When a bird dies there is grief, when a fish dies there is none.

I just finished watching an incredibly blurry (read handcam) version of Ghost in the Shell 2. Let's see...well first off I'm getting ever more confused about the canon-worthiness of the animated material based on the manga Shirow wrote. I mean I have not seen the second half of the tv series (licensing issues), I have only seen bits and pieces of the original movie, but the second movie is...almost taken straight out of a story from the FIRST manga compilation by Dark Horse. Granted, there are a bazillion differences, such as Motoko is already just a ghost without a body (fused with the puppeteer already), but I mean the underlying case is the same, love dolls with dubbed ghosts going berserk (Girls ask one of the inspectors to sabatoge the robots to get a message out.) Some other changes is that the factory lies in a gigantic submarine and the process of hunting it down takes quite a few side roads, including going through the mansion of an old hacker who starts looping Batou and Togusa's memories.

Also..one of the last lines Batou said...in the manga is "Did you think noone would get hurt?" which refers to the human victims (who admittedly were using slave dolls from shady sources.) However, in the movie, Batou's line changes to "Did you think of the victims, not the humans who were killed, but the robots who did not want ghosts?" This is what my topic refers to...as it means those without voices get sympathy, those without can not.

It's hard thinking of this movie as a continuation, just because so many story elements are the same as the story in the FIRST ghost in the shell manga volume. I guess I have to see the actual first movie and maybe the rest of the animated series. AND I have to start attempting to translate my Manmachine Interface or wait for others to do it.

On the issue of robot and human...there's quite a bit of talking about it, and I guess this case is as good as any to start examining the differences. But geez even the tv show had their version of this story (ghost dubbing), except it was a Che Guevara guerilla type figure who was being copied.

I guess I found it hard to really enjoy the deepness of this movie, precisely because of the rehashing of the main plot, and also because the definite lack of Motoko. Ghost in the Shell Manga 2 Manmachine interface is almost completely about her and her new form, and I really want to read and understand it. (Unfortunately the Japanese is ridiculous.)

It is pretty though, and for people who haven't read the original manga back to front over and over (it's like one of my oldest ones) it's a good plot.