Shirow Masamune Works Shirow Masamune/Works Bio

Well, he has his own forum, he derserves a appericaition thread/biography on him.

Masamune Shirow is a manga artist of international renown. His real name is Masanori Ota (born November 23, 1961). "Masamune Shirow" is a pen name, based on a famous swordsmith, Masamune. He is best known for the manga Ghost in the Shell, which has since been turned into two anime movies, an anime TV series and several video games.

Born in the Hyōgo Prefecture capital city of Kobe, he studied oil painting at Osaka University of Arts. While in college, he developed an interest in manga, which lead him to create his own complete work, Black Magic, which was published in the manga fanzine Atlas. His work caught the eye of Seishinsha President Harumichi Aoki, who offered to publish him.

The result was Appleseed, a full volume of densely-plotted drama taking place in an ambiguous future. The story was a sensation, and won the 1986 Seiun Award for Best Manga. After a professional reprint of Black Magic and a second volume of Appleseed, he released Dominion in 1986. Two more volumes of Appleseed followed before he began work on Ghost in the Shell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirow_Masamune

Appleseed:

Appleseed (Japanese: アップルシ－ド) is a science fiction manga created by Masamune Shirow which, like much of his work, merges elements of the cyberpunk and mecha genres with a heavy dosage of politics, philosophy, and sociology. As of 2005, four books have been released between 1985 and 1989. There have also been a several adaptations for TV, film and video games.

Originally published in Japan in 1985, Book One Appleseed: The Promethean Challenge was published directly to paperback instead of being serialized, a rarity in the Japanese manga market. This was soon followed by the publication of Book Two, Appleseed: Prometheus Unbound, Book Three Appleseed: The Scales of Prometheus in 1987, and Book Four Appleseed: The Promethean Balance in 1989.

In 1986, Appleseed won the Seiun Award — the Japanese equivalent of the Hugo Award — for Best Manga.

In 1990, Shirow produced the Appleseed Databook, a detailed look into history, people, and technology of the world of Appleseed.

From 1988 to 1992, Appleseed was published in English by Eclipse Comics, packaged by Studio Proteus. The manga is currently published by Dark Horse Comics.

Appleseed Hypernotes was released in 1996 as a collected volume in Japan. It consisted of a four chapter story followed by technical information about the world, mechs, and equipment much like Appleseed Databook. Originally published in Comic Gaia in serial form, it was reprinted for readers in the United States in Super Manga Blast (issues 25-36), a Dark Horse Comics publication. According to Anime Tourist, an online manga news site, one of the terms for Hypernotes publication stated that Appleseed Hypernotes could not be released in English as a collected format. The reason for this is because Shirow was unsatisfied with the work and wanted to fix it before releasing it as a complete book for English readers. It has been said that Appleseed Hypernotes was Book Five of the Appleseed series.

Shirow has stated that he originally planned the series to be composed of a total of ten books, but currently has made no plans to continue the series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleseed

 

Ghost in the Shell
Spoilers!

Set in the 21st century, Ghost in the Shell is superficially a futuristic spy thriller, dealing with the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi (草薙素子 Kusanagi Motoko), a member of the covert operations section of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission, Section 9, which specializes in fighting technology-related crime. Although supposedly equal to all other members, Kusanagi fills the leadership role in the team, and is usually referred to as "Major" due to her past rank in the armed forces. She is almost completely mechanized, save her brain and a single spinal cord segment, capable of superhuman feats, and specialized for her job.

The setting of Ghost in the Shell is distinctively cyberpunk or postcyberpunk, similar to that of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy and other post/cyberpunk works, though Shirow's work is focused more tightly on the ethical and philosophical ramifications of the widespread merging of humanity and technology. The development of artificial intelligence and an omnipresent computer network set the stage for a reevaluation of human identity and uniqueness. The manga in particular tackles these questions head on: Kusanagi and her colleagues face external threats and also suffer internal conflict over their own natures.

The overarching story of the manga (and the only story of the first movie) is of the hunt for a cyber-criminal, Top Secret Project 2501 AKA "The Puppet Master", real identity unknown, who commits a large number of crimes through a single modus operandi: "ghost hacking", breaking into and taking control of human minds. As the agents of Section 9 start to unravel the mystery of the Puppet Master, it becomes clear that it is no ordinary criminal, but a unique autonomous artificial intelligence project created by, and escaped from, the same government Section 9 serves, and wanting a real body and a human identity. Kusanagi, although initially skeptical, finally agrees to allow the Puppet Master to merge with her own consciousness, sharing her body, in what is no doubt intended to raise even more questions about the nature of human identity in a world where human consciousness is no longer unique.

The manga is also notable for the proliferance of footnotes and commentary by Shirow himself on both the technology and the socio-political background of the setting (in the complete, English language graphic novel edition, these take up more than 30 pages).


