Posted in: Anime, Netflix, TV | Tagged: anime, cyberpunk, ghost in the shell, ghost in the shell sac 2045, kenji kamiyama, mamoru oshii, manga, Masamune Shirow, netflix, neuromance, Shinji Aramaki, william gibson

Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 Season 2 Finally Hits Netflix This May

Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 (short for "Standalone Complex") finally returns to Netflix in May, slightly more than 2 years after "season 1" ended. It's been so long that most of us had already forgotten there had been a new Ghost in the Shell TV series or that it stopped with a cliffhanger with one of the main cast members in peril. 2020 feels like a long time ago. The only thing that came to our mind with the release of the new trailer is "Are you kidding me?"

Ghost in the Shell is probably the longest surviving Cyberpunk franchise series next to The Matrix. The groundbreaking anime movie directed by Mamoru Oshii came out in 1995, adapted from Masamune Shirow's seminal manga. It's probably the most complete and complex realization of the Cyberpunk genre as originated by William Gibson in his first novel Neuromancer. The anime TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex premiered in 2002 and deepened the series focus on a cyber-future where geopolitics, espionage, and technology clash as international borders and endless warfare, cold and hot are played out through its band of counterespionage soldiers led by the oversexualized (because Japan!) cyborg Major Kusanagi. Each season of the show focused on a new political threat and enemy who used cyberspace and high-tech weapons in a dystopian scenario. Anime directors Kinji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki are back to conclude the storyline that started in Season 1.

Kamiyama and Aramaki had been busy in the last two years. After all, they had to take time off to direct the even more bland Blade Runner: Black Lotus for Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. Some of us thought that perhaps the reception for the first season of Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 was so lackluster that Netflix might have quietly canceled it but it turns out they're committed to finishing the story after all. The CGI anime in both are perhaps a bit too smooth and soulless for some viewers. The plotline follows the usual SAC formula where Kusanagi, Batou & company go up against another threat on the cyberspace and hot war front that threatens to change the world forever. Has it become way too familiar? Well, if you're committed to the genre, you might as well watch to see how it plays out this time, until the next time a studio decides it's time for more Ghost in the Shell.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 Season 2 premieres on Netflix in May.

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