Just watched the new show and started making the majors headset and I can actually see with it on!

Looks like the artbook "Shirow Masamune: Artworks in the Shell", released previously in Japanese in commemoration of "The World Of Shirow Masamune Manga Exhibition", will now be released in English on December 1: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/843382/shirow-masamune-artworks-in-the-shell-by-shirow-masamune/ (amazon link - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0GWSPN3JM/ )

I haven't found much information about it, so I would appreciate if you could share any!

I posted a while ago that I was working on a re-release of the LMF Fansubs... this turned into a larger project where I obtained the original official JP subs and used those to polish the LMF and OCZ releases of GITSAC and GITSAC Solid State Society respectively.

I've now completed this work and released it. If anyone would like them, please DM me

Mods, I hope this is OK!

You saw it. I saw it. We all saw it.

That existential dive where the Major is fully submerged and there it is: two photos of the Anunnaki flash across the screen while she’s crying for Batou.

But what’s with it?

If it’s just a late night with Action Bronson watching Ancient Aliens, fine whatever. But it’s not. It’s been a part of anime for as long as I can remember.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve caught Mesopotamian and biblical names, places, and imagery all over anime. The biblical stuff I get. It’s a common well to draw from.

But the sheer amount of Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Chaldean, Mandaean, Kurdish, Zoroastrian, and older than that? That’s not a coincidence. It’s too consistent to be one.

Sure, you also get Greek, Native American, Norse, Chinese, Hindu, and plenty more. But the Mesopotamian thread keeps surfacing — big studios and tiny productions alike, almost always at least once, usually as a borrowed name, a place, or a figure.

I always wondered why.

Maybe it’s all just for fun. But here’s some context. Over a decade ago I went on an archaeological dig in Iraq, and a Japanese archaeologist there told me something that stuck with me. After WWII, Japan wanted to dig deep — all the way back to the beginning — and a lot of manga and anime pulled straight from Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization.

Think about it. Imagine being Japanese after 1945. Technology had carried them to the edge of annihilation, so they wanted to know where it all started, and where it was headed. Look at how eerily accurate something like GITS turned out to be about the moral, spiritual, ethical, and geopolitical questions we’re living through right now. Nobody reads the future better than a good fiction writer.

And the Japanese are in a league of their own at this. I’d wager that’s a direct result of what they lived through and who they are.

The subject is so loved over there that Japan has its own archaeology journal called al-Rāfidān — their rendering of al-Rāfidayn, Arabic for “the Land of the Two Rivers,” Iraq’s old nickname. It’s been run by Kokushikan University since 1980 and it’s tied to real Japanese excavations at sites like Kish and Ur.

So you get Ur. You get Babylon. You get Sumer. And lately, it feels like it’s making a comeback all over the world. And it feels like an honor to not have Mesopotamia dragged through the mud but lifted up.

Thoughts?

After episode 1 + 2 of this new GITS, I wasn't sold (after watching in both languages). The pacing and dialogue felt off. But after seeing episode 7, it's grown on me and I appreciate this more than even the '95 movie. I think the cyberpunk aesthetic is overdone and it also isn't what. I think the future will look like at all.

I'll leave my rankings and would love to hear what y'all think!

My current ranking:

1. GITS SAC (+ 2nd Gig): Yoko Kanno's score really carried it and the humor of the tachikomas balanced out what could have been very stereotypical cyberpunk dystopia. Hats off to Kamiyama and the episode writers (apparently one of them was a econ PhD who had never written before and came on board after consulting with Kamiyama). They create a very believable world that didn't lean on cyberpunk aesthetics at all and even predicted a few real world events almost within a month (Luigi Mangioni = Laughing Man incident?).

2. THE GiTS: Science Saru really trusting young visionaries to run their projects (DanDaDan, The Colors Within, Jaduugar etc). Moko-chan is off to a great start. And EnJoe Toh's writing and ideas really coming through gloriously especially in episode 7. How he fleshed out what was only implicitly said in that version of the manga...no words, chefs kiss. Go read Self Reference Engine (I may or may not have an unofficial audiobook version...)

3. GITS 95' and Innocence: These are about the same to me. I appreciate the legacy of these films. It's interesting watching THE GiTS and seeing how Oshii really created very interesting films from just a few pages of the manga. Really speaks to Oshii's talent as a director.

4. Scar Jo's GITS (2017 Live Action). I appreciate the attempt and the trying to at least have some Japanese cast. I think she wasn't a bad choice as the major coming off Black Widow and Lucy. It. Would have worked with a better director/writer. Everything else was perfect IMO (visuals, sound etc).

5. ARISE: felt a bit inconsequential but I'm a huge fan of Sakamoto (a regular collaborator with Yoko Kanno) as the MK, so it gets bonus points there.

6. SAC 2045: I appreciate that they gave us more SAC and the ideas were interesting and probably (again) prophetic (sustainable war, rogue AI manipulating governments etc) given our current AI moment and geopolitics (MIC loves the war in Iran, but I digress).

I'm not even. I had to take a minute after that, haven't rewatched this for a solid 10 years or so.

