The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories (2017)

The Ghost in the Shell: Five New Short Stories (2017)

Authors: Toh Enjoe / Gakuto Mikumo / Kafka Asagiri / Yoshinobu Akita / Tow Ubukata | Translation: Unknown | Page Count: 187

'Her cyborg form was an established item and not all that uncommon, but there was something special about the figure she cut. Something divine, divorced from this ugly world.'

The blurb on the back cover claiming that Five New Short Stories is a 'standalone collection' that 'requires no familiarity with the franchise to be enjoyed' is what's known outside of the publishing world as a falsehood, a fib, a damned lie, bullshit, because prior knowledge of GitS is needed.

Even ignoring the fact that someone new to the franchise will have no clue who the characters are, or any knowledge of their particular levels of cyberization, right from the very first story, a first-person narrative named Shadow.net by Toh Enjoe, prior knowledge is needed (specifically, Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society).

At first it didn't strike me as a particularly strong opening story, the choppy prose style was initially off-putting and disorienting. However, once I realised that it was purposeful, that the disconnect was thematically relevant, it began to come together. With crucial hindsight now in place I suspect that I'll enjoy it more when re-reading than I did during that first time.

The second story, too, Heterochroma by Gakuto Mikumo, from which the quote used above originates, requires knowledge of Motoko and her ties with Section 9. It's about a woman named Misaki, an SP with the Niihama Prefectural Police Security Department, who has an unhealthy fixation with someone she met once, briefly. Batou and Togusa feature as secondary characters.

Again, story number three, Soft and White by Kafka Asagiri, the longest of the five also requires that you be familiar with the series. It's set sometime during the first season of SAC, but I'd recommend not reading it until after you've viewed both seasons, for reasons I won't go into. But I will say that the story itself is fantastic and is reason enough to buy the book. The balance of philosophy (Immanuel Kant), investigation, mystery and action that made SAC so damn good is captured and put into words more successfully than any of the other shorts manage.

In the fourth story, Soliloquy by Yoshinobu Akita, Motoko is the primary character, so it goes without saying that you'd at least need to know who she is and what her profession is, but, more than that, you need to be aware of the deeper feelings regarding her full body prosthesis, too.

The closing entry, Springer by Tow Ubukata, is the shortest of the five, just twenty pages in length. Tow has a history with GitS, having written the scripts / screenplays for most of the Arise episodes and the subsequent film, The New Movie (2015), so you'd expect him to be able to get to the heart of the characters quickly and effortlessly, but he takes a less obvious route into the world he helped shape (it's set in the Arise version). In fact, he abandons 'obvious route' almost completely, presenting his work in the rarely used second-person perspective.

It's a mixed bag, overall, with each work having its own unique merits — certainly in structure and style, if nothing else — but what's true for them collectively, and what I've tried to stress in each of the paragraphs above, is that to enjoy the works fully you absolutely DO need to have the kind of prior familiarity with the franchise that the publishers (Vertical, Inc) claim you don't.