The Ghost In The Shell, Science Saru's latest anime rendition of Masamune Shirow's formative cyberpunk series, is out in its totality on Prime Video. Aftermath's resident anime sickos, Chris and Isaiah, are here to dive into the web and yap about it.
Isaiah Colbert: I've got to say, when this anime was announced a couple years back, I couldn't think of a better anime studio to handle it than Science Saru. It's quickly in a way become the defining anime production studio of the decade. Like, I'm talking Mappa in the late 2010s/early 2020s level of motion. That, on top of the show being a more faithful adaptation of the manga's titular goofiness, all but assured it was going to be a heater. As someone who's got more years on me with this series, what'd you think of it?
Chris Person: It's nuts how loyal it is to the source material itself, honestly. They did a real straight up adaptation of that bad boy with all its weird lumps. I think people who only know the material through the Oshii movie and the subsequent shows really don't have a good sense of what Masamune Shirow's whole deal is, and it's a very weird deal, and I'm impressed that they got it to cohere as well as they could.
Isaiah: When I interviewed director Mokochan and character designer Shuhei Handa, they were really hot on making sure they got the manga's tone and aesthetics down pat. Perusing the anime side of social media, it was very funny to see folks who'd never heard of the series until now wonder if it was the new Cyberpunk: Edgerunners show. Going from my own trajectory with the Oshii movies, Stand Alone Complex, Arise, SAC_2045, to Science Saru's show, I found that each series really lends itself to the show's whole idea of Motoko's ghost still remaining intact regardless of the shell she's in.
I feel like it's the only anime that can get away with so many different permutations of itself, with slight variations in how it characterizes its protagonist, while giving her different Law and Order-esque speculative-fiction cybercrimes to solve. Though, I suppose we should say what the series is first before we dive too deep into its themes and such.
To put it simply, Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg lady with a cunty bob who leads a counter cyber terrorist sect called Section 9. The shit they get up to varies, but for the most part they all tie to under-the-table government conspiracies and humanity's precarious placement in a trans humanist world with AI on the verge of breaching the parameters of its programming. All of this, mind you, takes place in the not-so-far-off year of 2030.
Chris: I love when people adapt something that's a few decades old and don't change the date, that's so fun. The original Ghost in the Shell manga isn't terribly long, basically a single book, and so they cover the entire run in this ten-episode series, which the original movie also attempts to cover in an a much more truncated form that Oshii really makes his own.
It's funny to go from the original source material, which is simultaneously goofy, busy, sexy, and concerned with the marginalia of how the universe works, to Oshii’s transcendental, almost Catholic interpretation of the work, and seeing how he changes not only the look and feel of series to be his own, but also what he decides to excerpt or truncate, particularly in the back half. But then you go to this version and yeah, much closer to a police procedural, much more concerned with the tone of the original. And in both cases you're left wanting more because Shirow leaves it open-ended, but also because you can absolutely imagine the Major going on more adventures before the conclusion.
Isaiah: I've heard the second manga volume is a bit harder to parse as a follow-up to the original. Which has only made folks lose their mind at Science Saru hinting that it might spin the block on it next by posting a key visual that's pretty much the intro illustration of the second volume. And honestly, if they want to swim in waters other series haven't swam beyond the shores of the first volume, I say go for it. But as far as this anime goes, it was a really fun watch both in its English and Japanese dub. I think what it nails especially is that retro look that's been all the rage in modern anime. In contrast to shows who stop the buck at grainy compositing filters, The Ghost In The Shell really goes in with bringing back the analog nature of technology in nearly every corner of the show. I know that's been something Luke's harped as a sorely missed facet of animation, so it was really cool to see the show go beyond the surface level aesthetics of cyberpunk by including Shirow's asides about tech and military lingo name dropped in the show.
— 攻殻機動隊 THE GHOST IN THE SHELL｜TVアニメ公式｜7月7日放送開始 (@thegits_anime) September 8, 2026
That, in concert with the show's bumping soundtrack, old-school character designs, guest illustrator episode end cards, and allowing its animators like Bahi JD, go absolutely wild on action sequences, made The Ghost in The Shell appointment viewing every week.
Chris: Man I gotta read Man-Machine Interface. It's so weird. Also, I occasionally have to check X for work, and it's funny to see how that site has just devolved because I saw people call that sequence mid for engagement. That scene was so, so good.
Isaiah: I feel like anime fans lost their appreciation for sakuga that isn't heavily composited on some ufotable shit.
Chris: I think it's good to worry about Science Saru becoming MAPPA on some level, retaining its soul and not scaling beyond its creative capacity, but people just don't know what looks good any more if they ever did.
Isaiah: We should return to the "Holy shit, two cakes!" love of animation, because that sequence fucking ripped. I especially loved how the lead-up to the sequence showcased a really crisp, detailed shot of Kusanagi yelling inside a Fuchikoma before the action sequence kicked in. The only way I can comprehend not loving this sequence is that folks never imagined Spider-Man scaling buildings from the passenger's seat of a car on a drive. And this being one of the only scenes like this early on in the show animated by one guy was something special.
I still remember that GIF of Bahi JD from 2009.
— Catsuka (@catsuka.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 11:45 AM
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Chris: Bahi’s resume is super impressive not to single him out and he has been in the industry a while (starting with Kids on the Slope). But you're also seeing this happen more with Japanese companies realizing how much talent exists internationally. Even in this show it was nice to see the end cards being done by people I follow online.
Isaiah: The show swinging out the gate with a Yoji Shinkawa illustration was the most cash money dollars flex from an anime in a long time.
