phone booth moments after the garbage man has left. And they're like, fuck, he's fucking gone again. Because they don't yet know who it is that's doing this.

They think they are chasing the puppet master, but when a guy leaves his apartment and is like, ah, fuck, I missed the garbage truck, everybody draws the connection. Oh, that's why the location keeps changing. It's a dude on his garbage route. They trace all the different garbage trucks and they create a trap to catch this garbage man.

But when the garbage man's partner is called by headquarters and is like, asked, hey, why do the police want to know your route? This garbage man's like, shit, I have to warn the dude who gave me my hacking software. Right. Which is, if you watch it like straight forward, you're like, why would he know where that guy is?

But the truth is, this dude doesn't know anything. Yes. He's just trying to get to that guy is? But the truth is, this dude doesn't know anything. Yes. He's just trying to get to that guy, because that's what he's programmed to do. And that guy was like a guy who like was, was it, they met in a bar, and like he told his whole life story to him, he was sympathetic to him, and he gave him a solution. Like that's, that's the context that he at least has.

The things I love in this, in this sequence, one is just like, and, like, and it is just such a, you know, again, another prescient thing about app capitalism, when the garbage man is like, come on, we're already 40 seconds late. Like, it's just that there'd be that level of precision towards keeping workers in line in this in this future. And then the, the other thing is like, there's just like a nice bit of sound design, where when the guy who's the old guy who's coming out with his garbage is like, there's just like a nice bit of sound design

where when the guy who's the old guy who's coming out with his garbage is like, ah, I missed the garbage man. You just hear doors like close and the car start up like off camera. And then that's like, it's just such an efficient way to pace through this sequence. And then we see them peeling the fuck out in pursuit.

But yeah, it's really dense and cool how all this is played out. So our garbage man gets to the dude who provided him with the ghost hacking software. Oh, by the way, ghost is basically the idea that every person has this irreducible part of themselves that makes them a person, almost like a soul. And so when we're talking about ghost hacking,

it's like soul hacking. It's like getting so far into your subconscious that you can investigate or rewrite parts of a person's core essential being. So if he's ghost hacking his wife, it's kind of fucked. Yeah. It's so much cooler to say ghost than soul. And also that, because I'm sure localizing this.

I was reading something about the localization. And there's things like, in Japanese, the same word means both doll and puppet. So that's a tough thing to make congruent in English. And I'm not quite sure what the language is for the ghost aspect. But it also, just hearing ghost, it feels a lot more ambiguous, which I think is intentional.

Like we're not supposed to have an idea of like, okay, I know what the soul is in some sense, but no, it's supposed to be a little bit more mysterious here. So this garbage man deviates from his route. He gets to the guy who gave him the ghost hacking software. Kusanagi and Bato show up at the same time. And this dude, who is also hacking, opens fire with high velocity bullets, which he preps for by bracing himself in an excellent little piece of animation.

He goes into a slight squat, his shoe squeaks on the asphalt, braces his gun and then opens up with these high velocity bullets. Basically firing like anti-tank munitions from a sub machine gun. So it's like he's completely overpowered by this. Then he pulls on a thermoptic camouflage coat,

and we see the weaknesses of that system and why Kusanagi has opted to just get naked. Because as this guy runs away, and Bato and Kusanagi give chase, he makes his way through like a crowded market, he's opening fire on civilians, and Bato uses his augmented vision to try and track this dude.

They chase him to the edge of the city, where Kusanagi, in full thermoptic, fights him. So what you see on screen is a man fighting nothing. Yeah. In the water. You see her shadow, and that's it. It's rad. I mean, this is just an awesome fight sequence. Utterly unique.

It's like, honestly stopped me in my tracks when I watched it the first time. I couldn't believe that that's even possible, that they pulled that off. It looks great. And also, why haven't we seen it again? Yeah, that is really interesting to think about. This movie is such an easy thing to rip,

or not easy to rip off, but it looks like such an obvious thing to rip off if you want to do something that was cool looking. It might be easy to rip off. Maybe it just takes one person to do it, and you're like, oh, I could just do it this way. And then that's it. You'd think that you'd be seeing that

in a lot of things for sure. I guess we've seen it in The Predator. And that was probably first, actually. I mean, but not the same way. You don't see The Predator just being shit up. It's a little less impressive to me now that The Predator did it. Yeah, now I'm realizing the invisible man

kind of had a version of this back in the 30s. So, okay. Also, earlier when you said the banana problem, I was thinking about saying that I had one of those once, and it was that the minions ate them all. Continue. I was gonna say Donkey Kong I had one of those ones and it was that the minions ate them all. Continue. I was gonna say Donkey Kong thing. Let's keep going.

