When the live-action Ghost in the Shell film came out in 2017, I wrote this long-form reflection to answer a question that still feels relevant today: How do we imagine the future?
The article begins with Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass, then delves into themes of technology, aesthetics, social control, free will, and how we might co-exist with ‘the future.’ Looking back now, I find the questions it raises are more resonant than ever. So I translated the article into English and repost it here.
🔽 Full article below
The live-action Ghost in the Shell feels like a mixed-race child who hasn’t yet found its identity. Though the Hollywood-style storyline is self-consistent, with impressive set design and several fine details, it fails to unify all the elements well. Ironically, the film’s best moments are those that recreate scenes from Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 animated movie — so powerful that they often outshine the main plot.
The Unease of Remakes: The Live-Action Ghost in the Shell
In the past, we only revered Hollywood. However, today we’ve been exposed to a broader range of flavors. Just as Hong Kong directors are moving north to adapt, Hollywood is slowly incorporating these new tastes. The live-action Ghost in the Shell combines elements from the 1995 Oshii version, the 2004 sequel film Innocence, and a hint of Kenji Kamiyama’s TV series into a single Hollywood-style narrative.
If this were an adaptation of another comic, that would be enough. But this is Ghost in the Shell, one of my all-time favorites! After leaving the theater, all I remembered were the Hong Kong-inspired cityscapes, reminiscent of Blade Runner yet still spectacular. All the characters, however, seemed to stay behind in the shell of the cinema. (That said, some shots were excellent, like the aerial sequence of Section 9’s raid.)
That visual style owes a great deal to the impression of future cities instilled in us by Blade Runner: cities permanently shrouded in night, corporations replacing governments, majestic skylines, messy street views, and information overload (mostly from monopolistic corporations), symbolized by enormous screens. (A fun detail: the director replaced the geisha with a weird Japanese man spitting koi fish—subverting Blade Runner‘s iconic silent mouth-moving ad.)
The only issue is that Rupert Sanders’ visual metaphors are too intentional. I could tell exactly what emotions he wanted us to feel in each scene. (So when I learned that Motoko’s mother lived in a building called “Avalon,” with circular design and no digital screens—a “primitive”, ” frozen-in-time” home—it didn’t surprise me.) This reveals a loss of imagination — both in world-building and in small, everyday details.
The Internet Is No Longer Vast and Infinite—It’s Getting Narrower
In 1995, the Internet was just starting to be commercialized. Mamoru Oshii cleverly built his future city on top of the chaotic, data-saturated colonial city of Hong Kong, already a cyberpunk haven, and infused it with the symbolism of “water.” This zen-like metaphor suggested the flow of information: a city surrounded by rivers, its high-rises and backstreets built along the waterfront, visually conveying the Puppet Master’s philosophy that “life is a node born in the flow of information.”
In contrast, the city in the live-action film feels like a game backdrop. You can’t tell how its districts (city center, Avalon Apartments, and the Lawless Zone—what a video game name) are spatially or socially connected.
Another issue is how much weaker Section 9 is at “using the tech” compared to their animated counterparts. In the TV series, once a suspect is neutralized, the next step is to hack their cyberbrain and trace the mastermind, often leading to thrilling digital battles. In the live-action version, aside from one Inception-style deep dive, Section 9 behaves more like mercenaries, charging in, killing everyone, and then standing confused in a scene with no evidence left.
Worse still, the film omits two major elements: the awakened, disembodied AI (the Puppet Master) and the Tachikomas—machines without ghosts but with mechanical bodies, which severely diminishes the depth and scope of its exploration of self and existence.
By the film’s end, I still don’t understand why Hanka Corporation created a cybernetic body like Motoko’s or funded Section 9. Nor do I understand what Section 9 even does in this version.
In a world where memories can be stored outside the body—and even altered to control behavior—tying everything together with the existential line “What I do makes who I am” feels arbitrary and insecure.
One day, I was chatting with a friend who loves anime and sci-fi. We discussed the live-action Ghost in the Shell and then moved on to other near-future stories, including Philip K. Dick’s novels, as well as Paprika, Summer Wars, and others. My friend said Japanese speculative fiction feels more “believable”, like it’s just around the corner. American ones, by contrast, feel distant. “By the time they arrive,” she said, “we’d probably already be dead.”
