Politics in Anime.

Pop culture has influence and is heavily influenced. It's the over-stated metaphore of life imitating art or art imitating life. The chicken or the egg. “The Matrix” film series that started in the late '90's almost owes its whole existence to William Gibson, the father of “CyberPunk”. The film was and is probably the best live-action film adoption of “CyberPunk” made. Other influences of the “Matrix” series includes the injection of religiosity (is that a word?) in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I'll leave it to you on whether that was accomplished. The last major influence of the “Matrix” series is Masamune Shirow 's Manga “Ghost in the Shell”. Masamune Shirow is a unique bird indeed. Besides his artistic talents he likes studying arachnids, he enjoys diving into politics and right before you start asking “Where the hell are you going with all this?” that's where the title of this post comes in.

In 2002, GIS was converted into an anime series by a Japanese animation studio named “Production I.G.”. Its second season, “Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. 2^nd GIG” airs on Saturdays at 12:30 a.m. or how I like to think of it, 30 minutes after midnight. It sits comfortably within the “Adult Swim” time slots on Cartoon Network. It dives directly into the sometimes complex patterns of politics. The current multi-faceted second season seems to have gone full-throttle into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict model. The series orbits around a cyborg character named Major Motoko Kusanagi, a weapons and hacking expert in a future-Japan that tries to deal with, in this case, the complexities of a growing refugee population. It also includes their very own suicide bombers and an “American Empire” with a relatively detailed world history. There are two movies made as well. One was released recently and the first was made in the mid 90's. Both movies deal more with consciousness and its definition or at least tries to in both films.
Not easy.

Check it out if you get stood-up on a Saturday night or SNL is just another rerun. The series also includes a personal-favorite of mine: Music by Yoko Kanno.

-G.