Ghost In The Shell 2 Manga (2005, Dark Horse)

Written and drawn by Masamune Shirow (of Appleseed and Dominion fame), the follow-up to Ghost In The Shell.

While I really liked Appleseed, I have mixed feelings with Ghost In The Shell.

What Shirow created- 'in the future there will be robots,' is an idea that's been done before- Bladerunner, etc. It wasn't anything new. The film by Mamoru Oshii took Shirow's premise of a cyborg female copy and her section 9 buddies in the future, with the idea of an entity called The Puppet Master born from the web of information, and turned it into something far more better. I seen the anime movie before I read the manga btw; in the manga, Kusanagi is more of a girl than the mature woman she appears in the anime movie, pretty much like Deunan Nat of Appleseed.

I read parts of Ghost In The Shell the manga prior to reading GITS2 the manga.

I'm giving this manga 2 seperate ratings, because I feel it is unfair to slate this manga and not acknow ledge the brilliance of Shirow's talent to illustrate.

In a nut shell though, to me it was 350 + pages of softcore porn with no plot...

Sure there is English dialogue in the speech bubbles, but all I was able to understand that happened was that the president was assasinated by a little girl, and there was a pig farm where human organs were grown. Aside from that, there was no plot, just convoluted pseudo-scientific banter that could only appeal to the 3 types of creature that would understand it-

*The creator himself, Shirow

*Aliens

*Robots

And there is no character development- everyone is a robot whether or not they're human, and engaged in throwning around pseudo-scientific terms. If it was the creator's intention to tell us that in the future everyone acts like a robot, and there are no emotions or human characteristics anymore, that would be fine (boring as hell, but fine because that was his intention), but really, there is no story. And, I would gladly defend anyone who called this manga 'stoopid n boring,' if they were attacked by someone who said 'idiot, you didn't read it properly, don't you understand anything you dumb troll!' or whatever, because frankly I can't see how this was meant to find a place into the hearts of millions, or even the small Shirow fanbase of somewhere like South Korea. My rating in terms of story-

1.2/10

The artwork is really dazzling though- I used to want to be better than Shirow, being an illustraitor myself. It was Shirow who forced me into using photoshop and adding CGI to my artwork, and made my mom by me my first computer 9.5 years ago. I don't know where a 48 year old (or however old he is now) finds time to make compositions as exellent as Shirow. Where the artwork in Ghost In The Shell which combines CGI elements in great, Ghost In The Shell 2 takes it to a whole new level. For Shirow to say though that the exposure of female flesh, and the body positions is not meant to be porngraphic, is in itself hypocracey. Shirow must have referenced positions from the karma sutra or a mazagine containing sexual positions. Also, it is clear here that his preference in woman is 'slim hardbodied athletic girls with little titties in their 20s.' This goes on for like every 2 pages or so, and is clearly aimed at male nerds.

Artwork rating: 8.9/10

- Overall would I recomend this to you as a good read? -Hell no! If you like seeing lush Shirow artwork, and hardbodied girls showing their booty n underwear buy it, but certainly not for a good read!