Ghost in the Shell Arise

Netflix has three of the four Ghost in the Shell Arise films right now, which were hour-long animated films released across 2013-2014. They cover a stretch of time as Major Kusanagi tries to get out of the military and create a career and life for herself, as a freelance cybersecurity expert/troubleshooter. The shooter part is literal, since the cases she faces all end up requiring some amount of gunfire.

I'm only familiar with Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, which was an earlier TV series set later in her life (after her team had been fully formed and had consistent funding from Section 9). So this Major is a bit of a change. She's less experienced, more guarded, quicker to anger, less comfortable in her prosthetic body - her boyfriend in third film, Ghost Tears, says that when they met, she couldn't decide whether to thing of her body as a person or a thing - and still trying to figure out who she's going to be.

Each movie involves a mystery, or two mysteries that end up connecting. One typically involving a death, and the other the theft of something. Weapons or information, typically. The world seems to be in a chaotic state from which their country is still trying to recover (it's remarked they were one of the biggest losers of the war). Of course, the war is still going on in other places, it's simply that any country that was able to peace out has officially done it already.

If, like me, you had any concerns about a world where everyone can just plug their brains into information systems, this is not a movie to assuage your fears. People's brains get hacked all the time. Sometimes it makes them either see something that isn't there, or not perceive something that is. There's a recurring virus that creates false memories. People receive artificial limbs that are, unknown to them, actually bombs. The Major is told in the first movie that, since her prosthetic body was paid for by the military, she's essentially property and can't leave the base without requesting permission first. There's prejudice, mostly likely going both ways, although we see it mostly from the Major and her team towards Togusa, a detective who has no prosthetic parts. They mock his flesh eyes on a couple of occasions (although to be fair to the Major, when she does so, she's really just pissed because he's said he suspects her boyfriend is mixed up in something crooked.)

One bit I thought dead-on was we see that more and more wealthy elderly people are getting fully prosthetic new bodies, young bodies, to enjoy more active and energetic lives. And since people with prosthetic bodies have specialized dietary requirements, now there's a lot of progress being made on new, more high-class foods suitable for them. When it was mostly just soldiers, no one was gonna bother with anything more than beer and fish sausage, but the old rich folks got involved and now there's money to be made.

I think they use CGI for a lot of the sequences where the Major's on her motorcycle, and it doesn't look great.Not terrible, but it's noticeably different from the rest of the film, which is jarring. Throws me out of it for an instant. Otherwise, the animation seems pretty good. The fight sequences are mostly brief, but they're usually well done. They do this one bit where one character will do a jump or a flip to get behind another and as they're dropping into their landing, it slows down. So the viewer can see what's coming, anticipate the next move, but it's a nifty effect. It's almost like the Major's legs are so powerful gravity can't catch up, so it doesn't pull her back down like it should.

Of the three films, Ghost Tears was probably my favorite. By that point, all the characters I was familiar with are involved, even if they aren't all officially working together. The mystery in the second film, Ghost Whisper, might have been the strongest. The other two relied on a couple of "surprises" related to the Major that they telegraphed too much. Ghost Whisper also probably had the Major Kusanagi that was closest to the more experienced, pragmatic one I was used to.