Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Broadcast from late 2002 into 2003, the show is set in 2030 within a fictional Japanese city, Niihama, also called New Port City. Its focus is a special operations task force, Public Security Section 9, whose agents come from wildly different pasts, some from the military, some from policing, and some even out of organized crime.

Each case tests the team both professionally and personally, and the threads gradually converge on a shadowy individual the media has christened the Laughing Man. The backdrop is a society where digital and bodily life have grown indistinguishable, and where the fusion of human and machine keeps redrawing the limits of what counts as human.

Section 9 operates as a top-tier domestic unit built to blunt technology-driven terrorism and crime. Its remit runs from serious cyber offenses such as cyberbrain intrusion and cyber-terror, to investigating corruption among public officials and handling high-profile killings, with occasional stints guarding visiting dignitaries.

The series charts a continuity distinct from Mamoru Oshii's theatrical films. It devotes far more room to the working lives of Motoko Kusanagi and her colleagues, and it leans harder on Masamune Shirow's source manga than the movies chose to.

Adapted from Shirow Masamune's manga, the production was helmed by chief director Kenji Kamiyama and scored by Yoko Kanno. The writing threads in literary allusions to Flowers for Algernon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and several J. D. Salinger works, among them the novel The Catcher in the Rye and the short story The Laughing Man from his Nine Stories collection.

In Japan the show first ran on the pay-per-view Animax channel, while its American premiere came through Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. A follow-up season, titled 2nd GIG, continued the story.