Geraci--Ghost in the Shell

Taken from meuploads.com 

     Ghost in the Shell is about blurring the lines between humans and machines. The lines that divided us were quite clear until people started to enhance their bodies by using robotics. For some people, like the major, there is significant robotics done to the body. The question of  when we stop being human, and start being an A.I. is important. Are we human because our bodies are made of living flesh? Or is it because we can infer and reason? Perhaps it is because we have a soul that helps us to interact and better understand each other. I think it is a combination of all of these. However, I think the soul part is the most important, so if someone loses his or her body parts and needs prosthetic limbs, they are still human. There are many issues concerning identity in Akira, Perfect Blue, and of course Ghost in the Shell, but I do not feel as though my identity was threatened or affected. I know who I am, and only something traumatic would affect my sense of identity. The characters in Akira and Perfect Blue went through something terrifying and riddled with the unknown.  Their sense of self was challenged by their environment and a series of circumstances that blurred the lines of reality and fantasy. In Ghost in the Shell, the major’s conflict is whether or not she was fully human. This is not something I can relate to because all of me is still original. The conflict the major faces is through the fact that she was mostly made not born. The human soul is something that cannot be fully made. The “souls” A. I.s have is called a ghost, it is a substitute soul that is nowhere near as complex as a human soul because it is a computer program. Real human souls cannot be duplicated. Cyborg bodies also go by the term “shell,” which is how we get the title Ghost in the Shell.