The philosophy of Ghost in the Shell

Ghosts

Colloquial slang term for an individual's mind or essence of being. In the futuristic society of Ghost in the Shell, the term has scientifically redefined the "soul", or ghost, as what differentiates a human being from a biological robot. Regardless of how much biological material is replaced with electronic or mechanical substitutes, as long as an individual retains their ghost, they retain their humanity and individuality.

The concept of ghost was borrowed by Masamune Shirow from the essay of structuralism The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler. The title The Ghost in the Machine itself was originally words used by a British philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, mocking the paradox of the conventional Cartesian dualism and Dualism in general. Koestler, like Ryle, denies the Cartesian dualism and resorts the origin of human mind to the physical condition of the brain.

Shirow follows this course of philosophy of denying dualism in his work. Based on Koestler's idea, in Ghost in the Shell, Shirow defines in a broader context ghost not simply as a physical trait, but a phase or rather vaguely a phenomenon that appears in a system of a certain level of complexity. The brain itself is only part of the whole neural network; so if an organ is removed from a body for instance, the autonomic nerve of the organ and consequently its ghost will vanish unless the stimulus of the existence of the organ is re-produced thoroughly realistically by a certain mechanical substitution. This could be compared to an analogy of a person with innate hearing disability being unable to understand the concept of "hearing" unless taught.

In Ghost in the Shell, Kusanagi completely reproduces her stimulus of her entire organs including internal organs to maintain her ghost. In case of a technical transferring of a ghost from one body to another, the attempt normally results in failure since the ghost tends to deteriorate due to either the difference of system at the material level or the deficiency of the transferring protocol. The Puppet Master manages not to deteriorate its ghost when merging with Kusanagi because his system is the body of information itself, thereby avoiding a deterioration due to the deficiency at material level.

Hegel's concept of Geist may also be related.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Another interpretation of the fusion of Kusanagi and the Puppet Master is more analogous to the concept of Birth where two separate entities create a third entity which is not the same as either of the originating Ghosts/DNA sets but shares common traits. The Puppet Master does not wish to merely save himself from termination, to do so he could simply ask Kusanagi to give him shared space in her memory cores that she could offload later into another robotic receptacle. He quite specifically asks her to fuse her "ghost" or "soul" with his own, a form of marriage/birth in which the resultant being is neither the Puppet Master nor Kusanagi but a new being entirely. This touches upon concepts of birth, immortality through progeny, and the union of two ghosts/people in the creation of progeny.

Throughout the story the cyborg characters, being more or less a human brain with a manufactured body, contemplate individually and together what being human really is, and how a soul or ghost is truly defined. The Puppet Master is an AI, yet they recognize traits and personality within his mind structure that are clearly analogous to a human soul or ghost image. They cannot discount this similiarity as it is very clearly analysed by their medical scanning tools when they first capture the Puppet Master. The members of Section 9 must re-evaluate their own tenuous hold on the idea of humanity and "I", when faced with a being who clearly is self directed and has a ghost but was originated as a complex program not a DNA organism.

 

Continued.........

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AI as a step in Evolution

A very important concept within this work is that evolution is the process of fusing (procreation) two sets of data(DNA) in order to create a 3rd set of data which contains the most vital elements of the original organisms along with some element of chance. the Puppet Master has evolved beyond DNA as a data set and thus to procreate (his true desire and purpose for leaving the net in the first place) this new organism (a soul not born of DNA) a new paradigm of data merging needs to be contemplated for which he has sought Kusanagi out. This is a merger of two operating "souls" or "ghosts" into one mind, which is specifically different than birth while being analogous to it at the same time.

Extended sequences in an old museum in the film version cintemplate life as an evolutionary step to creating AI, differring significantly from the content of the same sequence in the manga.

De-Ghosting

One of the consequences of this revelation is a final resolution of the nature versus nurture debate in criminology. When a criminal is convicted of a crime in Masamune Shirow's future world, a detailed technical analysis is done of the subject. If it is discovered that the crime was committed due to a material defect in either the biological or electronic components of the convict's brain, the defect is repaired and the convict is released. If, instead, the crime is determined to have been the result of an individual's ghost, then there is only one cure: the removal of the portion of the brain that communicates with the soul, thereby de-ghosting the criminal and preventing any possibility of future criminal behavior.
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Tachikoma/Fuchikoma

Tachikoma (they are called Tachikoma in Stand Alone Complex, but called Fuchikoma in the original Manga) are artificially intelligent mini-tanks (walkers) employed by Section 9. Because of the demands of field duty, these robots are constructed with extremely flexible, adaptable AIs that lack many of the safeguards present in other artificially intelligent robots. While this enables them to behave unpredictably and flexibly, it also presents difficulties for the members of Section 9, who must monitor the Fuchikoma closely for signs of undesirable emotional development.

