Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell will soon be making its grand return to anime after the franchise’s brief experimentation with live-action, and Netflix will be the home for the new anime series titled Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. Brought to life by Production I.G. and SOLA Digital Arts, this will be the first series in the franchise to be completely rendered with CG animation. While that would usually make one worry, the series seems to be off on a great foot in terms of how it’s going to look if the first teaser trailer for the new series is anything to go by!
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You can check out the first teaser trailer for Netflix’s Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 in the video above, and it’s pretty brief but should be enough to entice longtime fans of the franchise as it looks completely different from every other entry that has come before.
Ghost in Shell: SAC_2045 is currently slated for a 2020 worldwide premiere on Netflix. Co-directed by Kenji Kamiyama (director for Stand Alone Complex) and Shinji Aramaki (director of Appleseed) for Production I.G and SOLA Digital Arts, the series is still in the midst of production. Although much of the cast and staff are still being kept under wraps, it has been previously confirmed that Birthday Wonderland illustrator Ilya Kuvshinow will be serving as character designer for the new series.
The plot for the new series is still largely a mystery too, but Netflix has included the following brief synopsis, “In the year 2045, after global capitalism has defaulted, Japan’s elite Section 9 begins conducting covert cyber operations.” Production I.G. USA President Maki Terashima-Furuta has also previously confirmed that the new Ghost in the Shell anime will have two seasons with 12 episodes planned each.
For those unfamiliar with Ghost in the Shell, the series was created by Masamune Shirow (as Mobile Armored Riot Police in Japan) in 1989. Collected into three volumes by Kodansha, the series has spawned an entire media juggernaut with anime, OVAs, videogames, and even a Hollywood live-action film adaptation in 2017.
Set in 2029 Japan, the series follows the Public Security Section 9, a counter-cyberterror organization led by Major Motoko Kusanagi (a woman forced to live with a cybernetic body due to an accident when she was young) as they investigate the crimes committed between machines and humans. The series first made its major break in 1995 with a film, and then another anime series in Stand Alone Complex that told an alternate story from the film.
