You know, I fucking hate anime, but I liked Ghost in the Shell. I think it's literally the only Japanese anime show I actually like. Aside from the squeaky robot voices (from their helpers), none of the superficial, 'anime' qualities I hate are here--just good writing and Japanese style--which is why I was not at all surprised to see it mentioned here. There's enough psychology and detective work to make Batman get a hard on.
I'm glad you brought up both Akira and Ghost in the Shell. The second movie does an amazing job at making you question what is real and what isn't. I tripped out the first time I saw that in college, and it's stuck with me since. Animatrix also does a great job at displaying this. I sometimes have the feeling like we are all the universe focusing in on itself though filters and limitations in order for it to happen. In that sense, it is the Oroburo eating it's own tail, or watching itself, metaphorically. We are all the universe looking at ourselves through an imperfect lens.
@@nickcurrant2254 I feel like there are a lot more Anime out there that you would really like if you gave them a chance, Ghost in the Shell is by far not the only one that is serious, has brilliant writing and thoughtprovoking, deep philosophical themes and storys as well as (sometimes) gorgeous animation (Stuff like NGE, Monster, Ergo Proxy, AoT, Violet Evergarden, anything by Satoshi Kon, etc. etc. come to my mind immediatly for example (those are my favorites in that direction obviously, anyone is free to disagree and call my taste bad^^)). I dont mean to tell you what to do and what to like, but everytime i see someone say the "hate Anime" i cant help but think thats kind of an ignorant statement because to me it sounds like someone saying "i hate all movies", because Anime isnt a genre, its a medium just like film and books. You cant genealize "Anime" like that because thats not how it is, Anime is as diverse and nuanced as any other storytelling medium. I think what you really hate is the typical "Anime" marketing bullshit, right? And yeah true, most of the shows and movies out there are just mindless pandering bullshit made for pure marketing purposes or pure escapism. But in that giant pile of mass produced trash and mediocrity there are some true artistic masterpieces that are worth anyones time who likes good art. Just consider giving some stuff a chance, you might be surprised what you have been missing out on.
@@datzfatz2368 Thumbs-uped your reply because you're being so polite in response to my rhetoric. Yeah, when I say 'I fucking hate anime' I am generalizing in conjunction with my own experience. It's kind of like someone saying they hate a genre of music, but really there are aspects or iterations of it they would enjoy--it's just that their experience has generally been granted things they don't like. I have had a number of recommendations over the years, precisely due to my bombastic outlook on anime, and I have found other things I like. Princess Mononoke, for example, didn't blow me away, but I liked it. On the other hand, Howl's Moving Castle was a wonderful piece of imagination, until it went full 'anime' and he turned into an angel love story. I know there are other good things in anime, so I am aware that my opinion is like saying 'I hate sandwiches', even though a sandwich could contain just about everything, but on the whole, I find the stuff that gets pushed Stateside is middle-school level rubbish. And that's not even getting into the tropes and cliches that I hate, much like the problems with modern American 'cinema'.
But you are original because all of these others flowing through your life have made something very unique... If only society would finally learn a deep respect for everyone's unique individuality and very special creativity which is no doubt at least a little original... Many things come down to how our language is limited in its ability to really explain what mysteries we sense happening all around us🌌
every new painting is made of colours that exist and provided by the nature so Does that mean the Picture that anyone Draws isnt original...i dont think so
@@mehboob9101 But it's only original because we are beings limited by capacity and time. Originality and uniqueness are conceptual constructs of the mind to define an occurrence in time that only happens once in the perceptual frame. There are really two scenarios depending on the nature of the universe. If entropy always increases, there can be a certain uniqueness in that, in the process toward the heat death of the universe by particles spreading so far that they can no longer interact, there may be configurations of the universe that only happen at a single point in time. But much like the painter who is inspired and creates a painting, the nature of the paint is not unique, the nature of the painters inspiration is not unique, the atoms that make up the painter are not unique, they are all pre-existing, but the instant of creation of the painting may be unique. The uniqueness comes from the universal state in which atoms and whatever other quantifiable aspects are arranged in a specific pattern. That pattern may be unique if entropy holds. But once you get into infinite multi-versal territory, all occurrences recur infinitely, so there is no uniqueness. Aside from that, my beef has always been humanity's inability to accept the mechanistic nature of the universe. For if the universe were, as far as our perceptions can tell (It's really the only benchmark we have) not mechanistic, machines would not function and science could not use repeatable experiments to prove hypothesis. I know it gets funky when you throw the quantum into the mix. But that seems more to me to be a scale perception issue than an non-quantifiable state... (I'm a layman BTW, but have been a techno-philosophy nerd as long as I can remember. Any actual scientists who can flesh out the ideas and make corrections, I'm all ears...)