The underlying statement here is that predictable behavior results in inherent weakness. Section 9, as an organization, needs heterogeneity and even organic weakness if it is to survive. "A machine where all the parts respond the same way is a brittle tool."
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Cyberbrain warfare/Ghost hacking

Cyberbrain warfare is the practice of employing ghost hacking as a means of gaining access to an opponent's cyberbrain, and ultimately, their ghost. A successful cyberhacker can intercept, censor, or augment the sensory information being received by a victim, or even go so far as to destroy or rewrite complete memories.

Cyberbrain warfare is portrayed as a natural consequence of the integration of cybernetic and wireless communication technology directly into the human brain. Despite the apparent risks, even the most paranoid characters in the story find the benefits of directly networking their brains to be indispensable.

Apparently, any conduit by which information is absorbed by the brain can be exploited for ghost hacking. Shirow envisions the use of firewalls for protecting the ghost against attack, and multiple layers of encryption.
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Movie adaptation

Directed by Mamoru Oshii, the movie adaptation of Ghost in the Shell is highly atmospheric and slow-paced compared with the manga. Whereas the characters in the manga are portrayed as more convivially silly, Oshii's screenplay is written in a far more serious manner. In addition, Oshii was required to shorten the manga considerably in order to fit it into 115 minutes of screen time. As a result the film focuses almost exclusively on the 'Puppet Master Plot', excluding the several subplots covered in the manga.

Some found the result of this conversion superficial, confusing, and dull. Others argued that it removed much of Shirow's "obsessive fannishness", added focus to the story, and made for a more artistically pleasing and mature effort than the original.

The film was lauded as one of the first animes to seamlessly blend computer and cel animation. The soundtrack is of a classical Japanese style.


Although purists of Manga may consider the movie to be inferior, distilling 8 manga issues into the length of a feature, it ranks among sci fi fans as a serious pinnacle of speculative fiction in movies.

One of the first Anime features to "cross over" to the sci fi adherents not typically associated or exposed to manga/anime, Ghost in the Shell managed to convert large numbers of sci fi audiences to the possibilities of Anime as an art form, a feat accomplished by only one other sci fi anime feature - Akira. Its deep philosophical subject matter, beautiful textures and backdrops, and subsuming of technology to the emotional/spiritual concerns of the individual characters have earned it a place amongst some of the greatest sci fi movies of all time. Many viewers could easily rank Ghost in the Shell as being at the same level of aesthetic excellence as Blade Runner, the first Alien movie, or 2001.

As a side note regarding Oshii's condensation of the manga, consider the dense Philip K. **** novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" which Blade Runner is based on and see how many of Mr. ****'s many detailed subplots actually make it into the movie.

Oshii's adaptation of the manga is filled with awe inspiring cinematic sequences containing depth, detail, focus and perspective previously unrealized in movie Anime as an art form. The musical score, although perhaps grating at first to western ears, is deep and emotional, and the attention to detail in weather/crowds/technological implementations/etc. is far beyond the simplified action sequences and economical guerilla animation style used by anime features previous to this work.


Related projects

A continuation (somewhat) of the manga and first movie storyline can be found in the second part of the manga entitled Ghost in the Shell 2: Man/Machine Interface.

One self-titled console game has already been produced for the series, developed by Exact and published by THQ. A second one bearing the series title Stand Alone Complex was released in November 2004, developed by SCEJ and Cavia and published by Bandai.


A second feature, Ghost in the Shell:Innocence has been released by Oshii which places the character of Batou in the lead role. A beautiful film, filled with depth and philosophical ponderings, it takes its basic plot from a single chapter (Robot Rondo) of the original manga and yet stands alone as an evolution of Anime in film and a definitive sequel to the original film feature. It was a nominee at Cannes in 2004 for best picture.


Impact and influence
Major Kusanagi using optical camouflage (from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex)
Enlarge
Major Kusanagi using optical camouflage (from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex)

Like other pioneering sci-fi works, Ghost in the Shell has made a significant impact in fiction and the real world alike. The Matrix, a very successful 1999 sci-fi action movie, contains imagery apparently influenced by this movie (and other anime also). For example, the opening scene with green digits resembles the opening in Ghost in the Shell. During the opening scene in which Trinity flees the Agents, the shot of the Agent landing on the roof is almost identical to a shot of Kusanagi during the pursuit of the first 'puppet'. Also, the cut where the first puppet is fleeing Batou in the market and a similar cut where Neo is fleeing the trio Agents in a real life market are linked by exploding watermelons and terrified civilians amongst crossfire (although Neo is not armed). There is also a clear relation between the conception of the Matrix and the cybernetically enhanced brains of Ghost in the Shell. (The Wachowski brothers, makers of the Matrix trilogy, admitted the influence of Ghost in the Shell in an interview.

Another impact is the real-life development of optical camouflage as worn by Kusanagi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell

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Still editing mistakes, info issues, etc.

 

Dominion: Tank Police

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(manga)

Need info, PM me.