Kenji Kamiyama is the director of the 2002 television series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which successfully popularized the darling of hardcore science fiction enthusiasts on mainstream living room TVs. Together with Shinji Aramaki, he also co-directed the latest series under the title and its first all-CG entry, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. It features a retuned “future” with adjustments to the characters, setting, and cases Public Security Section 9 investigates to make things easier for a modern audience to digest. Kamiyama’s ability to lead a challenging work to success lies in his understanding of the inherent appeal of Ghost in the Shell, which remains unshaken even with some changes to the setting. In this retrospective on Ghost in the Shell, we spoke with him about everything from when he first encountered the original manga to his focus in his first work as a director, as well as the hopes he had for the latest release.

――Could you tell us when you first worked on a Ghost in the Shell title? And if you remember, what was your impression of it at the time?

 

Kenji Kamiyama (“Kamiyama” below): I had checked out Ghost in the Shell frequently since it got serialized in Young Magazine but began reading it properly in 1991 when the first collected volumes came out. My first impression was that it was complicated subject matter, honestly. I had read Appleseed, another work of Shirow Masamune’s, but there was so much more information per panel in this one that I remember feeling overwhelmed. He had even written supplementary explanations in the margins between panels, and there were little handwritten note-style speech bubbles with important-looking words. It was just so much information to take in. It almost went beyond being a manga. I felt like it really was another class of thing from any other manga I had read at the time.

 

――I believe you worked as an art director in the anime industry at the time. Did you always like sci-fi as a genre?

 

Kamiyama: Yes, I did. Cyberpunk took off in the 80s, and I was inspired by works like Akira that depicted the near future as a reader. But I feel like Ghost in the Shell almost created its own new genre, more than it fit into existing sci-fi. The concept of the internet wasn’t understood universally across society at the time; people were just starting to refer to an “information superhighway,” I think. The idea of a work in that era depicting people connecting their brains directly to the internet is shocking.

 

――Did the ideas in the original manga influence you as a creator?

 

Kamiyama: Of course. I had actually written a proposal for an anime with a clear influence from Ghost in the Shell around that time. I’m pretty sure the title was The Asian Matrix. It was a story about a girl internet detective, set in a chaotic Asia. The film The Matrix hadn’t been released yet, and I don’t remember where I got the idea of “matrix” as a key word. All I knew was that it meant “information connected horizontally and vertically.” But we had just gotten the ability to use email and chat on home computers, and I had internet service from a company called NIFTY. It was fascinating how people would become someone else on the NIFTY server text messaging system or talk about things with online friends that they never would with offline friends, or even cases like men who would have female online personas. That was all the background that went into the proposal I wrote.

 

――It sounds like you realized the potential of the internet by way of connections over computers. Still, was it difficult to get executives on the same page about the idea of an internet detective story?

 

Kamiyama: Their eyes would glaze over when I showed them plans. *laughter* Even if they followed me on the idea of a girl private detective in an action anime, unsurprisingly, they couldn’t imagine a way to put the idea of the internet into an anime. Conversations on it never went anywhere.

 

――Ghost in the Shell has had an impact on a lot of creators, including yourself, Mr. Kamiyama. It has also been the subject of a number of anime films and TV series over the years. As a director, what do you think makes it an appealing subject to work with?

 

Kamiyama: There’s a lot, so I can’t list everything, but of course the top point has to be that it depicts a global network and human potential in that society, from a time at the dawn of the actual internet, when it was still a concept most people didn’t understand very well. It puts forward a world where all sorts of creators would want to let their imaginations play. I feel like it’s as original and unshakably strong as a setting as some of the timeless masterpieces of science fiction, like Star Wars or Star Trek. Motoko Kusanagi is another major draw as a character. I’m not sure if any other female protagonists had been at the center of that type of action before Motoko. That’s another of the major inventions Shirow Masamune gave us.

 

――Shirow Masamune has worked on a lot of manga with female protagonists, but Motoko Kusanagi stands apart from his other characters, wouldn’t you say?

 

Kamiyama: For example, Deunan Knute from Appleseed is a super-powered heroine, too, but she couldn’t live without her lover, Briareos Hecatonchires, and couldn’t propel the entire narrative along on her own. I feel like that’s a sort of holdover from that era, when men were centered on society.

 

――You mean there’s a lot of depictions of women from a male gaze perspective?

 

Kamiyama: Until he made Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki always used to portray heroines with a conventional male gaze too, didn’t he? But even though Ghost in the Shell doesn’t have anything new in the makeup of Public Security Section 9 as a team, Motoko is there centrally as the leader and a woman, and her motivation and ability move the story forward. I feel like it was progressive in depicting her as a female protagonist with real depth, which was extremely rare at the time. Of course the other team members are also appealing, though, and another strength as a title is how strong the characters and setting both are in combination.

 

――Do you have any favorite works or scenes out of the various versions of Ghost in the Shell?

 

Kamiyama: That’s a difficult question, but I guess maybe the first volume of the original manga, as you might expect. Motoko is a full-body-conversion cyborg who commands a bunch of tough guys and lectures Togusa. But she’s not just strict or scary; she has a surprising level of concern for her subordinates, too. I found it fascinating just following the life of this mysterious woman, Motoko Kusanagi. And for beginners, I feel that it’s easiest to get into the manga for you to imagine what kind of person Motoko is while you’re reading. In the end, she changes her form and vanishes into the net. It felt like a great way to end things for something with a mass entertainment-style story. I liked that innovation.

 

Continued to　#02 A life reshaped by the “S.A.C.” series

 

 

KENJI KAMIYAMA

Born March 20, 1966. Native of Saitama Prefecture. Got involved in animation independently as a high school student. Hired at Studio Fuga in 1985. Worked on background projects for the anime films Akira and Kiki’s Delivery Service, among others. Took on the role of director for the first time for the 2002 film Mobile Police Patlabor Minimum. He is best known for the series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Ultraman, and Eden of the East.