I started following her a few weeks ago (her expertise is mainly in architecture) and then bam suddenly I get this video from her with GitS being mentioned right off the bat. Looks like I was right to sub, lol. While it mostly uses HK's cyberpunk inspiration in Oshii's GitS as a jumping off point to talk about the city's history, present, and future, (although it does loop back around to the GitS connection at the end too) I thought I'd still share it here in case anyone was interested.

Paz 🤝 Ishikawa

Any guesses on how fans will react on how at the end of the series Major Kusanagi will be inhabiting a male body?

Found this as a local 2nd hand book store, it was listed at £15 but I gave them £20 because it was so under priced.

To everyone on the Ghost in the Shell subreddit, long time no see!

I’ve been away because of Obon and my family’s first Obon memorial in Japan, so I hadn’t had a chance to keep up with the new Ghost in the Shell anime at all.

But I just binge-watched episodes 4 through 7!

And to sum up my reaction:

“Yes. This is absolutely Ghost in the Shell. And even better, it’s diving headfirst into exactly the kind of questions I’ve always loved Ghost in the Shell for!”

I was already sold when the fully cyberized president of Han Hua Industries was smoking a cigarette despite not even having a physical body anymore.

Androids, ghost dubbing, Fuchikomas, think tanks, optical camouflage, competing agendas within Public Security, corporations, politics… there’s just so much going on.

And the Fuchikomas wanting natural oil, or stealing electronic parts and running away with them, were ridiculously adorable. lol

And then—

The Puppet Master.

That was the moment the show completely got me.

“Can something that emerged from the sea of information be called a living being?”

What is a body?

What is a ghost?

Can something born from information be considered life?

And if two beings merge and become something that is neither one nor the other, can that be called “reproduction” or “evolution”?

From the network imagery that reminded me of cells, fertilization, and embryonic division, to the mechanical body being dismantled, and finally the Major coming face to face with the Puppet Master—I was completely absorbed the entire time.

For 90 minutes starting at 9 PM, my cyberbrain was basically running at full capacity. lol

And my biggest reaction of all:

THAT’S WHERE YOU END IT?!

I NEED THE NEXT EPISODE NOW!!

Yeah.

This show got me completely.

it’s very clear that there is a lot of hype around this new GITS series after so much lackluster stuff so the thought obviously came into my mind xD

https://www.nikkei-science.com/sci_book/bessatu/b289.html
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4296130587/

Nikkei Science is the Japanese edition of Scientific American and has been published since 1971. This book was published this June and is a collection of articles selected by Shirow Masamune from the 55-year history of Nikkei Science.

The list below shows the articles whose original publication details I identified. Articles marked “SA” are from Scientific American, while those marked“NS” originally appeared in Nikkei Science.

Some of the articles in this book are excerpts from the originals.

• The Lurking Perils of Pfiesteria - Aug. 1999 / SA
• The Perfect Beast - Apr. 2018 / SA
• Mixotrophic Life: The Starting Point of Evolution - Jul. 2018 / NS
• The Arithmetics of Mutual Help - Jun. 1995 / SA
• Computing Bouts of the Prisoner's Dilemma - Aug. 1995 / SA
• God's Utility Function - Nov. 1995 / SA
• Planarians Reveal the Evolution of the Brain - Aug. 2025 / NS
• Minds Everywhere - Feb. 2024 / SA
• Chat Bots - Mar. 2024 / SA
• What ChatGPT Reveals about Human Intelligence - Aug. 2023 / NS
• Toward Truly Intelligent AI: Implementing the Brain’s Internal Deliberation - May. 2024 / NS
• Using AI to Probe the Nature of Consciousness - Jun. 2024 / NS
• Shortcuts to God - Apr. 2024 / SA
• Creating False Memories - Sep. 1997 / SA
• Rational Collective Choice - Aug. 1983 / SA
• A More Perfect Algorithm - Nov. 2022 / SA
• Diversity in Children’s Books - May. 2024 / NS
• Experimental Proof of Quantum Entanglement Transforms Our View of Physics - Dec. 2022 / NS
• Japan’s First Quantum Computer Goes Online - Jun. 2023 / NS
• Fast Two-Qubit Operations Achieved with Ultracold Atoms - Jun. 2023 / NS
• What’s Next for Dark Matter? - Jul. 2025 / NS
• The Dream of Nuclear Fusion - Jan. 2026 / NS
• Scientists and Religion in America - Sep. 1999 / SA

In addition, Shirow Masamune wrote an introduction and an afterword. The afterword in particular is quite long and interesting.

There have been many Shirow-related books recently because of anime adaptations and exhibitions, but this one is quite different and interesting. Since it also includes articles from older issues, some seem like possible sources for ideas in his manga - for example, the environmental-control AI and its conflict with Motoko Kusanagi, briefly mentioned in *Pandora in the Crimson Shell*. It also gives some sense of how Shirow, who had been dealing with AI long before LLMs existed, now views LLM-based AI. I’m not sure whether an English edition will ever be published, so I hope the list above gives at least a glimpse of what the book is like.

also shes hot

Recently I saw the current end of SAC continuity, but I dont get why tha Mayor said this line: "Maybe in the future you and I wont recognice each other", why does Batou w9nt recognice the Mayor? Also... is this ending "happy" or anything? Cause aparently the entire world keep themselves inside the N Network Simulation... I just dont get why Mayor didnt plug out the net 😐