Ghost in the Shell[a] is a 1995 adult Japanese-animated tech noir cyberpunk action thriller film[8][9] directed by Mamoru Oshii from a screenplay by Kazunori Itō.

It is a Japanese-British international co-production between Kodansha, Bandai Visual and Manga Entertainment, with animation provided by Production I.G.

The film is set in 2029 in the fictional New Port City and follows Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg public-security agent who hunts an enigmatic hacker/ghost known as "the Puppet Master".

Upon release, Ghost in the Shell received positive reviews, with critics praising its narrative, visuals, and musical score.

[10][11][12] It has inspired filmmakers such as The Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix franchise, and James Cameron, who described it as "the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence.

An updated remastered version of the film, Ghost in the Shell 2.0, was released in 2008, featuring newly added digital effects, additional 3D animation, and new audio.

Oshii also directed Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, released in 2004, which was billed as a separate work and a non-canonical sequel.

Hollywood made a live-action reinterpretation of the original film in 2017, bearing an identical title, directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Scarlett Johansson.

Another significant achievement is the cyberbrain, a mechanical casing for the human brain that allows access to the Internet and other networks.

Following a request from Nakamura, chief of Section 6, she successfully assassinates a diplomat of a foreign country to prevent a programmer named Daita from defecting.

Unexpectedly, Section 6's department chief Nakamura arrives to reclaim the shell with permit from the foreign minister.

After the Puppet Master initiates a brief argument about what constitutes a human, a camouflaged agent accompanying Nakamura starts a diversion and steals the shell.

Anxious to face the Puppet Master's ghost, Kusanagi engages the tank without backup, resulting in her body being mostly dismembered as she attempts to pull open the hatch.

Snipers from Section 6 approach the building, intending to destroy the Puppet Master's and Kusanagi's brains to cover up Project 2501.

He proposed the project to Bandai Visual but was asked to direct an adaptation of Masamune Shirow's 1989 manga, Ghost in the Shell, instead.

Okiura chose to depict a physically mature person to match Motoko's mental age, instead of her youthful twenty-something appearance in the manga.

[16] Motoko's demeanor lacks the comedic facial expressions and rebellious nature depicted in the manga, instead taking on a more wistful and contemplative personality.

[19] Oshii based the setting for Ghost in the Shell on Hong Kong, commenting that his first thought to find an image of the future setting was an Asian city, but finding a suitable cityscape of the future would be impossible, and so he chose to use the real streets of Hong Kong as his model.

Before shooting the film, the artists drew sketches that emphasized Hong Kong's chaotic, confusing and overwhelming aspects.

Another aspect of the CG use was to create images and effects that looked as if they were "perceived by the brain" and were generated in video and added to the film in its final stages.

[16] The composition is a mixture of Bulgarian harmony[21][22] and traditional Japanese notes; the haunting chorals are a wedding song sung to dispel all evil influences.

Symphony conductor Sarah Penicka-Smith notes that the song's lyrics are fitting for the union between Kusanagi and Project 2501 at the climax of the movie.

[24] The ending credits theme of the film's English version is "One Minute Warning" by Passengers, a collaboration between U2 and Brian Eno.

[29] The DVD version was released on 25 February 2004 as a Special Edition release, in which the film was fully restored and digitally remastered from the original film elements in both original fullscreen form and in letterboxed widescreen form, and the audio was digitally remixed in English and Japanese.

[31] In the United States, the film was released on VHS on 18 June 1996 through Manga Entertainment, and on DVD on 31 March 1998 by PolyGram Video.

[41] In August 1996, Ghost in the Shell became the first Japanese film to top the Billboard video sales chart, with over 200,000 VHS copies sold.

[51] A spin-off novel written by Endo Akira, titled Ghost in the Shell: Burning City (攻殻機動隊灼熱の都市, Kōkaku kidōtai shakunetsu no toshi), was published by Kodansha and released in Japan in November 1995.

[71] James Cameron cited Ghost in the Shell as a source of inspiration for Avatar,[72] calling it "the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence.

[78] In describing Motoko as a "shapely" and "strong [female protagonist] at the center of the story" who is "nevertheless almost continuously nude", Roger Ebert noted that "an article about anime in a recent issue of Film Quarterly[79] suggests that to be a 'salary man' in modern Japan is so exhausting and dehumanizing that many men (who form the largest part of the animation audience) project both freedom and power onto women, and identify with them as fictional characters".

[25] Carl Silvio has called Ghost in the Shell a "resistant film", due to its inversion of traditional gender roles, its "valorization of the post-gendered subject", and its de-emphasis of the sexual specificity of the material body.