I know, I’ve been remiss. Even though I’ve been a die-hard anime fan since early high school, it’s taken me until recently to watch Ghost in a Shell, the pivotal Japanese science fiction film released in 1995.

Based on the manga by Masumune Shirow, Ghost in a Shell epitomizes the sheer brilliance of Japanese animation: the illustrations impeccably render a dystopian future in which humans have begun to transcend the limits of the human body by incorporating state of the art technology and cybernetic science into every part of their physicality and cognition.