Just when you thought the classic manga Ghost in the Shell couldn’t get any cooler, along comes this idea to bring it to both the traditional Japanese theater and the cutting-edge technology of virtual reality. Simultaneously, of course.
Masamune Shirow’s hugely popular manga series first emerged way back in 1989. Since then, it has received a steady stream of adaptations, remakes, and re-imaginings including an anime series, video games, and the awesome 1995 animated film by Mamoru Oshii that everyone should watch at least once in their life. Then of course, there was the more recent film adaptation featuring Scarlett Johansson, which drummed up a fair amount of controversy.
The crew includes Kentarō Fukuchi (who was involved in the stage production for (Ghost in the Shell Arise), with a script written by Jun’ichi Fujisaku (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), and leading figure in VR research Masahiko Inami from the University of Tokyo.
Cast member Takanobu Sakaguchi recounts the considerable effort that went into creating this interesting conglomeration of techniques:
The first thing we asked of Mr. Oku was to create a script that was faithful to the original manga, so that the fundamental structure and techniques of Noh could be preserved as much as possible.
As this took on more of a tangible film, we started to use more Noh techniques as a base as well, and worked hard to put it all together.