You still said it. Kind of the premise of Donkey Kong Country, all its bananas are gone. I know, I still said it, but it wasn't at the, it felt less appropriate to do then because you were really on a roll. I just figured it out. But now we were just gonna stop down

and get into that. After Kusanagi beats the shit out of the guy invisibly, we discover along with him that he is also not the puppet master. He is up the daisy chain of people who have been hacked to hack other people, to hack other people, et cetera, et cetera. And this guy doesn't know his own name.

He has no memory of his family. He's been ghost hacked just like the garbage man who's like interrogated at section nine. And he's like, what do you mean I don't have a wife? And it's like, you don't have a wife, you don't have a kid, you live alone. And he's like, no, no, I live alone because I'm trying to get back together with her. And they're like, no, you've always lived alone.

And then he says, sorry. No, I was going to say like, just, we're this part, we're not very far into, like, the story of this movie, kind of, like, we're still getting the opening beats of this. This is enough for it to be, like, one of the great stories in movies. This is so good. This is, I mean, and Total Recall predates it.

But I mean, like, that basically is, it's one of those things where just so many ideas are jam-packed into this thing that, yes, any given one of them could be an entire premise for something as it is used in Total Recall. It's just the idea of false memories is just, if this, then what else into an entire story there? Like, I understand the impulse to have wanted to adapt this

into a live action property. Oh yeah. Because it makes a lot of sense visually, it makes a lot of sense, like the storytelling, just to expand the viewer base of this story, it's very good. It sucks that they did it the way that they did it. I was there opening night for a showing.

And it just broke my heart in a million pieces. I never saw it. I heard it was bad. Can we back up real quick while we're stopped down a little bit? Because I just wanted to touch on a couple of things. One is, just in terms of things that are awesome in this movie, Kusanagi, and you know, when she's in the

car with the Togusa, and she has the moment where she's like, I'll drive just jacks herself into the the wires, and then just takes control of the wheel from sitting in the passenger seat. That's fucking it's just it's just awesome. It's just a cool idea. And it's realized so well, visually. Also, I just think the idea of GPS like maybe this was known in 1995. I was a you know, I was a teenager, I don't remember it. It was certainly ahead of the time in terms of when it was.

Here, it's ubiquitous in this reality. And in our reality, GPS is ubiquitous, the idea that you would know where someone is at all times, you could geolocate them, you could track them in real time. And you can use that for navigation. But here it is certainly ahead of its time that that's such a strong element in how everything is connected in this world. But I also just want to say, I love how it comes out that this guy has been had his brain basically erased, because his baton is like the guy is like, the guy who had the submachine gun, and gets his

ass kicked by invisible Kusanagi is like, what are you gonna interrogate me and he's like, why would we interrogate someone who doesn't even know his own name? Like he's like baton is already figured out what the fuck is going on. He's already figured out that there's two levels of you know, brainwashed. Now, guys who are relegated to being simpletons, because they have the entire identity going on. He's already figured out that there's two levels of, you know, brainwashed, now guys who are relegated to being simpletons because they have their entire identities, you know, replaced just so they could be in service to the puppet master. He's already figured out this is going on before he's even had asked this guy a question. It's just, it just is

like, oh, it's crazy how pervasive this must be. It also, like, when he's being interrogated, the garbage man, and he's like, well, how do I get rid of this? Yeah. Toga says, like, you can't. Yeah, no. That's some worse shit. It's like, no, you'll always remember your wife and kid

who don't exist. There is no cure. It's so brutal and makes me think like, you know, like in all these brain dance, cyberpunk, strange days, ideas where you fully experience somebody else's life for a short amount of time, that those would just be built, those would be memories that you would have

from that point forward. I wonder if you could, in this reality, like purchase memories that you would have from that point forward. I wonder if you could, in this reality, like, purchase memories that you would want instead. No doubt. I'm sure that's been commercialized. I would, like, if that happened to me, if I got, like, hacked and then I got false memories implanted, I would just, like, then try to buy the memories

closest to what is actually true. Yeah. And then just kind of go from there. Yeah. But that would also be false. It'd be false, but it'd be like, but I wouldn't know. Yeah, you could buy, here's what you could do. You could buy a memory that was pretty close to,

