The most
important cult franchise in Japanese science fiction is not going to let go of
the accelerator. Bandai Namco Filmworks surprised this Friday by announcing
that a new anime project for Ghost in the Shell (Kokaku Kidotai THE
GHOST IN THE SHELL) is already underway, leaving the responsibility of
animation once again in the creative hands of the Science SARU studio.
The
announcement took the industry by surprise during the presentation of a
clothing line of the Geeks Rule brand in Tokyo. Although for now the final
format that this production will have has not been specified, leaving it up in
the air whether it will be a series, a film or a special format, the company
accompanied the news with the revelation of a first promotional image to ignite
expectation among Major Kusanagi's followers.
This new proposal is presented as a completely fresh creative effort that will adapt passages from the original work of author Shirow Masamune. For this project, the Science SARU studio is once again teaming up on the production committee alongside giants such as Bandai Namco Filmworks, Kodansha and Production I.G, promising to maintain the quality standards that characterized the television series that debuted last July with ten episodes.
That
television project featured Mokochan's directorial debut, with scripts
supervised by Toh Enjoe and character designs by Shuhei Handa,
who also served as lead animation director. The musical direction was under the
command of Taisei Iwasaki, composing the soundtrack together with Ryo
Konishi and Yuki Kanesaka. In addition, the vocal section brought together a
high-level cast led by Maaya Sakamoto in the role of Motoko Kusanagi, Hiroki
Yasumoto playing Batou, Kazuhiro Yamaji giving life to Daisuke
Aramaki and Yuichi Nakamura playing Togusa, accompanied by Kosuke Goto
as Ishikawa, Toru Nara as Saito, Marie Oi as Operator and Tomoko Kaneda as
Fuchikoma.
Ghost in
the Shell is one of
the most influential cyberpunk franchises worldwide, originally born as a work
of manga written and illustrated by Shirow Masamune. The story is set in
a hyper-technological neo-Tokyo future where the line between humanity and
machines has become virtually invisible, following the operations of Public
Security Section 9, an anti-terrorist unit led by cybernetic major Motoko
Kusanagi.
Over the
decades, the work has served as the inspiration for countless science fiction
productions and has had multiple classic cult adaptations in film and
television. With this new project on the way, the saga reaffirms the validity
of its narrative universe within modern animation.
