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After reviewing SAC the other week, I had to follow up with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG. This follows on from the earlier series and touches on many of the same issues. As usual, I'll try to review without spoilering either series.

2nd GIG is different from SAC in many ways, obvious right from the start with its different title sequence and music. The new title sequence is much less striking, less awesome, than the old one, being animated in the same style as the show rather than pure 3D CG.

The same topic, of people acting independently yet in concert, is back in a new guise; this time it is not through direct memory transfer but by authorship. As I noted in my previous review, authorship can be considered as life creation, and this point is developed further, but too explicitly in my view. Having a virtual tachikoma hold up a virtual copy of a Dawkins book and summarise it is trite and pretentious.

Pretentiousness is the order of the day, as the plot for the first half of the series focuses on a series of essays. Investigating leads to the main characters reading these essays, which in turn leads to them discussing the essays in long and dull dialogues which are only marginally related to the rest of the show. There is a development about half-way through after which the essays take back seat to a discussion of individuality.

Historically there has been a contrast between the wills of individuals and the will of the state, the latter of which is not the sum of the former. Sato (thus Shirow by proxy) has one of his characters claim that direct mind-to-mind interaction mediated by the internet brings into existence a second collective will, distinct from society as a whole. Despite quite some exposition of this point I was unable to spot any basis for believing it. The tachikoma again come to the rescue by contrasting their individuality in spite of synchronisation, as discussed in the first SAC, with the phenomenon that humans, both in society at large and specifically in the series, can act and even think collectively despite our individuality.

This is punctuated by a certain amount of character development absent from the first SAC, bringing the series dangerously close to soap at times. One episode features Kusanagi travelling to Hong Kong, encountering an annoying teenage boy, and sharing a hotel room with him. The occasional bouts of fanservice (of which I disapprove in general as being incredibly silly) are not as bad as in most anime series, but still come to a head when the boy, noticing Kusanagi's full-cyborg body, asks her if she can still have sex. The resulting dialogue does not bear repetition. Much later in the episode, Kusanagi comments, in perhaps the least propitious translation ever, “That kid had more spunk than I expected.”

Finally, matters come to a head in the last few episodes with all-action excitement. Again, Batou ends up screaming, “Motokoooooooooooo‥” at a crucial and dramatic moment, but this time the symbolism goes too far by having him carry a piece of steel girder in the shape of the Cross, silhouetted against the sky. I felt sick to my stomach.

The stealth subplots of the original are back, but the series is more focused towards its central plot with fewer stand-alone episodes. This means that this series doesn't deal with Issues to the same extent, taking the show away from sf and closer to high-tech spy action thrillers. The more straight-line development of the plot also means that the stealth subplots are belaboured a bit.

In one stand-alone episode, Batou is shocked, and I was surprised, when he manages to work out the plot twist half-way through the episode by deciphering the handy hints the author had left for him. I was quite impressed that they hadn't felt the need to make the plot completely obvious, until it turned out that he hadn't worked out the plot twist and three or four clues later he was shocked again.

Whereas the first SAC was set in an affluent future of megacorporations and the middle class, 2nd GIG deals with the uglier underside, the proletariat. The plot revolves around a refugee crisis, and features shady weapons deals and smuggling, suicide bombers, shanty towns, and exploited workers.

This ugliness is reflected in the visual aspect of the series, which is a lot less shiny than before, and I find it a lot less pretty too. In a parallel development, the tachikoma are less cutesy, and they have a bigger rôle to play in the series. OTOH, I find their dialogue this time round is much less carefully written, less careful to avoid anthropomorphising them, and the shorts at the end of each episode are more lightweight and not as entertaining.

The first SAC considered that not only are ideas life-forms of themselves, spreading from human carrier to human carrier, but like any other infection they manifest themselves, the symptoms being action on the part of the human host. Although it's not as thoughtfully presented as its predecessor, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG goes further to consider what happens when ideas mutate inside their carriers to produce different and unexpected symptoms. Even the supposedly regulating effect of the author/mediator cannot completely control the outcome when this happens. The eventual outcome of Kuze's plan (as well as his backstory), the tachikoma's actions in the final episode, and Kusanagi's behaviour after crossing Kuze's ghost-line, can all be considered illustrations of this effect.