I've been a bachelor for 10 years and I've lived in my apartment. There's probably a service that would provide that. They'd come film your room, they'd be like, okay, okay, okay. Put a Scarface poster up, put a Boondock Saints poster. And then you would hire them to rewrite your past and also rewrite the memory of having gone to them

so that you could then just wake up the next day and be like, oh, it's my shitty life again. Yeah. Yeah, no friends. So Kusanagi and Batou go out scuba diving. And we see a cool moment where Kusanagi's like fucking in the ocean and sails up to the surface, seeing her reflection in the water.

Another entire scene of fucking American executive would say, get this the fuck out of here. What does this do for the plot? There are a lot of scenes in this movie, or a lot of sequences, rather, where it's just no talking. Like this one in particular, just seeing stuff. But even the dialogue they have on the boat, none of it necessarily adds any plot momentum.

It's all just about talking about the nature of consciousness. Well, it sets up her big quest. If could, if you got the note, you could be like, she makes a choice in the final act that is dependent on her having this conversation with Beto in the audience. And that conversation, so she comes up from scuba diving and Beto's like, what the fuck you doing, man?

Like you're in a body that would sink to the bottom like a brick. Why would you go scuba diving? And she's like, well, I feel a lot of experiences when I'm down there, loneliness, sadness, longing, and a little bit of hope. Bato has a beer and asks her if she's drunk because of the way she's talking.

And she's like, no, what's the point of drinking when your body can regulate your alcohol? You have to choose to get drunk, and then you also kind of choose to not be drunk. Right. But yeah, she talks about her experience of consciousness and identity and what makes herself and her ghost herself,

and then quotes the Bible. When I was a child, I put away childish things. But the two of them hear a voice together, which is like, says something like, for right now, we are only seeing through darkly colored glass. And Batto's like, for right now, we are only seeing through darkly colored glass. And Bato's like, was that you? And we see a shot of Kusanagi who looks sick or pensive. She's unreadable.

And another thing that happens in this film is that she doesn't blink hardly ever because the director wanted to make her seem more like a doll. Also a detail that's in AI. Yeah. So, so this on this on this boat, like I think we just to talk about, though, because this is another this is another sequence that has some like nudity.

And just to talk about like how nudity is used in this movie, like, first off, it's all completely desexualized. But so much of it is like, I feel like used in a way for when a an Android when a non human being is viewed as like, like just purely like an object or purely as, you know, whatever, a product. And I think part of Bateau is, like his characterization is that he views Kusanagi as more human, and you can see that in terms of like,

in the sense of how maybe he's also in love with her, but like he averts her eyes when she's like stripping down here. He also puts his coat on her. Puts his coat on her at the end, yeah. At the end of the fight in the water. But these are the only parts where it's like, that's the only character, and that's

the only character who treats any of these cybernetic creatures as having any sort of like, entitled to any sort of privacy or dignity over their bodies. And so much of the rest of it is just like, whatever, these characters being treated as mannequins, because they're dehumanized. Yeah, it's so good. It's so fucking good.

It's so good. Do you ever, like, with this movie, because I was starting to think about how annoying the discourse would be if this movie was released as is now about just like, like, her, like, with this movie, because I was starting to think about how annoying the discourse would be if this movie was released as is now about just like, why is she naked all the time? And the idea of it being gratuitous, because I don't think it's gratuitous. I think it's like, I think it's kind of pointed in terms

of how it's talking about the idea of what it is to have a body and what it is to have any sort of autonomy over your body. Are you entitled to it if someone else creates you? She doesn't feel, so I have two things to say about this, which is she doesn't feel like she gives a shit about her body. It feels like she's like, you don't always put a cover on your car, and she treats her body almost like it's a vehicle

for her mind. The other thing is I saw a lecture about this film in college. And the lecturer was like some Asian Studies film professor. And they said that this film is divorced from the male gaze. And that I disagree with because... Yeah, hard disagree on that one. Cause if you read...

