A Trip Down Cyberpunk Lane

With the current iteration of The Ghost in the Shell (2026) streaming on Amazon, I'm reminded of the hours and days I spent watching as much cyberpunk anime as I could back in college. I owe the 2026 series a review once it's done. For now, I've republished a lot of my old blog posts related to the genre; hopefully, you'll forgive the musings of a young intellectual struggling to bridge pop culture and scholarship. At the very least, I'll seem like I know a thing or two about anime.

On a broader note, it's cool to see the internet discourse about a franchise I've loved for nearly two decades. Ghost in the Shell has seen many incarnations, and I've always believed in the relevance of its themes. The story is rooted in a what-if scenario for post-Cold War politics: nuclear weapons are a constant threat, America is seen as an unabashed empire, nanomachines seem to infiltrate all aspects of human life, and people aren't ready to manage their own primitive instincts in a world inundated with AI. 

In the real world, we're witnessing the nascent stages of AI development and proliferation Interestingly, none of the Ghost in the Shell adaptations depict humanity as existentially threatened by it; rather, the stories are always about human persistence as we brave the unknown. There are more than enough interviews, articles, fake news, and essays about whether AI will wipe us out or usher in world peace, so I really don't care to interject with my worthless two-cents. All I can do is look forward to seeing how the human race, and my toddler in particular, answer these existential challenges.   

Here is a link to my undergraduate thesis, which has aged better than I thought but still tastes like a cheap wine bottle from CVS. A lot of my old cyberpunk anime posts were done in service to this 2013 project, my personal homage to Ghost in the Shell: Establishing a Post-human Identity through Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell and Innocence Films

If essays aren't your thing, you can just read my older Anime Guardians posts below. Perhaps you'll see an anime you've never heard of:

• Battle Angel (1993): https://www.animeguardians.com/2012/06/battle-angel.html
• Armitage III (1995): https://www.animeguardians.com/2012/07/armitage-iii.html
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002): https://www.animeguardians.com/2012/06/ghost-in-shell-stand-alone-complex.html
• Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (1995, 2008): https://www.animeguardians.com/2012/03/ghost-in-shell-20.html
• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004): https://www.animeguardians.com/2013/02/the-chicken-or-egg.html
• Mardock Scramble: The First Compression (2010): https://www.animeguardians.com/2012/11/mardock-scramble-first-compression-or.html
• PSYCHO-PASS (2012)
• Perfect World: https://www.animeguardians.com/2013/03/perfect-world.html
• Your Flesh is Irrelevant, Because it's the Data that Counts: https://www.animeguardians.com/2013/01/your-flesh-is-irrelevant-because-its.html

Finally, I don't advertise this much, but I do write science fiction when I'm not blogging. I have a short story, "The Zoo," featured in an upcoming collection, Forged in FIYAH: Celebrating Ten Years of Black Speculative Fiction. Once upon a time, I was obsessed with separating my blogging and professional writing personas, but I probably haven't done my career any favors by doing so. Being an otaku is sometimes weird, but it certainly isn't a crime. If you'd like to support me--albeit indirectly--at least preorder the book and get a sense for how all this cyberpunk has rotted my mind. 

To all five of my loyal followers: thank you for humoring an old man who refuses to migrate to a modern blogging platform.