Chris: My goat...
Isaiah: While I do understand that Prime Video is a bigger market platform in Japan, it still sucks that The Ghost in the Shell suffered from the same lack of promotion in the West. Like Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, City The Animation, and New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt, it was pretty much up to the studio's own social media accounts to promote the show themselves the day before and the day of a new episode dropping, and I think that sucks for discoverability for shows of this caliber.
Isaiah Colbert
Chris: Western companies with deep investments in Japanese markets keep doing this and it's so annoying. We've talked about this how badly Netflix has fucked up JoJo but it feels like they know in the abstract that anime is popular in the west but still have no clue how to treat it like the cultural force that it is. Lean on it! This is a huge industry! Debatably, it's one of the most influential cultural products out there as a genre and they're acting like it's a tax write-off half the time.
Netflix made a billboard for The Last House, one of the worst movies I've seen all year, and had an actor live inside it. Imagine if they pulled that kinda shit with Steel Ball Run, or if Amazon knew what the hell to do with this series in the west.
Isaiah: It was pretty gratifying that the Steel Ball Run stage 2 trailer made it abundantly clear they heard all the criticism by explicitly saying, "JoJo Fridays Are Back." I just wish that in the same way the Netflix Brazil account is more tapped in to animation fandom posting, that the Prime Video social media machine took its own animation arm more seriously beyond pump and dumping their money-making shows annually like a 2K game.
Production I.G
Chris: Getting back to The Ghost In The Shell, “Bye Bye Clay” might be one of my favorite episodes of television this year. This is the episode where they capture the Puppet Master and features the Major interacting with the rogue AI for the first time. In the Oshii movie this kinda gets merged and truncated into the events of Episode 10, and they bypass the last part of the series where the Major gets put on trial for being a member of an unaccountable police force engaging in extrajudicial assassination (fair point, Japanese court system!), but Science Saru does some beautiful sequences attempting to translate Shirow's transcendental conversations between Kusanagi and the AI. Gorgeous work.
Isaiah: I'm glad I got to re-experience this storyline through the Science Saru anime because it was probably my least favorite part of the Oshii movie. I got what it was going for, but it all felt a bit rushed with the rhythm of the movie cherry-picking parts of the manga Oshii liked. It didn't land with me as well, even though I got the impression of what it was going for. The show having it be such a cosmic experience for Kusanagi that we get to see from her perspective rather than two (blown to hell) characters talking in the rain elevated their conversation to new heights for me.
I think it also helped that their conversation wasn't a one-and-done. Puppet Master's prescience being felt throughout the show's other procedural moments dovetailing to its finale made that episode all the better. Forget Woke 2, have you heard of Woke Tree??? lmao.
Science Saru
Chris: lol. It's also fascinating revisiting that sequence in the movie because it's so much more lurid in some ways but static in others. Like the lead-up is fascinating, but they luxuriate on the Major’s body being destroyed. The Science Saru adaptation really leans into the specifics of what the Major melding with the Puppet Master implies. But also that in-between court scene is important, despite being politically questionable, because it begins to show the process by which the Major identifies less and less with humans and begins to see people as software, and of problems as systemic failures. The way her eyes glaze over as she talks about human life like a programming error is a much darker tone and contextualizes why she would ever begin to agree to merge.
Isaiah: Yeah, I found that moment in the Oshii movie kind of came out of left field. It’s Major leaned more towards being a machine contemplating the ways she's still human. Her just agreeing without much pushback to merge with Puppet Master always felt more like a "the script says she does" moment than something entirely motivated by her. The anime made that turn a lot easier to follow. If Daisuke is side-eyeing the Major like she's looking mad unfamiliar talking about blasting a dude with all the gravitas of a yawn in mixed company, you know a flip has been switched in her head.
Chris: There's a part where she's like, "If these people cared about violence they would renounce consumer culture for the violence it does on the periphery," and it's like, damn, the computer turned her into a Marxist. But also you still shot a guy in the head five times with hollow-tipped bullets. And that discomfort does kinda add something to her bottom-line conclusions.
Isaiah: Even Batou was like, "Dude, wtf?" and he's usually pretty agreeable to covert missions going from stealth to full-blown shootouts.
Chris: It feels closer to a Paul Atreides situation where the religious, transhumanist moment is undercut by this slightly dark implication of what that transformation might yield.
Isaiah: The Les(Bi)an AI-Gaib kinda spooky.
While I can already project folks debating where this show lands in the Ghost in the Shell tier list—and whether it's better than (gasp) Stand Alone Complex—I can't help but reiterate my feeling that the series' different iterations kind of supersede the usual water cooler talk of one show being better than another based solely on its efficacy to the source material.
To me, every Ghost In The Shell is a mirror reflecting the times. Sometimes that shows up in Motoko's character design; other times, it's in the scope of cybercrimes she and Section 9 face. It's kind of like Kamen Rider in that respect: The shell might be different, but the themes humming inside it are a special kind of baton pass from series to series, letting you see how different folks keep the ball rolling.
Science Saru going back to the well cyberpunk media like The Matrix have been drinking from for years to give the original manga its time in the sun beyond forum acknowledgment of the tones from the series echoing Oshii was a nice treat to see play out alongside modern anime. Seeing how prescient its themes are compared to when the manga came out was wild. I just hope its success doesn't give the streamer powers that be flirt with the idea of doing another live action project again.
Chris: Controversial take: give Science Saru the Akira manga. I believe they have it in them. Or it would kill them.
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Isaiah Colbert