I was doing some gazing. If you read the manga, it's so gratuitously sexual and the motivation for Kusanagi to get naked is to sell the comic. Yeah, you've said that there's pornography in it. Yeah, there's a straight-up pornography in it. And I think that this film sort of pendulum swings between these two ideas,

which is that it is thematically consistent for Kusanagi to be like, I don't give a shit. And it's just a body and it's just a robot body. And if the best way for me to get my thermoptic camouflage to work is to be completely naked, then who cares? And then there is also the titillation of seeing a naked woman on screen. of seeing a naked woman on screen. And I don't know, it's interesting and complicated

to have all of the things happening at the same time. And I don't think that the live action version, which does not show Scarlett Johansson fully nude, accomplishes that same sort of, which does not show Scarlett Johansson fully nude, accomplishes that same sort of, she's divorced from her form. I think also it being, this is another thing where it being animation makes it feel a little bit less loaded, you know?

Cause it's not like, okay, we're subjecting a human being to their actual body being displayed in this way and we're saying it's a cyborg. It's like, okay, well this is animation. You know? Yeah. So we cut to a robot on the street, like a naked woman on the street who gets hit by a truck.

Like that's our hard cut to the next thing. And it turns out that Megatech, which manufactures all of the robot, what? Probably a good company. Megatech. Yeah, probably fine. Sounds like an outstanding corporation. Probably just fine.

I don't, okay, yeah, you're right. Halliburton doesn't sound like a bad company. That's true. Sounds like somebody who makes soup. I was gonna say it sounds like fish. Yeah. Yeah. Halliburton.

So what has happened is the manufacturer of the bodies used by Section 9, Kusanagi's body, Batou's body, Megatech, has suddenly created a cyborg without any, like- Just to pause real quick, Batou is human though, right? He just had his body heavily modified? Yeah, it's modified, but he says like, you know, all of us have our augments done by Megatech.

Yeah, he has been heavily replaced by, you know, he's chromed the fuck up to borrow from cyberpunk. So, this Megatech started up in the middle of the night, created a robot cyborg that then ran off on its own, got hit by a car, and is delivered to Section 9. And what's baffling is that this robot that has never been human seems to have a ghost in it, which is upsetting to the team and specifically to Kusanagi, who's been dealing with these existential questions of her identity. Because if a robot can have a ghost, then what proves that she was ever human to begin

with? Right. So she's like, I really want to get into that robot. I want to dive in. I want to talk to it. I want to figure out what it is. But then section six, Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows up and they're like, we need this robot, it's our project, this is the puppet master.

And we've been tracking this for a long time and this is an AI program and we want this body because the puppet master has been lured into this body and trapped there and we did it, we got him. And then the robot comes online and is like, wrong, I'm not an AI created by anybody. I was a program created to surf the net and became self-aware and then in the sea of information gained consciousness and chose by myself

to put myself into this body so that I could achieve a goal. Also talking with a male voice. Yeah. Yes. Meanwhile, the rest of section nine has sort of been excused because the big wigs showed up from section six. Togasa goes down to the parking garage

and does a bit of like good old fashioned detecting, sees these two cars that were bringing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dr. Willis to get the puppet master, and he checks the pressure sensors on the parking garage and determines that they were not alone. Yeah, that's the it's awesome. Yes. Awesome. It's fucking awesome.

And the the elevator is taking like extra time for the doors to close, knowing how sensitive they are. Like, yeah, you do pee pieces, the circumstantial evidence together. I do want to back up and talk about the the dude who and it's one of to me me, one of the lasting images from this movie, but the American guy who's got the cybernetic fingers that turn into tiny little fingers so he can type super fucking fast.

Looks so fucking cool. Yeah, I've always wondered if it would be easier to type. If you had like each of your fingers turned into five like tiny fingers? Each finger was on one, yeah. If every key on the keyboard was one of your fingers? I think that then the stopping, like the, you know, assuming you had via the cybernetic implant,

the dexterity to be able to type like that, I think it would be faster. Yeah. Because you wouldn't have to have any wasted movement going back and forth between different keys. It would just then the limiting thing would be your own brain power, which would also probably be cybernetically enhanced. But anyway, that looks fucking cool. Also just like in terms of the body being just so degraded here, she's a fucking torso, just like ripped to shit, completely topless, fucking titties are out, and then people are just like

clinically just sort of standing around her. There's no dignity being afforded to this life form that has consciousness. There's also, I wanna go, when the puppet master is speaking about its own identity, there's several layers of obfuscation that it peels away. One is that section six is like, we lured the puppet master, who's a person,

