Ghost in the Shell (manga)
| Ghost in the Shell | |
 English Dark Horse reprint cover |
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| 攻殻機動隊 (Kōkaku Kidōtai) |
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|---|---|
| Genre | Cyberpunk |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Masamune Shirow |
| Published by | Kodansha |
| English publisher |  Titan Books Dark Horse Comics |
| Demographic | Seinen |
| Magazine | Young Magazine |
| Original run | May 1989 – November 1991 |
| Volumes | 1 |
Ghost in the Shell (攻殻機動隊 Kōkaku Kidōtai, Mobile Armoured Riot Police) is a Japanese science fiction manga created by Masamune Shirow originally released in 8 separate issues. He followed it up by Ghost in the Shell 2: Man/Machine Interface and Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor.
The manga is notable for the proliferation of footnotes and commentary by Shirow himself on both the technology and the socio-political background of the setting (in the complete, English language graphic novel edition, these take up more than 30 pages).
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The overarching story of the manga concerns Major Motoko Kusanagi's hunt for a cyber-criminal, The Puppeteer (known as The Puppet Master in the film), whose real identity is unknown. The Puppeteer commits a large number of crimes by the act of breaking into and taking control of human minds known as "ghost hacking". As the agents of Public Security Section 9 start investigate, they discover The Puppeteer is a unique autonomous artificial intelligence project known as Project 2501 created by another government agency, the Treaty Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), also known as Section 6. The Puppeteer escapes Section 6's control in pursuit of its evolution through merging with Kusanagi. Kusanagi, although initially skeptical, finally agrees to allow the Puppeteer to merge with her own consciousness, sharing her body, in what is no doubt intended to raise even more questions about the nature of human identity in a world where human consciousness is no longer individual.
[edit] Releases
The Ghost In The Shell was initially published by Kodansha and was released on October 5, 1991. The manga was then published by Dark Horse Comics / Studio Proteus for the english version and released on December 1995. The chapters have the date in DD-MM-YYYY format next to the title except for chapters 1, 4 and 5.
| No. | Japanese | English | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Release date | ISBN | Release date | ISBN | |||
| 1 | May 1989 | ISBN 4-06-313248-X | December 1995 | ISBN 1-56971-081-3 | ||
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[edit] Film adaptions
An eponymous film adaption was released in Japan in 1995. The film stars Atsuko Tanaka and Akio Ōtsuka as the voices of Major Motoko Kusanagi and Batou respectively, and was directed by Mamoru Oshii.
As of 2008 DreamWorks acquired the rights to produce a 3-D live action film adaptation of the original manga with Steven Spielberg tipping the scales in DreamWorks favor. So far Avi Arad and Steven Paul are confirmed producers and Jamie Moss will be adapting the manga into a screenplay.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Variety Report, Variety Magazine, Linked Article.
[edit] External links
- Ghost in the Shell (manga) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
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