How Does The Ghost In The Shell Movie Compare To The Manga?

Going into the body of work of Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow can be a daunting task. The original manga is a multi-layered work that could be looked at as a vast ocean of thought, robot parts and questions of existance. Each page is very detailed and requires time to absorb the depth of the work. It is not just a book of fight scenes but the effects of technology on society and how it changes the way people perceive identity and self-awareness.

While the film does a great job at capturing the kernel of the story of the original manga by Masamune Shirow, it differs significantly from it, mostly by giving more emphasis to its atmospheric views of futuristic landscapes than to and explanation of themes. A lot of the philosophical and introspective matters Shirow explores are dealt with instead by views, loaded with tons of analogs, scores of sounds, sounds of images — beautifully maintained with unbelievable paintings in every frame of this movie. Your perception of this work will be engraved for life after viewing the full length of this movie.

What makes the film different from the manga by Shirow is the way that the core themes of the story are re-interpreted in order to be better suited to the nature of a film. Instead of rummaging through every complexity of idea from the original work, Oshii makes a choice for a more personal and emotional storyline. Major Motoko Kusanagi searches for her identity and her place in the world of natural human existence in which she is no longer part, and along the way discovers something profound about existence. The film is a poem to the remaining traces of humanity in a world where most people are hybridized with machines, and it explores these difficult to grasp ideas through deeply contemplative scenes that explore the nature of identity in a deeply human manner.

In my mind the best representation of these themes would be the film’s visual storytelling, etching the stunning images of the Major’s dive into the fully realized cybernetic city and her cyber攻擊 of the Puppet Master into my brain like so much candy. But all of these images are so much more than just ‘oh cool.’ Each of them has been reworked for the film with a selection of the most phenomenal ethereal sound design and the hauntingly beautiful score to fully immerse the viewer in the Major’s apparent search for fully realized human identity in a world dominated by technology; and frail, vulnerable to destruction at any moment.

In the end, it really does matter how you access ‘Ghost in the Shell’. Both are so uniquely brilliant in their own right and, no matter which you experience first, you will be affected long after the story has ended and you’ve returned to reality. I would wholeheartedly recommend both Shirow’s mighty and dense manga and Oshii’s perfectly shot film as a foray into the amazing and towering world of ‘Ghost in the Shell’.

What seals the film into being is the final sequence. The merging, the birth, the infant gazes up at us and asks, ‘And where does the newborn go from here?’ The scene is one of the most hauntingly beautiful conclusions to a story ever put on film, anime or live action. In contrast, the ending of the manga is clever and leaves many questions open but does not convey the same amount of mythic quality or sense of transcendental ambiguity as the film. While the ending of the manga brings a close to the case and hints at what is to come, the ending of the film leaves the viewer in awe of the poetry of the film. Both are effective in their own right, but the film is far more powerful.

The film’s opening, with its accompanying score by Kawai Gordon, is perhaps the most famous single page of the entire manga, in digital form. The page has been brilliantly reassembled into a cinematic sequence and is a superb introduction to the core themes of Major the Movie: The creation of life; identity; and the joining of organic and synthetic to form something greater than the sum of its parts. The opening to the manga, by contrast, is just the first page of a running story which readers can enter at any time. There is no equivalent ‘opening’ to the manga, and a major part of the film is its carefully crafted narrative, realized with a unique rhythm and brought to a special climax. The manga is a continued journey into the world created by Takaya, to be explored in whatever order the reader wishes, with the keys to the city being handed to him or her. The film is a guided tour conducted by a master of the genre, with light and sound under his complete control.