Week Nine March 19: Cyberpunk: 
            Ghost in a shell


            Reading this manga really surprised me. Before reading it, I saw the live action move ghost in a shell with friends. When reading the manga, I was completely caught off guard. The live action movie is about a young innocent heroin. It was more of a hero origin story with a teenaged girl. It had everything for the young girl’s anime. The movie seemed stereotypical. There was the love interest who seriously didn’t deserve her, I wanted him to die the whole movie, and the slightly overprotective “father” figure. the movie was pretty good and I was expecting the same from the manga. 
            Once I started reading the manga I realized that I needed to forget what I thought I knew. This manga wasn’t about a girl that’s a bounty hunter fighting a corrupt system. As far as I read, the manga never even brought up the question of her family. Instead the protagonist was the leader of a task force for the government. She may still be an assassin in a way, but it was nothing like the move. The ghost in a shell almost felt like a heartless cold-blooded killer, not a sweet teenager. When thinking about a “ghost in a shell” the heartless killer does make more sense. 
            The manga’s protagonist was crude, and spent her time bossing a bunch of men around. Instead of questing the heart of a teenaged girl, the manga gave Matrix vibes. It amazed me to see how similar the Matrix was the ghost in a shell in the presentation. The questions of what it means to be alive; what it means to be human were so much deeper in the manga. If you lose your memories are you still the same person? Can a machine develop human feeling? The whole concept is both ludicrous and ere. 
            As someone who has spent most of their time with American films and storytelling, what hit me the most from this week was the influence of ghost in a shell on the Matrix. I took this class wanting to learn more about storytelling in other countries to see what I can learn and apply from it. This week gave me a clear view of what applying things learned from anime into western culture can do. Everyone things of the Matrix as something completely original. The black leather is still in movies to salute the Matrix. The outlandish concepts, slow motion, everything has inspired so much of western culture. Seeing this, it makes me feel as though ghost in a shell was robbed of its glory by America’s reboot. I want more people to learn about this. 
            To Americans, anime is weird and hard to understand. In a way, that is exactly what the matrix is, and that is why it was so loved. This makes me want to look into other anime and manga to see how much of our cultural favorites weren’t as original as we thought they were? This class just leaves me with the question: what is originally American, and what is barrowed form anime that I don’t know about?

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