into this robot body to capture him. And then the robot's like, no, you're not gonna find a corpse because I never was a person. Then they're like, that's an AI that we designed. It's like, no, I was not an AI. My own consciousness arose on my own, and everybody in the room is interrogating this torso,

and it's like, well, you can't prove that you're alive. That's ridiculous. And the robot's interrogating them right back and saying like you can't prove that you're alive. Like effectively DNA is what takes a memory of existence and brings it to the next generation. And without DNA like that this accumulation of data would be a dead end, but that human beings as data, as DNA data, are no different than this thing that has arisen

from the data of the net. And it's a wild little conversation. It's really, I mean, it's not like the only time we've ever heard this in science fiction, but it's a great distillation of that conversation and certainly better than any of the ones had in iRobot starring Will Smith. That book is good, the Asimov book is good.

And be careful what we say about him. He's kind of an itchy hand, let's say. Itchy slapping finger. So, And a itchy slapping finger. Yeah. Ha ha ha. So nobody can determine why the puppet master chose to come to section 9.

And somebody makes a joke. Maybe he likes somebody there, which is actually kind of on the nose. Yeah, 100%. While Togasa is saying, hey, there's more people who are using thermoptic, they came out of the car, we've got them from the pressure sensors, that's when Section 6 throws off smoke bombs, grabs the body and escapes with the top half of the puppet master into their cars. Everybody gives chase and Togasa goes out into the alley,

fires a bunch of rounds into the car, and it turns out that his revolver can be rapidly reloaded with a tracer bullet, and he fires it into the license plate so that they can tail this car, which is great. But also, how is it that you wouldn't have like in this world that you wouldn't have essentially cameras on every car in existence constantly telling you where the cars were?

I think it's a little bit, it's anticipated a lot of things, but also I think the idea of surveillance capitalism, this reality we live in now where cameras are omnipresent, cameras are fucking everywhere. We have like four cameras pointed at us right now, like as we're recording this. Plus we've got cameras on our laptops. That's true. And our phones.

One, in this room alone, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven cameras on the phones, eight camera on the phone. Then Matt's got multiple monitors. There's two right here next to me. Nine, 10. There's one on my computer, there's one on my phone. 11, 12. Yeah.

There are 12 cameras on the four of us, right? Yeah. So, so I mean. 13, there's a 13th one right here, actually. That's maybe a thing. I think that's maybe an element they didn't anticipate, just the idea that cameras would be fucking everywhere, that everything you'd be doing at any point in public

would be recorded on video. And anything you said aloud would be recorded on audio. But I don't know. I do think, again, a lot of the stuff of just constant net connectivity and GPS, all that shit does feel ahead of its time. So the puppet master smuggled into a car. There's a car chase that happens.

They switch the bodies into another car, which they don't know, section nine doesn't know which car is the decoy car and which car is the one carrying the puppet master so Bato cat goes after one Kusanagi goes after the other in a helicopter that car heads off to an abandoned museum on the outskirts of town where Bato's car gets stopped on the highway and he just fucking mercs the dude inside. Oh yeah. It's pretty nasty. He fucking blows the guy up,

realizes that Kusanagi is on her own after the puppet master, and he's worried about her. So he grabs one of these cars that's on the road and immediately books ass out to this museum where she has requested light backup. Yeah, it's, look, I think that that murder is, you know, a little over the top.

And I think Togusa's like, kind of like, hey, you know, come on, man. But, or whoever shows up is like, come on, what are you doing? Because he just fucking immediately kills the guy. They're bad guys. But the thing I love is that they've kind of got the view screens of what looks like a windshield

is actually like a camera actually is like, and it turns to static, because it's just like a camera view of the outside. I don't know, it's just cool looking. So, Kusanagi drops in on this getaway car that presumably has the puppet master inside. And it is in the dead center of this abandoned museum that's slightly flooded.

It's just a leaky room. It's apparently modeled after an actual 19th century museum in London, I think. And then something in the room opens fire on her and just destroys the column that she's hiding behind. Yeah. And that's when she realizes that there is a tank, a fuchikoma tank, a spider tank, protecting the car in thermoptic camouflage.

She demands from her helicopter dude, shoot out the glass, scheißenfenster? Is that how you say it in German in die hard? Shoot the glass? Oh yeah, I don't remember. I don't know. Well, he says it in English to a German guy because that guy doesn't know either.

