Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 (Japanese: 攻殻機動隊 SAC_2045, Hepburn: Kōkaku Kidōtai: SAC_2045) is a Japanese original net animation (ONA) anime series based on the 1980s Japanese manga series Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, set in the Stand Alone Complex sub-continuity.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045
Japanese promotional poster
攻殻機動隊 SAC_2045
(Kōkaku Kidōtai: SAC_2045)
Created byMasamune Shirow
Original net animation
Directed by
Written byKenji Kamiyama
Music by
  • Kazuma Jinnōchi
  • Irone Toda
Studio
Licensed byNetflix
Released April 23, 2020 – present
Runtime24 minutes
Episodes12

The first season premiered exclusively on Netflix worldwide on April 23, 2020. An English dub was not made available until May 3 due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing production delays.[1]

Production

Kodansha and Production I.G announced on April 7, 2017 that Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki would be co-directing a new Kōkaku Kidōtai anime production.[2] On December 7, 2018, it was reported by Netflix that they had acquired the worldwide streaming rights to the original net animation (ONA) anime series, titled Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, and that it would premiere on April 23, 2020. The series is in 3DCG and Sola Digital Arts collaborated with Production I.G on the project.[3] Ilya Kuvshinov handled character designs.[4] It was stated that the new series will have two seasons of 12 episodes each.[5]

Plot

In the year 2045, after an economic disaster known as the Simultaneous Global Default which destroyed the value of all forms of paper and electronic currency, the "Big 4" nations of the world are engaged in a state of never-ending "Sustainable War" to keep the economy going. In this world, Motoko, Batou, and other members of Public Security Section 9 have contracted themselves out as mercenaries under the group "GHOST," using their cybernetic enhancements and battle experience to earn a living while defusing hot-spots across the globe. However, the emergence of "Post Humans" and a conspiracy uncovered by former Chief Aramaki force Section 9 to reunite.

Voice cast
Character Japanese voice actor[6] English dub actor
Motoko Kusanagi Atsuko Tanaka Mary Elizabeth McGlynn
Daisuke Aramaki Osamu Saka William Knight
Batou Akio Ōtsuka Richard Epcar
Togusa Kōichi Yamadera Crispin Freeman
Ishikawa Yutaka Nakano Michael McCarty
Saito Tōru Ōkawa Dave Wittenberg
Paz Takashi Onozuka Bob Buchholz
Borma Taro Yamaguchi Dean Wein
Tachikoma Sakiko Tamagawa Melissa Fahn
Purin Esaki Megumi Han Cherami Leigh
Standard Kenjiro Tsuda Keith Silverstein
John Smith Kaiji Soze Roger Craig Smith
Chris Otomo Tate Shigeo Kiyama Armen Taylor
Takashi Shimamura Megumi Hayashibara Max Mittelman

