Ghost in the Shell #10 — Chatbots
September 8th, 2026
Boy, am I sick of monologues after this season.
Impressions:
Through the entire episode, I couldn't stop thinking about how utterly stupid this entire plan was. All these agencies never considered that she might use a duplicate body or transfer herself to something else? Or want to tail her accomplices when they start doing 'random' things while she's off being very distracting? Oh, her severed second head says "make sure you're not followed", but that seems to be about it for opsec. No followup either. Wow, it's crazy that her best friend suddenly has a new android lady out of nowhere. Eh, probably just the wind. But also, why all these theatrics in the first place? We've established that hojillions of people want her killed. It'd have been the easiest thing in the world to set up in a carefully controlled situation and just hop on to a new ID, going right back to work.
But none of that is the focus of the episode anyway, which is why I had so much time to think about how dumb it was. No, the focus was yet another goddamned chat with the Puppet Master gestalt which hadn't quite totally for real merged with her yet, so we get another rambling philosophical monologue about life, the universe, and everything. The best part are the recycled shots eight minutes apart because it's literally just her sitting on the ground while a ball rambles. Which I think brings the Puppet Master monologues alone up to around 35 minutes of this show's runtime. And then it just unceremoniously ends. With another monologue. As if this season wasn't infected enough with them.
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Neither the US nor Japanese dub features Batou joking that Motoko’s body is being gang-raped by the police. Stay classy, Mr. Shirow. They also talk past each other at the very end in the manga. We always get to hear that the 1989/90 manga is the greatest cyberpunk comic of all time, but it’s unlikely to be in the running for best cyberpunk anime of the year. The mark of a true “classic”. And I can only repeat myself: the two follow-up volumes go downhill from here. Now to my point.
S9 NEVER functions as a cohesive team in this continuity. None of the characters really bond, and some of them come close to outright hating each other. Batou is the exception, retaining some loyalty to Kusanagi because they both survived a nuclear war in Mexico (revealed in Vol 1.5). Even then, she shows him very little respect, both in Vol 1 and in her sole case in 1.5. One of the Kusanagi AI clones even owns a Batou robot/Landmate powersuit (an Appleseed carryover) in 2.0. Aramaki also screws her over pretty badly at the end of Vol 1, so her returning to S9 makes little sense but the whole escape plan is godawful. So what was the point of this S9 origin story? Their solo manga lasted less than 200 pages before Shirow gave up.
The regular Kusanagi appears once in 1.5, where she is amused to discover that S9 is falling apart without her after randomly crossing paths with Batou and Togusa. She nevertheless refuses to directly help them with their case. That manga was abandoned so Shirow could move on to 2.0, which might as well be a new IP by that point, especially once the random ESP bullshit from Orion starts entering the setting. Shirow apologized multiple times, even as recently as 2023, for not creating a new cast for 2.0. That manga has no redeeming qualities, and its CG art has aged like asbestos. 1.5, on the other hand, looks really weird and consists of deleted cases from this manga and failed anime pitches. It’s a much easier pill to swallow and only half as long as the other two entries, but good luck remembering anything beyond Motoko showing up, robo-bees, a fungus virus and Batou getting catfished. His one-chapter ponytail and Motoko’s Chroma cyber-avatar are the only things from 1.5 to get salvaged for an anime and 2.0 has never even been referenced.
Aramaki and Batou appears at the very beginning and end of 2.0, where they are completely out of their depth. The series was then abandoned for a second time, leaving everything unresolved since 1998 and the bridge to the equally abandoned Appleseed unbuilt. Despite that, 2.0 is the first work to officially establish that the two series share a canon. Ghost Urn and W-Tails Cat/Greaseberries officially follow the Shirow GitS canon afterward. The lead-in story for 2.0 and its sequel were never made, as detailed in a previous post, so we have to wait for his hentai to one day fill in the blanks and continue the Shino-Cyber-Evolution nonsense this episode vaguely introduces when Motoko fully merges with the Puppetmaster.
The AU-origin story Arise had Shirow involved in its pre-production, though to a much lesser extent than with SAC S1. At received criticism for the S9 internal struggles, the characters constantly being at odds with each other, and its focus on the military conspiracy. Having now experienced the original entry in full, you can see why it went in that direction. Arise was essentially a true reboot, much like Ultimate Marvel. Back to the roots, with a younger cast and completely new plots. If this mega-mess of an anime manages to make some people reevaluate Arise, then I’ll take it. Once you factor in the film and the manga, Arise actually told a complete story. But we are now on the third GitS anime in a row to receive a polarized reception, with the 2017 US film flop also in the mix. None have been widely seen either and even Innocence boombed in 2004. A sign of things to come but it´s good. Pandora in the Crimson Shell and the S9 lead 1.75 manga (fully irrelevant to this canon as Shirow wasn´t involved, despite being longer than all his volumes combined) went completely unnoticed, which is for the better. Endlessly rebooted but never-properly-adapted Appleseed and Production I.G.’s GitS-wannabe Psycho-Pass lastly run out of gas. The market had enough and no one can follow this many canons. The core ideas of GitS are decades out of date, even SAC S1 to SSS was all about the political crises of the 80s being updated, so it’s time to pull the plug. Unless Mamoru Oshii wants to make one more movie to finish his tale. But even he is long past his prime and doomed to fail as he hasn’t had a success since the 90s. Can´t be worse than this.
PS: Glitch Witch, the second half of PitCS, just had its manga announced, to the surprise of absolutely no one: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-09-08/naoki-azuma-launches-new-glitch-witch-manga-set-in-ghost-in-the-shell-world/.241529
Project 2501 is a main character, but you’d know that if you’d kept up with my posts. Can’t wait to be one of the few hundred readers in the West to actually read this one in full. It can’t be worse than PitCS.