Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society

Solid State Society is a 2006 television anime film belonging to the Stand Alone Complex branch of the franchise, itself rooted in Masamune Shirow's manga. Production I.G made it, Kenji Kamiyama directed, and Yoko Kanno scored the roughly 105-minute picture. To lend it a theatrical polish, it debuted on Japan's satellite pay-per-view before rolling out to broadcast and home video.

The year is 2034, two years on from the events of 2nd GIG. Major Kusanagi has walked away from Public Security Section 9, leaving Togusa to run a field team that has grown to some twenty operatives. The unit is drawn into a cluster of suicides among former agents of the disbanded Siak Republic, and one name keeps surfacing: Kugutsu Mawashi, rendered as the Puppeteer. Their digging exposes a micromachine virus revenge scheme and, beneath it, a far larger horror. Thousands of kidnapped children have been reassigned to bedridden Noble Rot elderly wired into the national healthcare network, part of a conspiracy spanning more than twenty thousand unreported abductions.

Batou crosses paths with the Major during his own inquiry, and she warns him to keep clear of the Solid State Society, leaving him wondering whether she herself is the Puppeteer. In truth she has been chasing the abduction network alone since leaving the unit, and she quietly sets Togusa up as bait to draw the culprit out. The thread finally points to a system designer, Takaaki Koshiki, who claims authorship of the whole apparatus and then shoots himself, only to hack the Major from inside his failing cyberbrain. Presenting himself as a kind of vanishing mediator born from a collective consciousness, he leaves the Puppeteer's real identity unresolved. The film closes on the Major echoing the series' signature reflection on how vast and boundless the net has become.

The feature premiered on the Japanese satellite platform SKY PerfecTV on September 1, 2006, later airing on the Animax network and arriving on DVD that November. Bandai Entertainment and Manga Entertainment handled the American release in July 2007, and the Sci Fi Channel used it to launch its Ani-Monday block that June, choosing to broadcast the original footage with its nudity blurred. Yoko Kanno's soundtrack opens with "player" by Origa featuring Heartsdales and closes with her "date of rebirth." The production carried a budget of roughly 360 million yen, about 3.2 million US dollars.