Review of Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor

Well after watching this year’s anime and rereading the first manga simultaneously I wanted to also reread this one which for years I had rated the highest out of the three and now that’s not the case anymore. It’s not that I find it bad all of a sudden but certainly inferior to the original and worse than I remembered.

The narrative structure is the same as it was in the first manga, with the Section 9 minus the Major solving cases involving some kind of cybercrime, terrorism and politicians or police guys behind them, but since the manga is shorter and the stories longer than they were in the original to the point of getting two chapters each except for the last one, they are fewer than before, four in total if I remember correctly.

As far as themes go, this sequel lost every existential topic but at least retains the policial and cyberpunk aspects and even the political ones to a minimum. Robot bees manipulating corpses, attempts of murders, a cop involved in drug traffic and cyberbrain assassination, a duel between snipers, that kinda cool stuff. Fans of the action of the original should be mildly pleased, at least as long as they don’t miss Major’s hand to hand fights.

The tone remains the same, a mix of serious cyberpolice action and comedy, with some newcomer whose name I won’t bother to check that is not bad but definitely underutilized. The deepest parts are of course gone without the existential themes though.

The cast gets to shine more without Motoko around and are pretty likeable but don’t get the same kind of fleshing as they do in Stand Alone Complex and are even more inefficient as they were in the first manga, plus there’s no trace of some kind of backdrop, development or catharsis here, partly because there’s no main plot nor character arc followed in this sequel. Some character might mention something about their lives previous to the Section 9 but that’s about it.

As for credibility, Shirow made sure to excuse himself far more than he did in the previous manga, the weaponry, the technology, the procedures, the brands, even the way the characters move and position themselves. Did I say excuse? That’s the issue here, he ramped the footnotes and appendices up to eleven in this one. Ten years ago I thought it was cool how many details he took into account when writing this manga, but now I kept thinking if this was even necessary, only guns and technology and police nerds would pay attention to that, which to be fair are present in all sci-fi fiction so ok. Nevertheless, almost none of the clarifications felt needed to follow the story, and we’re not talking about translators nor fansubs notes that help understanding something, we’re talking about the author himself adding all that stuff on the page, thus slowing down the progression of an otherwise pretty easy and quick to get plot.

The art keeps being great in this manga and at times there’s even an improvement. The artwork looks rough in an intentional way in the beginning and even the backgrounds are compromised, but since this is a collection of stories released throughout several years, there’s an improvement throughout the chapters. Later on the artwork looks more polished, the backgrounds more detailed, the action sequences very well done, and even the characters moving or fighting are done, followed, shown and paneled with a lot of care. I don’t mean to say that Shirow is Fujimoto or Murata or anything, but he still did a very good job. There are also some interesting effects used such as speed lines and the backgrounds drawn more roughly to portray a car moving at fast speed, Batou and Motoko moving in some kind of special way only with half their torsos inclined, which according to the mangaka makes more sense that way despite not looking very cool, and in the last chapter we even get to see Saito’s cybernetic eye sniper’s POV, all sequences that I remembered for ten years, very cool stuff. My only gripe at the end is that Aramaki looks way older than he did before, as if he was modeled after the anime versions of him, instead of the original design influencing the ones from the adaptations. It’s almost like watching some X-Men movies where characters age like crazy in the spawn of a few years when canonically moving from certain actors to others.

So yeah the manga isn’t as good as the original and I didn’t enjoy it this time around as much as I did the first time, but for fans of police fiction it should suffice. The action is cool, the art is very good, the characters are funny and likeable, minus the newcomers which add absolutely nothing, the technology used gives it some cool cyberpunk aesthetics, and there’s some political stuff in the background to give all the rest a little bit of substance. Quite fine for an easy, short, one time read.

6/10