TheRetroCritic

As the world digests Hollywood's recent attempt at producing a live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's much celebrated animated feature, there's no better time to revisit the original Ghost In The Shell from 1995. Based on one of the popular manga's stories involving a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master, this first film was not only groundbreaking as an anime but as a science-fiction film in general influencing pretty much every science-fiction film after it including The Matrix . We're introduced to a dangerous world where people can be cybernetically enhanced which creates new threats for special units to deal with. Major Motoko Kusanagi is the mostly artificial leader of an assault team tasked with various missions including finding the Puppet Master. The film is a complex sci-fi thriller which deals with self-identity, what it means to be human and technology gone mad in a subtle yet often brutal way. There are unexpected bursts of gore in this