天下制覇

residentgrigo says:

The giant spider tank in the 95 film is indeed from the manga, but it is not used climactically here. One of many cool ideas used suboptimally. But what isn´t? Now, about this boyfriend. Even hardened Seinen readers were baffled by the early lesbian sex scene. Good luck finding a polyamorous lead with at least three confirmed gay lovers even a 2026 non-erotic work. Shirow quickly clarified that she isn’t gay but promiscuous instead, and got another story out of it. He handwaved that heterosexual cybersex doesn’t work and that he didn’t want to draw male asses, but 2.0 features a female soldier having her male unit run a VR train on her, so that lore didn´t stick. This boyfriend gets a final cameo right before Motoko is set up by Israel (lol), and he also briefly appears in SAC with no connection to her. This is the only time Shirow’s Motoko is with a man.

SAC S1 has her meet up with two girlfriends for a sleepover, but she gets sidetracked by a VR investigation while both of them fall asleep around her wearing their negligees, with her fully clothed. That Motoko herself barely wears bras and goes on military missions in a deep-cut battle swimsuit, so none of this means anything. One friend is the cyborg nurse from Chapter 5/EP 3, which is broadly adapted. The other woman appears only briefly without explanation, just as in the manga, although the 2026 anime expanded her role into EP 3 as the woman receiving a new body. No romantic or sexual relationship between any of them is confirmed in SAC, despite this lip service to the manga and they don’t appear past S1. Shirow worked on it but had no involvement with the later installments. That explains why it immediately stops resembling the manga, instead taking cues from Patlabor 2 and the films. S2 has her pining for the anti-hero terrorist Kuze who dies, while both seasons and SSS show some sexual tension with Batou even from her. Especially in the final scenes of S1 and SSS. He might get attention on the side for good work and dedication. SAC_2045 has zero romance for anyone and a divorce for Togusa.

Motoko clearly cares for Batou, but not romantically in the movies, which is why SAC also played around with this. She has a male lover with whom she has romantic cybersex on screen in Arise, who betrays her half-unwillingly and dies. Batou also has a girlfriend who was set up to take him down on the same day, but that’s only in the manga. It ends with both bonding as friends after years of passionate hatred, when they have to cyberdive into each other and share their trauma. More so in the manga. The 2017 film has Puppetter Kuze for her, I guess.

Two Motoko ISOs have lesbian tentacle sex at the end of 2.0, and confirmed lesbians are found solely in Shirow’s canon. Motoko easily has more on-screen lesbian lovers than named ISOs, but that’s what happens when porn increasingly takes over her on-screen appearances. The pre-Puppet Master Motoko also appears in the finale of Pandora in the Crimson Shell, where she openly lusts after that manga’s female lead like a cartoon dog with her tongue out while on a mission. The protagonist herself is in a monogamous lesbian relationship with her childhood robot girlfriend.

His three main hentai lines, all have omnisexual casts, apart from one strictly lesbian Motoko ISO (?) in W Tails Cat. A butch drill instructor who likes watching her men gang-rape women to warm them up before taking over and she likes having her sister participate with her in these orgies. Shirow is fundamentally a pornographer, with a commitment to extreme material. 2.0, the final mainstream manga drawn by him to date, is already loaded with these fetishes and has a Japan-only erotic variant called Short-cut. One artbook even features additional full frontal nude art of the female soldier mentioned above. What a priority.

There is no message about sexuality in his manga, according to Shirow. And of course no gay men to this day, as that would be gay. He has had virtually no editorial oversight throughout his career and no assistants, explaining his idiosyncratic plots and unfinished projects. He didn’t get derailed by some earthquake in the mid-90s. He simply draws what interests him, can sell his IP value/name for anime every few years, and knows that there will always be a minimal viable demand for his actual art, as his 2025 manga exhibition was immediately followed by a hentai exhibition. That is why 2.0´s Motoko can squirt green on screen, why she is naked during the lengthy cyberspace finale, why there is an upskirt shot of a woman wearing a low-cut burqa during a cyber-Shintoism discussion, and so on.