Mecha

Machines of every build crowd the world of Ghost in the Shell, and the hardware seldom just decorates a scene. It trades off between protagonist and antagonist duty while serving as a vehicle for Masamune Shirow's ideas and foreshadowing. Across the series he applies the umbrella slang think tank to any AI-driven robotic weapons platform, and most such units, together with gear like the Jigabachi gunships, issue from an invented firm named Kenbishi Industries. Their typical silhouette leans arachnid: four to six legs, a set of front manipulators, and a body built in segments.

The compact think tanks form one closely related family. From the manga comes the Fuchikoma, a four-legged machine that can roll on wheels or balance on its two arms, seats a single rider, and backs up operatives on its own through built-in intelligence, though copyright trouble kept it off screen until a PlayStation title finally animated it. Stand Alone Complex puts the Tachikoma front and center, upgrading it with keener AI, active camouflage, paired manipulator arms, and a grenade launcher, while the green hybrid Uchikoma turns up later across 2nd GIG and Solid State Society. The heavier tanks run larger and deadlier: the six-legged T08A2 of the 1995 film, the scorpion-shaped HAW206 that headlines an early SAC episode, the stilt-tracked EW-205, and a jackhammer-snouted construction mecha that menaces Motoko in Human-Error Processor and Solid State Society. Separate from the tanks sit the arm suits, among them the four-armed GSDF Type 24 and the thickly plated, camouflage-fitted MSDF Type 303 that laughs off small-arms fire.

Several of the frames house living cyborgs. The Jameson-type debuts in the manga as an unremarkable four-legged, two-armed box; inside sits the cyberbrain, together with the spinal cord, of the man heading Hanka Precision Instruments, and later versions recur through the anime and the Tachikomatic Days shorts. Section 9's first mechanical hurdle in the manga is an illegally altered Type 2033 security cyborg, and Solid State Society introduces biped security cyborgs sporting bare human heads over horse-like hind legs. On the non-combat side, Motoko keeps a troop of small named decoy drones, Conan, Max, Rocky, Musashi and the others, that serve her much as the Tachikoma do; she also fields robotic bees in Human-Error Processor and pursues remotely operated inspection submarines in Man/Machine Interface. Finally, the wasp-named ATH-29 Jigabachi and its self-directing Jigabachi AV cousin are attack helicopters whose tails mount a Gatling gun, with missile launchers rounding out the armament, patrolling both seasons of Stand Alone Complex.