Transgresión, fusióny posibilidad peligrosa. las claves gráficas de ghost inthe shell

Abstract

In 2017, Ghost in the Shell. The Soul of the Machine was released in a real-image version of the animated film Ghost in the Shell, created by Mamoru Oshii in 1995 from the manga of Masamune Shirow Kokaku Kidotai (1989). While the remake tried to honor the plastic universe of the director and the entire saga, its aesthetic approach showed some differences that made the new proposal a technophobic and pessimistic version. The reason is that while this review highlights the human essence as a superior feature, the anime defended cyborg hybridization as a revolutionary attitude and open to the future. To develop that optimistic view, Oshii used three graphic clues that defined the discourse of his film, to highlight the transgressed limits, to represent the fusion of opposites, and to design the dangerous possibilities that the technological future could bring. In our opinion, those three ideas already appeared in a work previous to Oshii's film, which looked to the future in a very similar way: Donna Haraway's “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1991). This article addresses the translation of these theoretical assumptions to their aesthetic representation through animation, a genre that offered Oshii the possibilities with which to create a unique universe.