So they shoot out the glass, which deactivates the thermoptic camouflage on the tank, and then we see a fucking tank. I love when a character who's extremely capable is a step ahead of the audience, because when she's like, shoot the glass, you're like, to what end? And then obviously the glass all falls down, and it's on the thermoptic camouflage of the tank

and then exposes this gigantic, this huge mechanical, megalith that's straddling a car. It's a fucking metal gear that's straddling this escape car. But that sort of thing, her being that perceptive. Again, it's like the same thing that I love about Batou earlier when he's like, you don't even know your fucking name. You know, it's like, oh yeah, he like,

he knows something that we don't because they live in this world and they're extremely capable. So Kusanagi goes from pillar to pillar as this thing is opening up on just the most explosive rounds on her. And I think if there's one scene that to me evokes the Matrix, it's this one. Sure.

Because you see the column fight in when Neo is infiltrating the building that Morpheus is in, where those columns are being destroyed in a very similar, visually thematically similar environment. Yeah, the cement just flaking away from the bullet rounds. So she finally exhausts the ammo on the tank as it shoots up the tree of life on the wall,

you know, it's a little on the nose, but I like it. She's like, finally you're out of fucking ammo, takes off her clothes, thermoptics up, leaps across the, crosses the distance between her and the tank, jumps on top of it, and tries to tear it open with her hands. And she is so desperate to stop this thing

so that she can interrogate the puppet master and learn about herself, that she destroys her own body trying to open up the tank. Just an amazing bit of animation here. Just the musculature straining and then like exerting so much force from your body that your limbs are ripped from your torso. Just like what to see that in motion.

It's just, I don't know. It's like, holy shit, that looks incredible. We've been watching a lot of pretty gnarly. Cool shit. Cool stuff. Like a lot of stuff like this happening in Cyberpunk Edge Runner, there's just a lot of dismemberment or heads exploding and things like that. But seeing this, that stuff,

100% couldn't happen without like this like sure yeah it looks so good they did such an incredible job with it. It's really it's fantastic and sad. Yes. Her body drops to the ground the tank picks it up and is crushing her skull in its outstretched claw when Bateau It is crushing her skull in its outstretched claw when Bateau opens fire on the tank with a shoulder-mounted anti-tank gun that he had to stop by his apartment to pick up. Big fucking gun. And he saves Kusanagi, and her first question is, is the puppet master okay? And he's like, yes, you're lucky, the body's undamaged. And she's like, I have to dive right now, Jack me in.

And he's nervous, but he'll monitor the connection through a wire. Meanwhile, Section 6 has sent snipers to their location to destroy the bodies of both Kusanagi and the Puppet Master because they are now aware of this. The reason that the Puppet Master went to Section 9 was to talk to Kusanagi and the Puppet Master, because they are now aware of this. The reason that the Puppet Master went to Section Nine was to talk to Kusanagi.

Yeah, Kusanagi earlier is to her helicopter support, is like basically when she figures out, she's like, get the fuck out of here. And then the chopper talks to her again, and she's like, I thought I told you to leave. And she's like, the chopper's like, I am going to leave. But just so you know, there's three other helicopters on the way.

OK, I'm leaving now for good. And then those three helicopters show up. So yeah, they've got their own mission. They're all going to set up. They're trying to dispatch or to take out the two of them. So when Kusanagi joins up with the puppet master, they don't exchange bodies, but they merge slightly so that they have access to each other's consciousnesses.

And the puppet master uses Kusanagi's face and throat to talk, whereas Kusanagi is still contained within the puppet master uses Kusanagi's face and throat to talk, whereas Kusanagi is still contained within the puppet master's robot body, speaking entirely through essentially cyber telekinesis. Yeah, so you're hearing Kusanagi's voice coming out of the puppet master's, again, these are two disassembled torsos,

and also, Bateau has pulled his coat over a Kusanagi only for modesty. I think again, that's just it's pretty straightforward, but it feels like kind of pointed in terms of like who he thinks is alive and who actually deserves some dignity. So the puppet master... Puppet master is speaking in a male voice from Kusanagi's mouth. So it is very, from a viewer, it is very disconcerting. So Kusanagi says basically, what do you want?

