Ghost in the Shell 2.0

Synopsis

By the year 2029, the concept of national borders has been rendered obsolete by the global network; humans enhanced with cybernetic parts inhabit digital realms, monitored by law enforcement agencies capable of transferring their consciousness into powerful, crime-fighting mecha suits. The ultimate covert operative of this era is not a biological being, lacks a physical form, and can traverse the world's information networks at will, hacking and manipulating data whenever and wherever necessary. Note: Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is an updated edition of the original 1995 film, created as part of the celebrations surrounding the release of The Sky Crawlers in 2008. For Version 2.0, the entire animation was remade using state-of-the-art techniques including 3D-CGI, and the soundtrack underwent a remastering process. All voice acting was re-recorded. A notable change is that the character "Puppet Master" was recast from Kayumi Iemasa to Sakakibara Yoshiko, and some dialogue lines were altered from the original version. Kawai Kenji remixed the music in 6.1 channel surround sound, and Randy Thom from Skywalker Sound joined as Sound Designer to enhance the audio quality.

Background

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is a remade version of the 1995 movie made to commemorate the release of The Sky Crawlers, which opened the following month. The new edition replaced Iemasa Kayumi (Giant Robo's Chief Chuujou Shizuo, RahXephon's Ernst Von Bähbem) with Yoshiko Sakakibara (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence's Harraway, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki) as the enigmatic Puppet Master and reunited majority of the cast from the original movie for a new 6.1 surround sound recording. The animation was reproduced using new computer graphics and digital effects. Randy Thom of Skywalker Sound (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) oversaw the new soundtrack, which included original music by Kenji Kawai as well as a final mix.