Episode list

Season 1 (2020)
No. Title Storyboarded by Written by Original release date
1"NO NOISE NO LIFE - Sustainable War"
Transcription: "Jizoku kanō sensō" (Japanese: 持続可能戦争)		Kenji KamiyamaKenji KamiyamaApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Motoko meets up with Batou, Saito, Ishikawa, and new recruit Standard (who Batou nicknames "Clown") on the war-torn roads of Palm Springs as they try to find the person supplying local bandits with high-powered weapons. Meanwhile, a newly-divorced Togusa has returned to police work in Japan when Aramaki calls for his help with a new investigation. Back in Palm Springs, Motoko's group meets up with a confidential informant who claims that the belligerents are getting weapons from a "Good 1%er" but doesn't know who that is, when they suddenly walk into a robotic guard dog.
2"AT YOUR OWN RISK - Divided by a Wall"
Transcription: "Kabe ga hedateru mono" (Japanese: 壁が隔てるもの)		Shinji AramakiKenji KamiyamaApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
The belligerents in Palm Springs take heavy losses but shoot their way through Motoko's group using a high-tech APC and drone with Hellfire missiles. Motoko manages to down the drone while her team disables the APC, but the supposedly downed drone fires a missile at a mansion in the distance, destroying it. Meanwhile, in Japan, Aramaki tells Togusa of the new Prime Minister's plan to revive PSS9.
3"MAVERICK - Missing In Action"
Transcription: "Sakusen kōdōchū yukue fumei" (Japanese: 作戦行動中行方不明)		Gorō Taniguchi
Kenji Kamiyama		Ryō HigakiApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Motoko's GHOST squad is apprehended by a US Delta Force cyborg squad. An American agent calling himself John Smith hires GHOST for a rescue mission, and has them perform a variety of VR training exercises, while secretly planning to have them killed afterwards. Meanwhile, Togusa tries to contact the old PSS9 members, and he follows the trail to California, eventually meeting with one of Motoko's Tachikoma.
4"SACRIFICIAL PAWN - Emissary from the Divide"
Transcription: "Bunkai yori no shisha" (Japanese: 分界よりの使者)		Takayuki HamanaKurasumi SunayamaApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Togusa accidentally helps John Smith confirm GHOST's identities while being warned not to dig any further. Motoko's Tachikoma ask Togusa to help repair their damaged comrade. Aramaki finds out the NSA is using GHOST, but can't recover them through his contacts, forcing him to ask the Prime Minister to intervene. GHOST is dropped into action near Beverly Hills, where they realize their target is a robotics entrepreneur named Patrick Huge, and that the mission is not a rescue but an abduction.
5"PATRICK HUGE - Gift from God"
Transcription: "Kami kara no okurimono" (Japanese: 神からの贈り物)		Shinji Itadaki
Shinji Aramaki		Ryō HigakiApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Motoko's GHOST squad infiltrates the home of Patrick Huge but is unable to apprehend him, as he inexplicably dodges all their gunfire and most of their attacks. After fighting through Huge's security robots, the team fights Huge himself, equipped with an armored suit. The team manages to disable the suit and Motoko tries to dive into Huge's cyberbrain, then orders Saito to shoot Huge in the head before she loses herself. As John Smith and Delta Force operatives plan to kill everyone there, John is ordered to stand down by the President as Aramaki appears to escort PSS9 back home.
6"DISCLOSURE - Quantized Gospel"
Transcription: "Ryōshika sareta fukuin" (Japanese: 量子化された福音)		Tensai OkamuraHarumi DokiApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
John Smith confirms that Patrick Huge was the "Good 1%er" supplying the bandits with weapons, then escorts the GHOST squad to a secret government facility where he is holding Gary Harts, a retired US Army Master Sergeant and the first known "Posthuman" who almost single-handedly launched a nuclear missile at Moscow until he was rendered inert by a lucky shot to the head. However, the supposedly brain-dead Gary uses coded messages to perform a buffer overflow attack on the facility's emergency systems, taking control of the security robots. Motoko orders Batou to kill Gary before he can escape his confinement.
7"PIE IN THE SKY - First Bank Robbery"
Transcription: "Hajimete no ginkō gōtō" (Japanese: はじめての銀行強盗)		Norihiro NaganumaHarumi DokiApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Batou heads to a bank in Fukuoka to deposit his earnings from his work with GHOST, but suddenly finds himself embroiled in a bank robbery concocted by a few senior citizens who lost their retirement funds in the Simultaneous Global Default. After listening to their stories, Batou decides to help them by depositing his funds at the bank, then using his account to short-sell a cryptocurrency using the branch manager's terminal before the SAT storm the building to rescue them. The seniors split their funds, the branch manager gets blamed for the cryptocurrency's crash, and Batou reunites with PSS9.
8"ASSEMBLE - What Came About as a Result of Togusa's Death"
Transcription: "Togusa no shi ni yotte motarasareru jishō" (Japanese: トグサの死によってもたらされる事象)		Michio Fukuda
Shinji Aramaki		Daisuke Daitō
Kenji Kamiyama		April 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
PSS9 meets with Japanese PM Tate and John Smith, who informs the group there are 14 known Posthumans around the globe (including the two killed earlier) and three of them are in Japan, but there is no footage of them after they transformed. Aramaki offers to let each member decide if they want to work with PSS9 on this new case. Motoko tasks Togusa with rooting out the mole in Tate's office. After Togusa roots out the identity of the group spying on Tate, PSS9 gets their requested budget and collectively decides to take on the Posthuman case.
9"IDENTITY THEFT - The Lonely Struggle"
Transcription: "Hitorikiri no tōsō" (Japanese: 一人きりの闘争)		Tensai OkamuraDai Satō
Kenji Kamiyama		April 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Sanji Yaguchi, a boxer turned Posthuman, is spotted in Fukuoka killing a bureaucrat with his fist alone. Purin compiles data suggesting that Sanji has been serially murdering immigrants and refugees linked to Tokyo reconstruction projects. Tate's father-in-law, who runs the company profiting from the reconstruction, is soon killed in a similar manner. Tate decides to lure Sanji out by making himself the bait. Motoko and Batou work together to take down Sanji. Motoko wonders why Sanji didn't immediately attack Tate, as John Smith takes Sanji into his custody.
10"NET PEOPLE - What Led to the Hate Mob"
Transcription: "Enjō ni itaru riyū" (Japanese: 炎上に至る理由)		Masayuki MiyajiKurasumi SunayamaApril 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Purin is on the case of a mid-manager who died at an airport when 3 million hackers were somehow directed to attack his cyberbrain at the same time. She tracks down a suspect named Koji, who leads her to a master hacker called the "Nameless King." The King tells Purin about their program "Think Pol," used to enact mob justice on a chosen target remotely, when Motoko finds out the King is a highschool student named Uotori. Uotori tells Motoko that someone else from his middle school wrote the original program, but he spun off Think Pol to "democratize" it. Suddenly, the program chooses Tate as its next target, forcing PSS9 to spring into action and save him.
11"EDGELORD - Revolution of the 14-Year-Olds"
Transcription: "14-sai kakumei" (Japanese: 14歳革命)		Tensai OkamuraHarumi Doki
Kenji Kamiyama		April 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
Motoko and Togusa begin investigating the original Think Pol developer, a Posthuman boy named Takashi Shimamura, and visit his old home to interview his mother. In the past, Takashi developed Think Pol and successfully used it to kill a teacher suspected of abusing a female classmate and leading to her death. After Motoko and Togusa leave, Takashi's mother finds Takashi somehow left his favorite blanket on the desk with a letter to her.
12"NOSTALGIA - All Will Become N."
Transcription: "Subete ga N ni naru." (Japanese: 全てがNになる。)		Sōichi MasuiDaisuke Daitō
Kenji Kamiyama		April 23, 2020 (2020-04-23)
While analyzing code written by Takashi, Togusa stumbles over a program meant to awaken forgotten memories. Togusa and Batou decide to follow their last lead to an old, abandoned village in Kyoto, where Takashi briefly stayed with his uncle. Upon arriving in the village, Togusa begins seeing some of Takashi's older memories: meeting a JSDF Ranger, reading a translated copy of George Orwell's 1984, and witnessing a gunfight where a stray bullet took the life of his cousin Yuzu. At the end, the memory of Takashi offers Togusa a spot on the truck. Batou suddenly loses sight of Togusa as the Tachikoma wave goodbye to him.