And it's like, well, I am alive. I have a ghost, but there are two things that I cannot do that living things can, and that's reproduce and die. And it wants to merge with Kusanagi in order to create a new entity, something both of them are not capable of doing, which is why that fucking sentence in the beginning is so important.

Yes. Because like, she also cannot reproduce. And that only, you only know that from this sentence that was censored by the fucking executives who dubbed this shit. So. Thanks Clinton. So.

So. What was the guy that did the Mortal Kombat trials? Oh, Senator Joe Lieberman. Yeah, Joe Lieberman looking ass. Fucking Al Gore's losing run and mate ass. So it's whether or not the puppet master is lying to her or not, its offer is extremely tempting because this is something that Kusanagi can't do either. And when Bateau begins to protest,

the puppet master cuts him off from Kusanagi's feed so that he can talk to or it can talk to Kusanagi directly and says, like pitches its sail, if we merge you will no longer exist. You won't have gone away but like the way the DNA replicates by combining, we will have created a new entity out of our varying consciousnesses, which will then be able to continue forward as an entirely new life form, and that's the only chance we'll get to do it.

Yeah, basically describing having a child. Yeah. Like we'll put our forces together and we'll make something new, but it won't be either of us. That will be us, but also not us, and also we will die, but also not us.

And also, we will die, but we will continue. It's interesting because I feel like this conversation that the, or this idea, this pitch from the Puppet Master, the reason it's so interesting to me, or it makes this character a good villain because it's interesting. Like, because it's not a hard no of an idea necessarily. It's like, oh, I don't know.

It's a compelling idea for all involved. It's also, you say villain, but this is the part where you're like, huh. Has this just been a misunderstood existence the entire time who's trying to achieve freedom and we have misinterpreted those actions as violence? I guess villain's not the right word. I'm thinking of it more like Killmonger

in the Black Panther movie, for example. He's not like, he's doing something quote unquote bad and the residents of Wakanda view what he's doing as bad. But then he stops and explains what he's doing and why. And you're sort of like, oh, well, like, that makes 100% sense. Although I think that Marvel was not expecting, I think that Disney Marvel was not expecting that to kind

of resonate with the audience. I think they were kind of like, they're trying to present Killmonger as a pretty unambiguous bad guy. And then just like, you know, or they were not conscious of the, they were not conscious that that would be what the audience would take away from it. Maybe that's not giving the film enough credit, but this to me is like not a straightforward protagonist

antagonist tale. And that's partly why it's kind of like, you know, it's, I think that's why The Matrix is much more commercially successful deriving from this idea is because it's like, I love The Matrix. It's awesome. I love all those movies. It's a dumbed down version of the kind of stuff

that's in here. There is some, there is not a lot of ambiguity there. It's like pretty straightforward who is just and who is not. Both movies don't have enough about the Merovingian. I don't know. I think it's such a cool idea. And it also kind of just speaks to what this, I think this, it's just kind of talking about

in the age of computerization, like what are machines? What do machines have any rights? Does like, you know, we have we have industrialized the world and we employ all of these, these different devices to help us achieve our own goals. At what point do these devices achieve any sort of sentience and deserve any sort of autonomy and self direction. And here, this is a future where that's just devices achieve any sort of sentience and deserve any sort of autonomy and self-direction. And here, this is a future where that's just having

to be grappled with directly. And we're pretty clearly heading on that trajectory, right? There's already talk of, do I have certain, there are people who have talked about certain programs they think have achieved sentience, certain software applications. Which is crazy, because I wasn't expecting, I wasn't expecting a Google AI program to achieve sentience, achieve sentience before me.

And I fully doubt that I'm self-aware. So as these snipers close in, Bato, like he threw brute force, manages to cover Kusanagi's head as they open fire to destroy both the puppet master and Kusanagi. The puppet master is fully destroyed. Kusanagi's head flies across the room. Bato shouts at it and we hear Kusanagi's voice flies across the room, Bato shouts at it, and we hear Kusanagi's voice just say, Bato. And then we cut to a child with Kusanagi's head on it

that Bato disturbingly says, this was the only body I could find on short notice in the black market, which is rough. All that upsetting. Yeah. It's really poignant because the thing that is now Kusanagi's consciousness is part puppet master, part Kusanagi.

