'The Ghost in the Shell' is released via streaming this July.

Kodansha, Bandai Namco Film Works

The upcoming Ghost in the Shell anime is finally nearing its July release, and it’s already looking incredibly faithful to the original manga.

That’s the key point here: while we’ve had numerous Ghost in the Shell anime adaptations, and a lackluster live-action one, they’ve all deviated quite substantially from Masamune Shirow’s original manga.

From the original 1995 movie to Stand Alone Complex, they’ve all re-interpreted the manga in various ways.

With the 1995 movie, the focus was on the emergence of AI, which was something that already existed in the manga.

Stand Alone Complex was much closer to the manga, but the Fuchikomas were changed to Tachikomas, among many other changes.

Here, though, the anime actually looks like the manga, from the characters to the hardware and the general tone; this looks to be the first genuinely accurate anime adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.

Having read the original manga when I was a teenager, and thinking it was brilliant, it’s a strange but wonderful feeling to finally see that version come to life as an anime.

Considering Science Saru’s amazing track record as an anime studio, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Their adaptation of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! was superlatively great, and that too followed the original manga pretty closely.

So to see the studio tackle Ghost in the Shell in the same dedicated way is genuinely refreshing.

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