GRAPHIC NOVELS: Ghost in the Shell

Major Motoko Kusanagi

Are graphic novels worth reading? This one is__"Ghost in the Shell" by Masamune Shirow, widely popular among manga fans, and with beautifully rendered art and an intriguing storyline__ it is a story set in the mid 21st century where the line between humans and machines has become blurred. It is a world where the human brain can be programed like a computer. Humans have become mechanically enhanced and robots have been upgraded with human tissue. What is human, what is robot? At what point does the human soul end and the cybernetic machine begin. It does sound like just another sci-fi futuristic plot, but in the past five years numerous nonfiction books have appeared predicting a closer melding of human and machine within the next thirty years. (notably the books of Ray Kurzweil). The interesting twist to this story is that hackers can reprogram the human mind through a man-machine interface, implanting commands that result in criminal behavior and insanity. There is even a criminal manipulator called the "Puppeteer," who makes his zombie victims commit all sorts of heinous acts. In "Ghost in the Shell" the mind exists not so much as organic tissue, but as electrons pulsing through electronic components, therefore it is more difficult to destroy a person because their conciseness can be stored away on a hard drive. This manga and the original anime adaptation show the potential of animation for complex and relevant stories, a potential already discovered by the Japanese. Home Page