What about when Squidward threw the pizza at that guys face and then told Spongebob that the guy ate the whole thing just to make Spongebob feel better?
Spongebob is already a mindf**k considering that they live in a a place called "Bikini Bottom" which is a direct reference to the point where nuclear bombs were first used... Hence all the nukes that go off in the show.
As a person who's struggled with a frail, severely asthmatic body for 65 years, I was seriously impressed at the notion of becoming partly or fully cybernetic when I first watched the GITS original movie. It seemed a dream come true. No fears of being hacked as I would choose to not have the brain external connectivity. After watching the entire Stand Alone Complex series seasons one and two, however, I began to think that I would lose so much of what has made me who I am. My compassion for others, my understanding of human limitations, even my choice of work and recreation - those things that make me who I am would be gone. With a perfect body, capable of all I've ever dreamed of doing I might be a wholly different person and have developed very different philosophical ideas. So, despite my limitations, pain and occasional suffering I think I will stick to what I've got. A shorter warranty certainly, but at least I am me.
I very much validate our inability to question who we have become as a direct result of our life experience. I also do not summarily disregard our potential absent same. I literally cannot fathom my affect outside my choice and circumstance, nor can I dismiss my capacity beyond them. The lack of choice does not merit admiration outcome.
@Luke Skywalker You can make your own and also make it mostly positive. Any 100% positive outlook is doomed to failure, but as someone who was a horrible cynic most of his life I can say the other side is just as bad. Life sucks, but you rule, and you have a body and brain that are insane bio machines.. You're better than an android, you're human.
A brain in a tub of its own juices feeling and seeing the world through a network of nerves that cant be trusted by design. Questioning if the world its processing is real or not. Of course that is questionable. Brains reality is a cramped skull. Everything beyond doesnt really exist if you strip the senses. Strip away every sense a human has and only leave the brain alone for monitoring. Would you then experience true reality? Maybe out of sheer boredom and lack of any external stimuli the brain might create its own delusional reality and declare it real. The difference being is that its the master of its own delusion rather than being fed one from the outside. If this reversal can be done then how do we unravel "reality". Dive into a black hole? Is it death perhaps? is it taking absurd amounts of drugs that completely scramble the senses. All of those questions and more can be answered with some inhumane experiments in due time.
Not the brain, it's counciousness studying the brain. We are part of the ultimate counciousness. Like little boats in a boundless sea. Everyone grasping a little bit on his way drawn by ripples made by himself or not.
Ahead of its time sure... but the heavy use of poor quality CG was bad then, and hasn't aged well since. I like the idea of that movie a lot... but it is hot garbage to watch. I would love to have them get another crack at it, but it did sooooo extremely poorly that it almost killed the franchise. Will probably never get another chance.
@@CaedenV Huh, I recently saw a GITS movie or show on Netflix that was truly atrocious to watch. It was full CG and looked like a PS2 or PS3 game or so, because the animations were so stiff. Couldn't stand to watch more than 10 minutes of it. What a shame.
That angel scene reminded me of one of Terry Pratchett's quotes "Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."
Saw the first GITS as a teen, and it was such a mind blowing experience. Was raised catholic and never questioned much of anything, but as the movie went on a bunch of questions kept popping up in my head, by the end I was in shock on how good it was and that somehow I was changed by the concepts it presented and the stuff I just didn’t have an answer to. One of the best films I’ve ever seen.
This is exactly why I love Ghost in the Shell. It's my favorite anime. It's very deep and I think really describes accurately and in great detail where humanity will inevitably go. It asks and answers some questions that we would have if we decided to take the next step. Either machines will take over or we accept them completely and merge them into us, evolving what humanity is as a whole. I love how the advantages and disadvantages of this are considered in the movies and the series. The latest iteration of the series is sadly very watered down in my opinion.
