Prime Video Officially Updates A Seminal Sci-Fi Story For The 21st Century With New Series

Science fiction is enjoying a moment on television right now, and we’ve been lucky enough to see some of the greatest sci-fi stories ever written reimagined for the small screen. Apple TV is making a Neuromancer show, Amazon is making a Blade Runner show, and Paramount+ has two more seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on the way. We’ve gotten a Foundation show, an Alien show, two Handmaid’s Tale shows, and more Star Wars shows than you can shake a lightsaber at.

Just this past week, we’ve seen one of the most iconic and influential sci-fi stories ever told adapted into a near-flawless anime series. Prime Video seems to be cornering the market on cyberpunk, because it’s not just making a Blade Runner show; it just dropped an animated adaptation of the seminal Ghost in the Shell manga, produced by the Japanese studio Science Saru.

On July 7, The Ghost in the Shell debuted its first episode on Prime, and it’s already being hailed as a masterpiece. This is, of course, not the first time that Ghost in the Shell has been turned into anime. In 1995, a feature-length adaptation of Ghost in the Shell was lauded as one of the greatest movies ever made — the first truly grownup, truly mature animated film for adults — and promptly inspired the Wachowskis to create The Matrix. It was a great movie, but it wasn’t a great adaptation. The new series on Prime is both a great TV show and a great adaptation of the manga.

Prime Video’s The Ghost In The Shell Stays True To The Manga

While the Ghost in the Shell movie was technically based on the manga of the same name, it wasn’t a very faithful adaptation. The film only focused on part of the first manga, and it deviated from the source material, so it left a lot of story material on the table, and didn’t really do justice to the story material that it took off the table. Much like The Shining, it still turned out to be a great movie, despite having little in common with its namesake source material, but it did leave an opportunity for other storytellers to come in and do a more honest, faithful adaptation of the manga.

This year, Science Saru has finally seized that opportunity. Amazon’s Ghost in the Shell series is much, much more accurate to the original manga than the classic movie adaptation. As an episodic series, its structure is inherently much closer to that of the serialized manga, and the show is bringing the manga to life, chapter by chapter. The first episode adapted the “Prologue” and the first part of “Super Spartan,” and the second episode will finish “Super Spartan” and move into “Junk Jungle,” and the series will go on like that, adapting the manga line by line.

Why The Ghost In The Shell Movie Will Always Be A Classic

Major Kusanagi (Atsuko Tanaka) calmly falling from a building during a mission in Ghost in the Shell (1995)

While it bears very little resemblance to its source material, the ’95 Ghost in the Shell movie will always be a classic. If it wasn’t for that Ghost in the Shell film, we wouldn’t have The Matrix, and for that alone, Ghost in the Shell deserves its place in cinema history. But it’s a masterpiece in its own right, with gorgeous neon-soaked visuals and a mesmerizing cinematic atmosphere.

Just the way the sound design utilizes background noise gives Ghost in the Shell so much more life and luster than 99% of the animated movies out there. It’s a dazzling sci-fi action thriller, but it’s also a movie that’ll take the time to indulge in a two-minute conversation between a couple of garbage men, to enrich the narrative and enhance the dramatic payoffs later on. Faithful or not, that Ghost in the Shell movie is a masterclass in visual storytelling.