Volume 2 of the Deluxe Edition of Ghost in the Shell gets the same love as the first, though the plot is a little more convoluted.
Creative Staff
Story: Shirow Masamune
Art: Shirow Masamune
Translation/Adaptation: Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith
What They Say
This hardcover edition of The Ghost In the Shell volume 2 features story and art by Shirow Masamune.
The long-awaited sequel to Shirow Masamune’s groundbreaking The Ghost in the Shell, and one of the most highly anticipated graphic novel events in many years, “Man-Machine Interface” is Shirow’s most ambitious and complex story yet, with deep forays into philosophy and the meaning of artificial life, intelligence, and existence. Utilizing awe-inspiring digital effects on a level never before seen in the annals of graphic fiction, Shirow has raised the bar for what can be achieved, page after page!
This deluxe edition will mark the first time the book has been published in its original Japanese right-to-left format in English and was supervised by the creator. This will be the definitive edition of The Ghost in the Shell.
Released simultaneously with new deluxe editions of the other two books in the original series.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I have loved the Ghost in the Shell series since I was first able to see the movie way back in 1995, and I count the two TV series among the best anime ever produced. But no matter how much I loved it, I’d never taken the opportunity to sit down and read the manga. With the re-release of the entire series in three glorious, hardcover volumes, I have now done just that. Volume 2 collects one of the two follow-ups to the original 1989 manga in one book. This particular storyline was written at the same time as Volume 1.5 and was published chapter-by-chapter in Young Magazine in Japan from 1991-1997. Both Volumes 2 and 1.5 use the first volume as a jumping off point for their respective stories and are otherwise independent of one another. So there is no true continuity as to which one comes first. Either one can be read before the other. For this review, I read this volume before 1.5.
The volume is hardcover, and the comic is printed on a high quality, heavy-weight paper. For the first time in the US, the comic is printed in its original Japanese, right-to-left format. Like the first volume, parts of this volume are printed in color, while the rest is in black-and-white. However, the ratio of color-to-black and white here is weighted a lot more towards the color. The printing is clean, and the full color pages look glorious. With the first volume, I really wished the whole thing had been done in color, and with the much higher percentage of color pages in this volume, I really feel that way. In fact, while the color was a nice bonus in the first volume, there’s so much color in this one that it is a bit distracting when it switches to black and white. Again, I understand why they did it, but it’s still a shame. Still, though, overall, this is a really well done package for this manga. Very high quality throughout the entire volume.
The end of the first volume ends with the Major merging her ghost with the consciousness known as The Puppeteer and disappearing into the underworld, leaving Section 9 behind. As this volume opens up, she has gone into business for herself, selling her services as she sees fit. Now going by the name Mokoto Aramaki, she takes a job as a security expert to investigate a series of incidents of bioterrorism against a multinational conglomerate that clones human organs for transplants. While trying to find the perpetrators, she uncovers a complex web that shows that those in charge of the company might be just as complicit in illegalities as those attacking the company, and so she takes matters into her own hands to discover just what the truth is.
As much as I loved the first volume of Ghost in the Shell, I found this one a little weird to read. I still really enjoyed it, but I found it kind of awkward as well for a few reasons. The first one is the complete lack of most of the characters that I’ve come to really enjoy through reading the first volume and watching all of the anime. As Mokoto has left Section 9, none of the S-9 crew show up in this volume (aside from a brief cameo by Aramaki and Boma at the beginning and end of the story). As Mokoto is the main character of the series, that shouldn’t be a big deal; but the farther I read into this volume, the more I found I missed them. This was exacerbated by the fact that Mokoto has and often utilizes many other bodies around the world, none of which look anything like the classic image of the Major. She shows up in her “real” body at the beginning, and then rarely again for the rest of the volume. With the complete lack of any recognizable characters, it was really easy to forget sometimes that I was reading Ghost in the Shell. It all felt disconnected.
The bigger issue for me, though, is that this volume goes hardcore into cyberpunk. And what I mean by that, is that it goes hardcore into the philosophizing of the meaning of humanity. The first volume discusses it some, but focuses a bit more on the various crimes S-9 are investigating as well as the search for The Puppeteer. This volume loses itself in the philosophy, and it does so in a virtual environment where it’s easy to question whether anything we’re seeing is real. I love this about the anime, but I had a really hard time following it in the manga. For much of the last one hundred plus pages of the volume, I completely lost the thread of the philosophy and had to re-read many pages quite a few times. And I still don’t really have it. I feel like this is something I need to read quite a few times before I completely get it, but I’m certainly not there yet.
Because of this, I actually spent a little more time with the footnotes in this volume than I did the last in the hopes that they would help me put the puzzle together, but they honestly just made it worse. Again, this isn’t to mean that I didn’t enjoy the volume, but there were some frustrating aspects to it that I haven’t quite figured out yet.
In Summary
Volume 2 of Ghost in the Shell gives us a little more of the philosophy that has made Ghost in the Shell so famous and a little less of everything else. Because of this, it was a bit of an awkward read for me. I still enjoyed it, but I had trouble following it a bit too. I’m sure plenty of people won’t, and it’s still definitely a must read if you are a fan of the series. But be ready for this one to be a bit more challenging than some of the other entries in the series. Recommended.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: M 18+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: February 21, 2017
MSRP: $29.99
