Reviews are pouring in for Ghost in the Shell ‒ Episode 7, and the verdict is splitting audiences and critics alike. From the performances to the direction, here is a closer look at what the film does right — and where it stumbles.
The Story So Far
Before we get to that point, the first half of the installment kicks off as a fairly standard Ghost in the Shell setup – someone remotely hijacked Megatech Inc's autonomous production plant's machinery, built themselves a top-of-the-range android body, downloaded bespoke operating software into its synthetic brain, and it scarpered.
Section 9 retrieves the rogue droid, and during the dismantling process, they discover that the droid seemingly contains a ghost, a marker of independent life. Said ghost is identified as previously foreshadowed uber-hacker the Puppet Master. While Section 6's Nakamura and freaky multi-fingered Dr.
Willis (who movie admirers will recognize from their almost identical roles in the 1995 movie) claim that they disposed of the Puppet Master's original body, forcing their host to migrate their consciousness elsewhere, the Puppet Master declares there will be no body, as they are neither human, nor an AI, but something completely different: a fresh form of intelligence, born within the net itself, a being of pure information.
With the Puppet Master's formal introduction, we transition to Shirow's true purpose for his narrative. Not merely another sci-fi police procedural, it's a deeply considered work that explores the nature of consciousness, of personhood and transhumanism (written before it was trendy). After Section 6's botched heist of the Puppet Master's body, as Motoko Kusanagi desperately dives into its damaged, deteriorating mind, she experiences something that can only be described as transcendental.
Science SARU's background artists are really made to put in the overtime with this installment, with Kusanagi's surreal odyssey into fractal mindscapes a fascinating and abstract tour de force of visual design. I wondered how on earth anyone might manage to animate Shirow's dense panels full of technobabble and strange, alien concepts, but somehow they managed admirably.
It's difficult for someone like me, raised in a Western culture, to fully parse Shirow's thought processes here. His cosmology is deeply indebted to various streams of Eastern philosophy, like Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Even if the individual words and sentences from the screenplay sound like nonsense, the overall combination of frames and narrative progression helps to communicate the overall gist of his thesis.
Kusanagi has stumbled onto what may be the next step in the evolution of consciousness, as the Puppet Master escapes the confines of the physical network to access something deeper, higher, and more fundamental to reality. Her limited senses can perceive it only as light, and as her emotions become overwhelmed, she glimpses an angelic vision.
We're left on something of a cliffhanger. The movie uses a version of this scene essentially as its finale, yet we have another three episodes to go. I know from the manga that there's a lot more of this challenging material ahead, and that may alienate more casual viewers.
This installment still has plent…
For now, fans have plenty to discuss, and the industry has plenty to analyse. TeraMovies will be tracking every twist in this story as it unfolds, bringing you the full picture from the world of entertainment.
