If you've seen the original Ghost in the Shell (1996)—about a cyborg cop investigating a corporate criminal who turns out to be a machine that is trying to become human—you may have an upper hand in understanding Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.
But then again, maybe not. Like Akira and its many other anime predecessors, Ghost in the Shell 2 is overwhelmingly beautiful and completely baffling.
In the year 2032, cyborg detective Batou begins investigating a gynoid (a female robot created for sexual companionship) who malfunctions and slaughters three people. This investigation leads to much higher levels of corruption.
In one stunning sequence, Batou and his human partner enter a building booby-trapped with several different virtual realty scenarios and must find the code to shut it down.
As written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, Ghost in the Shell 2 is never less than spectacular. It seamlessly combines sophisticated hand-drawn animation with computer-rendered backgrounds, especially in the final showdown: a battle with a battalion of half-built girl robots, their plastic body parts clacking against the metal grating and their creepy, expressionless eyes gazing ever forward.
The movie is purposely ambiguous about who is mechanical and who is organic. After a chain-smoking woman has shown many human traits, she suddenly opens up her synthetic face to reveal a whirring mechanism inside.
Ghost in the Shell 2 has a cluttered thickness that perhaps helps drive home the film's theme: what does it mean to be human? The dialogue chatters on a bit too much, and frankly, most of the experience involves reading the English subtitles. Yet, small moments in the film—such as an ongoing argument about the type of food Batou feeds his pet dog—resonate on a non-machine level. This vague imprint of human hands makes all the difference.