The Ghost in the Shell (2026) Review

The earlier Ghost in the Shell adaptations took Masamune Shirow's manga and turned the laughter down. Mamoru Oshii's film made the Major a solemn meditation on identity, and Stand Alone Complex made her the calmest professional in any room. Science SARU's ten episodes, directed by Mokochan from scripts by the novelist Toh EnJoe, restore the version on the page: a playful, sardonic cyborg with a rubber face, who treats the Puppet Master case as a job until it becomes something much stranger.

The look is the argument. Colour is laid on thick, the character animation squashes and stretches like a 1990s cartoon, and the mechanical design still carries its weight, so a firefight and a slapstick reaction can share a cut without either feeling cheap. Reviewers praise it as the most faithful adaptation yet and single out the painting and the score.

They fault the density: the jargon arrives at a speed that asks for the pause button, and ten episodes are a tight fit for the whole of Shirow's first volume, so the pace stays brisk right through the ending the manga and Oshii's film share, the Major merging with the Puppet Master. The dissent comes mostly from those who wanted Oshii's stillness, and most reviewers have sided with the manga.