The scene where the puppet master says something along the lines that" for all of your art and science you humans cannot explain what life actually is", blew my mind. I saw it was like "damn".
It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual only because of his intangible memory. But memory cannot be defined, yet it defines mankind. The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization. [..] And can you offer me proof of your existence? How can you, when neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is?
The first question is - how our consciousness will react to detaching it from it's biological platform. We often forget how much our biochemistry affects our mind's work, if we will remove it and transfer our "selves" onto a different base - will it become a pure intelligence or it will become completely indifferent to everything what's going on outside?
Based on real world experiences, a human without emotions does not become a perfect, logical, rational machine. Quite the opposite, in fact: This doctor Antonio Damasio treated a patient who lost the ability to "feel" emotions after a brain surgery. This man lost his job, his family, most of his life savings, and his home, and he didn't seem to care at all. The man was perfectly normal, his reasoning was good, his memory was great, and he showed no signs of depression or anxiety. In fact, he showed Zen-like calm after a lot of misfortunes caused by his own negligence. After the surgery, this man stopped caring about his job, his family, his life savings that he lost to a con artist, until he was effectively homeless and his brother took care of him. It was obvious that "something" changed after the surgery, and after visiting many doctors who couldn't find anything wrong with him, this doctor Damasio measured his ability to _feel_ instead of thinking. After talking to him and hearing him explain the rationale behind all of his mistakes (missing an investor's meeting to buy a new stapler, for example), one of Damasio's colleagues showed him several gruesome pictures of burn victims, starving children, accidents, etc. The man was actually surprised at how he didn't feel anything after seeing pictures that would make any other person look away in shock and horror. He admitted that he _should_ have turned away in disgust, but he felt nothing. So this puzzled the doctors, because at points we wish we didn't have emotions. Emotions drive us to do stupid shit we later regret... But there was this man, devoid of emotions, and his life was a dumpster fire. Doctors asked themselves: Why the fuck, if his reasoning was intact, didn't he figure that meeting his job and family obligations was the most logical thing to do? Even sociopaths figure that out, but he couldn't do it. To him, a school recital invoked the same joy and fatherly pride as buying a pair of socks, losing $1M in savings felt the same as pumping gas... So, doctors figured that we need emotions to strive for "something better". If our brain was a car, the driver wouldn't be our "logical mind" it would be our emotions, while our "thinking mind" is the GPS, only suggesting a course of action, but is ultimately our emotions the ones deciding where are we going. So, I think that without emotions, we would all die of indifference no matter how "logical" and "rational" we think we are, as they are the driving force of our lives, and if they have a biochemical basis, which is the most likely, detaching ourselves from it without a form to replicate them, will harm our psyche as a whole...
@@DonVigaDeFierro "So, doctors figured that we need emotions to strive for "something better". If our brain was a car, the driver wouldn't be our "logical mind" it would be our emotions, while our "thinking mind" is the GPS, only suggesting a course of action, but is ultimately our emotions the ones deciding where are we going." Here. This sentence resumed what Jung took BOOKS to describe as "Conscience" and "Unconscience".
@@DonVigaDeFierro Yes! I think we are more our bodies than we like to admit. Human consciousness is more than the ability to think rationally or the capacity to feel instinctively. It's the combination of these and other factors what makes posible human consciousness and the sense of self.
The thing is: feelings exist to make us do stuff. If we don't feel anything, what will drive us? It's the same with animals although we often prefer to call their feelings "instinct". The wolf will howl in order to find it's peers or tell strange worlfs to stay off it's territory. Finding peers is a necessity to survive, that is driven by a need, some sort of desire, which we refer to as instinct in non human animals but when we are talking about humans we call it a feeling, a desire not to be lonesome. Feelings exist to drive us, to do make us do things.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Interesting, looks like a perfect depression to me, that state when everything just loses it's meaning and you just stop care... If even digital mind won't save us from this, then I don't know. It was good to believe that there is a hope
GITS and Akira were the first anime I saw, and they fundamentally changed the way I saw myself, my future, and humanity. The first Dune novel also helped me understand the way that my emotions and my perceptions impact my decisions. I think all three of those (GITS, Akira, Dune) ask us if we're animals subject to our body's whims, or if we can choose to be human, to face our own weaknesses and flaws, and become more ourselves.
