Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG

Airing first as a pay-per-view offering on the Animax satellite channel from the opening day of 2004, this second season continues the work of Public Security Section 9, the covert unit drawn from Masamune Shirow's original manga. A shift to the terrestrial Nippon TV followed in 2005, and Animax carried the show onward through Asia, Latin America, and other regions, while American audiences eventually met it inside Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim block. Bandai Visual held home-video rights in Japan, with Manga Entertainment handling release across North America and Europe, and Britain's AnimeCentral later ran nightly screenings in both dubbed and original form.

Where the debut season only gestured at its world's past, this run lays bare the wreckage of two global conflicts: a nuclear Third World War that spread fallout across Eurasia and left central Tokyo submerged, and a non-nuclear Fourth, nicknamed the Second Vietnam War, that ground on through the 2020s. A cloud of radiation-scrubbing micromachines called the Japanese Miracle spared the country the worst, letting it stand intact as rival powers crumbled. Out of that collapse rose the American Empire, an expansionist state that drew a weakened Japan into a security pact. Against this backdrop the season follows the plight of Asian refugees and the Individual Eleven terror movement, a plot quietly stage-managed by the manipulative intelligence chief Kazundo Gouda. At its heart stands Hideo Kuze, a former commando turned refugee champion whose path grows strangely entwined with Major Motoko Kusanagi.

Yoko Kanno returns as composer, with Origa singing the opener Rise and Steve Conte carrying the closing piece Living Inside the Shell. The comedic Tachikomatic Days shorts, built around the spider-legged think tanks, again ride alongside the main episodes. In January 2006 a condensed retelling reached Japanese DVD under the name Individual Eleven, paring the arc down to roughly 160 minutes with new footage, a remixed score, and a tighter focus on the tie between the Major and Kuze. Kamiyama has explained that the theme grew from a decision not to look away from war in the wake of September 11, bending the notion of a stand alone complex, separate people acting as though in concert, toward the shape of modern conflict. Victor Entertainment issued the music across several original soundtrack albums.