Reception

The first season of the anime has received a mixed critical reception.

A negative Polygon review states that there's "none of the visceral aesthetics or mood that made Ghost in the Shell an indelible element of how we think about our interconnected lives."[7] Writing for The A.V. Club, Toussaint Egan rated the series a C-, calling the action sequences "awful" and opining that "as wonderful as it is to return to this series’ interpretations of Major Kusanagi and company after more than a decade away, you'd be better off dusting off Stand Alone Complex DVDs and give this one a pass."[8] Kayla Cobb of Decider wrote "time and time again SAC_2045 ignores the deeper path and chooses instead point and drool."[9] Theron Martin of Anime News Network wrote that the series was "easily the weakest entry in the franchise so far" despite the existence of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.[10]

References
  1. "Netflix Lists Ghost in the Shell: SAC _2045 As "English Dub…Pending" On Day Of Release". Bubble Blabber. April 23, 2020. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  2. "Ghost in the Shell Gets New Anime From Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki". Anime News Network. Retrieved 8 April 2017.
  3. https://comicbook.com/anime/news/netflix-ghost-in-the-shell-sac-2045-trailer-anime/
  4. Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 3DCG Anime's Characters Designed by Birthday Wonderland's Ilya Kuvshinov, Anime News Network, retrieved 12 June 2019
  5. Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Anime Reveals New Clip, Confirms 2nd Season, Anime News Network, retrieved 20 April 2020
  6. "Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Anime Reveals Trailer, New Cast, April 23 Debut". Anime News Network. March 21, 2020. Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  7. Genecov, Max (24 April 2020). "Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 is an action-heavy sequel to a once-thoughtful anime". Polygon. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  8. Egan, Toussaint. "Netflix's Ghost In The Shell: SAC_2045 is a tepid, techno spy thriller". AV Club. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  9. Cobb, Kayla (23 April 2020). "Stream It Or Skip It: 'Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045', Netflix's New Take on an Anime Classic". Decider. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  10. Martin, Thereon (27 April 2020). "Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045". Anime News Network. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
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