For me, Japan feels like a country with a strong sense of futurism. Classic American sci-fi often begins with a grand thesis and builds an entire world to test that idea, much like thought experiments in political philosophy. Japanese sci-fi animation, on the other hand, often begins with a social issue and introduces a “nonexistent but plausible technology” to address it, more akin to thought experiments in sociology.
Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel like an experiment—it’s just reality emerging. Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid, once said:
“In 2017, you can no longer whisper ‘the net is vast and infinite’ and shake people like Motoko Kusanagi did 20 years ago. In 1995, the Internet was a mysterious new realm. Today, it isn’t exciting. Smartphones keep us glued to the internet 24/7. For us, the net is no longer vast and infinite.”
He’s right. I recently read an article about Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web. His goal was to decentralize information, making it freely accessible to all. Today’s tech giants, however, build walls to monopolize user data for profit — cutting off access to outsiders. (WeChat, with its restrictions on external links and search engines, is a prime example.)
It forces us back to the pre-World Wide Web era, where gathering information means learning a range of incompatible platforms. Many of us, especially in China, are used to this now.
William Gibson said, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” I used to think he meant futuristic lifestyles can already be found in real life. But now I believe he meant something deeper: the future — whether it’s Jules Verne’s optimistic vision or Philip K. Dick’s chaotic, drug-fueled dystopias — arrives not in dramatic fashion, but through gradual immersion. One day, the passengers on Theseus’ ship look up and realize they’ve become part of the ship.
And often, that reality is less thrilling than fiction.
Reconciling with the Future: The Third Path in Psycho-Pass
After that chat, my friend recommended the sci-fi anime Psycho-Pass to me. Set over a century into the future, after world wars have shattered the global order, Japan alone remains civilized, thanks to a system akin to Minority Report: the Sibyl System.
Sibyl measures each person’s “psycho-pass,” a psychological index that determines personality and mental state, represented as a color. Based on this, the system recommends careers, partners, and life paths.
The most important metric is the “Crime Coefficient” — a person’s potential to commit crimes. People are categorized as ordinary citizens, latent criminals, or targets for elimination. The Public Safety Bureau enforces this, using “Dominators”, a weapons that scan a target’s psycho-pass and decide whether to lock, stun, or execute.
This all-in-one legislative, judicial, and enforcement system screams dystopia. Viewers familiar with 1984, Brave New World, or We will recognize the red flags. The show even has characters who remember life before Sibyl, criticizing society’s blind obedience.
But as the series progresses, especially into Season 2 and the movies, it becomes clear that Psycho-Pass isn’t just about free will. It invites us to rethink the concept of dystopia itself. Yes, Sibyl is built on the exclusion of certain individuals, much like modern capitalism and its consumer/enslaved person states, as described in the Ghost in the Shell TV series. It robs many of autonomy and motivation, some even become vegetative due to a lack of pressure.
Yet the system is absolutely fair. So long as it functions, everyone—eventually including Sibyl itself—is monitored. Most people get matched with suitable work and partners. It’s the perfect technocratic bureaucracy.
Even more interestingly, the show foreshadows today’s discourse on machine learning and system evolution. Isaac Asimov once said intelligent beings will reshape the world to suit their needs. Humans build societies for humans; robots will build societies for robots, which may not suit us.
Replace “robots” with “governance systems,” and that explains why most utopias turn dystopian. (Chaos theory and Murphy’s Law help too—Plato’s Republic just isn’t feasible.)
The protagonist, Akane Tsunemori, chooses a third path—not to accept or destroy Sibyl, but to evolve alongside it. She injects humanity into the system through debate and action, guiding it to serve the public better. In that sense, the live-action Ghost in the Shell’s Dr. Ouelet’s line about Motoko: “She has a soul, machines don’t. She is the first of her kind,” applies equally to Akane’s vision.
Maybe Psycho-Pass shouldn’t be called Cyberpunk anymore. In a world where we often discuss reconciling with ourselves, life, and the past, perhaps we also need to reconcile with the future.
Because the future won’t be a utopia, but it won’t be a pure dystopia either. It’s just the future—a time slice in a process of coevolution. Even with Sibyl, we still face the question: “Who am I, and how do I want to live?” That’s both the gift and the burden of free will.