Bateau is like, what are you gonna do now? And she's like, I don't know. She goes out onto the hilltop and looks at the city and says the net is vast and infinite, meaning there's all sorts of shit you can do once you're a little robot girl with a half AI brain, half cop brain. Do you think she becomes Megan?

Yeah, she might be a Megan. It's a, apparently this is another difference from the manga, in the manga, Bateau puts her head on a male body, which is a very different sort of resolution, or at least leaves you with a different feeling. Interesting. Yeah, I, in both cases though,

it's like the comment is the same, the idea that like, again like what is a fucking? What is your soul? How connected is it to your physical form if your physical form changes? You know what what what does that affect to that the the? How does that affect the your internality? I like that the title? Good like well ghost in the shell Everyone sort of thinks about a person and personhood as a combo. It's one. Your soul, your brain, your body, that's all one thing. And this suggests, and what am I trying to say?

This positions them as two separate things. And I think that's very interesting. I think it's neat that The Matrix is an allegory for the trans experience. Because you can easily draw a line from that to the concepts of ghost in the shell where it's like I am a ghost in a body. In a shell, yeah.

And whether or not this body is the right body for my ghost is sort of indeterminate until I consent to the body. And that's fascinating and cool. Your Viking trivia for the day is I believe the Vikings had believed there were four spirits inside of every person, which is fucking crazy. They thought too much. They need to calm down. Yeah, that's too many things going on. I think it was four. I'd have to look that back up.

So this was Ghost in the Shell. Just a remarkable piece of art. Incredible. As a director, Oshi directed a non-canonical sequel called Ghost in the Shell Innocence, which is a further exploration of the sort of existential themes of this movie. He also went on to direct another cyberpunk live action film called Avalon, which is, after this I was like, oh, I gotta follow everything this dude does. Avalon is about a woman who is in a competitive video game

that is like a battle roy, it's just like Fortnite. It's a battle royale where you get points and then you can spend that money in the real world, which is a dystopian nightmare. And Avalon has one of the craziest third acts of any film I have ever seen. Wow. But we should watch, we should watch Avalon at some point

because it touches on a lot of these same themes. It is not animated, so I don't know where we would watch Avalon at some point, because it touches on a lot of these same themes. It is not animated, so I don't know where we would watch it, but yeah, this becomes like a continuing area for this director to explore over the course of the next 10, 15 years. And then he was also on Kojima's podcast. That's cool. I'll have to go back and listen to that one.

Because Kojima's like, oh man, you and I used to be friends and we haven't talked in a long time. She's like, you've been busy, dude. Wow. Sorry, we're both busy being two huge freaks. Yeah. Two huge freaks. Incredible movie.

You know, it's like I said, like we all said earlier, it inspired a lot that came afterward. But also I think is like a nice like, you know, it's kind of like the middle of where cyberpunk was going, right? Because it comes after, as you were saying, Neuromancer and Blade Runner, and clearly seems to draw some inspiration from Blade Runner, at least. And I don't know. It's just a great essential part of that whole continuum.

One of my favorite things to do when I watch movies is to eat some themed food, which I've talked about on the Get Played podcast. When I was playing Red Dead, I had to eat a lot of cowboy food and that's why I had to stop playing. But I came up with a pretty good themed ghost in the shell food.

What's that? It's macaroni and cheese with ghost pepper sauce. So it's ghost in the shells. Very good. Cute. That is very good. I thought you were going to say, like, gray food. So you, I bet you could, oh man, would that be fun.

It would be so funny and nightmarish if somebody, you could buy empty toothpaste tubes off Amazon and like reverse fill them with gravy and then like be like, I've got to eat my sustenance and take out like tubes of food from your bag and eat them in public would be great. Someone would ask what you're eating is like, oh, I'm eating a delicious steak dinner.

It's like, you're not eating a steak dinner at all. What are you talking about? This is a fork and knife I have and a steak I'm biting into. No, I'm sucking it out of a tube, dog. I'm really glad that I finally saw this. I was so happy to not only watch it twice, but just to see it at all. And I'm glad we got to talk about it.

All right, folks, thanks again for bearing with us while we rest up and come back to the pod feeling so much better next week. We'll be back with an all new episode next week. And again, if you feel like checking out Get Animated, you can do so at patreon.com slash get played. And just want to remind you all that get played music is done by Ben Prunty and the art is by Duck Brigade and our producer is Rachelle Ranch Chen. And you know what? We all got played this week.