20 years ago, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence dared to be the philosophical mood piece of a blockbuster cyberpunk action series

"(Oshii's) thinking about everything we make... human attempts to build a purer, better form of ourselves without all the original sin. Something innocent."

David Cabrera

Jul 2, 2024 — 5 min read

Caption: "Life is innocence." The US poster uses this image, but with the much more generic sci-fi tagline "when machines learn to feel, who decides what is human...". The US release, clearly not confident audiences will understand this movie, also adds text cards to the beginning of the film to explain GITS.

I knocked over my old anime club friends the other day with the following phrase:

“Yesterday I went and saw a 20th anniversary showing of Ghost in The Shell 2.”

They cringed.

Sorry, guys, we’re old. The 2000s are old, and those of us who lived our carefree youths at that time are coming up on some uncomfortable anniversaries. When I tell my anime convention stories, these days, I realize that perhaps too many of them are from the Haruhi or Naruto days.

Time goes on, man. What we left behind has become more profound when we realized when we put it there. Like your kid’s favorite baby doll, or the basset hound in your apartment.

The Japanese release of Ghost in the Shell 2 doesn’t actually bear the franchise name. Its real title is Innocence. Just “Innocence.” A lot of folks find this movie incomprehensible, but you can’t say that director Mamoru Oshii hides his points.

Ghost in the Shell is about what it means to be human in a world where we can fully replace our bodies with artificial parts. The sequel takes that line of thought a step further, pondering instead everything that humans create in their image. Children’s dolls, sci-fi sex robots, purebred dogs. Civilization.

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The fighting game based on a mobile game has a reasonable battle pass, while Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 expect you to take up a part-time job

How the alternate universe Genshiken spinoff Spotted Flower caused fans to disown a beloved millennial otaku icon

In Tekken 8, I have to shift my brain between “smart” and “stupid” gears over and over again

Metallic Rouge took me back to the 2000s, including the profound final-episode disappointment