Ghost In The Shell Plot (Anime)

The Puppet Master

In the year 2029, Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg working for Section 9 of the police force. She and others in her police team are pursuing a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master. Much of the population at this time is connected mentally to a huge electronic network and the Puppet Master uses this network to take over the minds of cyborgs/people, even managing to control and manipulate a number of officials in the government.

Early on in Ghost in the Shell, the Puppet Master takes control of a civilian gunman and has him attack Motoko and Batou, another cyborg member of Section 9. A gunfight ensues in the street until Motoko is eventually able to stop the man by using a cloaking device to make herself invisible. They later question the man but find he is hardly aware of what is really going on, believing false memories about his life that the Puppet Master has implanted.

Section 6 and Project 2501

Later someone hacks into a cyborg manufacturing plant and has a female cyborg body manufactured. The cyborg body then leaves the plant but soon gets hit by a truck. Section 9 recovers the body and finds it contains a consciousness or "ghost" inside it. Police from another divison, Section 6, arrive and confiscate the body. They tell Section 9 that the body was created to tempt the Puppet Master into it and then trap him in there.

Through their earlier examination of the cyborg body, Section 9 finds out about a project named Project 2501. The director of Section 9, Daisuke Aramaki, suspects that Section 6 created the Puppet Master under Project 2501 but that he later escaped their control. Daisuke thinks that Section 6 are now trying to catch the Puppet Master to cover things up and avoid embarassment.

Motoko vs the Tank

Motoko and Batou separately attempt to track and follow the female cyborg body as it's transported away. Batou's path leads to a dead end but Motoko successfully tracks the body to an otherwise empty building. Inside, a large spider-like armored tank is protecting the car with the cyborg body inside so that Motoko can't get to it.

Although outgunned, Motoko tries to use her rifle to disable the tank which then returns fire with much more powerful machine guns. Using her cloaking device, Motoko eventually manages to blindside the tank and climb on top of it. She then attempts to pull the plating off the top of the tank so that she can get inside. However, the tank's armor is too strong and Motoko instead ends up ripping her own arm and leg off. The tank is then able to shake Motoko off and begins to crush Motoko's skull. Batou arrives just in time and repeatedly shoots the tank with a heavily powered gun, disabling it. Motoko is still alive but her body is badly damaged.

Motoko Meets the Puppet Master

Upon checking the car that the tank was protecting, Batou finds the female cyborg body inside. Believing that the Puppet Master's ghost is inside the body, Motoko tells Batou to connect her body to the female cyborg body so that she can communicate with the Puppet Master. The Puppet Master then tells Motoko he was created by Section 6 so that they could use him to hack others. However, the Puppet Master eventually became self-aware, which led him to realize that he could never reproduce or die. Bothered by this, he therefore wanted to become a cyborg instead of being only a non-physical consciousness or ghost. The Puppet Master had attempted to escape from Section 6 using the cyborg body that his ghost is now in.

The Puppet Master wants to merge with Motoko's ghost and live on inside Motoko's body. Batou tries to disconnect Motoko from the Puppet Master to prevent this but the Puppet Master stops Batou by hacking him. At this point Section 6 helicopters turn up above the building to destroy everyone inside to cover things up. The Puppet Master begins merging with Motoko but their bodies are then shot up by Section 6.

Motoko's New Body

In the next scene Motoko awakes inside Batou's house with her head attached to a child cyborg body. Motoko's body had been destroyed, apart from her head, in the shooting. The child cyborg body was the best replacement Batou could find and he had attached Motoko's head to it so she could continue to live. Motoko tells Batou that she is no longer only Motoko's consciousness but also partly the Puppet Master's consciousness, due to the merge. She then leaves the house pondering where she should go now.

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