When I saw these as a kid, I didn't know what to think. I was like 8 or 10, and I had no idea cartoons were even allowed to be this way. Profoundly changed little me. A couple years later we got Anime Network and I was flooded with cerebral stuff like this and never looked back
@@Mahaveez It is a tool for what you see fit, after all. But I mean to say in this instance, TOOL’s actual sound itself is profound from an instrumental or technical perspective, music theory, ya dig?
My "holy based" moment was when I saw the Android from The Talos Principle at 0:40. That game is profoundly transcendental. If you take the time to: 1, read all of the text files; 2, explore all of the QR codes (and their riddles); 3, listen to all of the doctor's voice recordings; 4, find the many Easter eggs; then The Talos Principle is so utterly transformative that you will never look at life the same way.
Not at all. The ego is not the process of thinking. The ego is an LLM, it is the presence of Language and the absence of actual thinking. The abstraction away from the ego, into the literally abstract of reality, is when thinking happens. Most conversations, including this reply, is a preconceived thought, the logic and language was determined long ago, via the language model and understanding it. You are still learning the language model, hence why you’re just wildly incorrect. Thats how most humans operate, inconceivably ignorant of what I just told you. You literally used the ego to donexactly what I said, NOT THINK. And now that I challenged you, the real truth will arrive. You will either THINK, or use your ego to defend your mistake.
Ghost in the shell and Akira are fantastic movies, but can I just mention the train scene in spirited away? That's the most profound for me. Not one bit of dialogue but it says so much. Really impacted me at only 7 years old.
@@WheelChair-yy1ji Really? wow. .You must have been reincarnated and remember your past life, to be able to possess the knowledge and wisdom one would need to possess,(acquired from experiences and lesssons learned during life) to be able to realize the profound and existential meaning that this movie explores.. Or are you a super genius or something? help me understand who you are...
I think Innocence is one of the most profound films ever made, animated or otherwise. The whole thing deserves to be analysed in its entirety. It deals not only with how we create and elaborate our selves, but also with how it interacts with the world, how we try to affirm our presence by anchoring our selves in the world around us. It challenges our preconceived notions of selflessness and egotism by asking why we're so fixated on reproducing, always replicating our forms and thoughts through the environment we live in. The final scene is one of the most beautiful and complex moments in animation history. I'm glad you've talked about this film, it's a pity it is so ignored compared to the first one
@@hellogoodbye3786 He's either a bible humping lunatic or possibly a bot. As for Serial Experiments Lain, I found episode 9 to be my favorite, because of the documentary scenes. Very enlightening.
Gate had a weirdly deep second when Rory Mercury was addressing the Diet and she corrected the congresswoman that the people who died from the Defense Force's mishandling of a threat weren't relevant. That those people would have died for their lack of involvement. The Defense Force's intervention actually created lives that were destined to die otherwise. It kind of impacted me that we're quick to criticism militaries that intervene without ever thinking about the outcome had they not intervened. It was all the more appropriate that the lesson of mortality was delivered by an avatar of death. Anime has a lot of hot garbage philosophy but occasionally they land on some highly profound ideas.
born in 94. grew up on late night adult swim. Ghost in the shell, Cowboy bebop, Trigun, Blue Gender, lain, manyyy gundam series. I have a strong love for 80's-90's anime and a few modern ones. Ghost in the shell and Cowboy Bebop are ABSOLUTE masterpieces in the anime genre. Nothing comes close in terms of story telling, world building, characters, plots. I will die on this hill and will carry this to my grave.
Just watched 08th MS Team again. Dude the subbed and dubbed versions are both so good for 95. It was a way better dub than Wing was and the story was good.
Apparently they made another GITS manga after abandoning the manga timeline for decades. It takes place after the Major merged with the puppetmaster but before she resurfaces, and it's about section 9 investigating an anti-cyborg cult while also experiencing growing pains from bringing a "psychic channeler" into the group. It's honestly incredible seeing the series' usual take on spirituality from the opposite perspective, with a spiritual character as a permanent member of section 9 and how the other members grow to accept her and come to rely on her skills when dealing with the cult, especially when she's subtlety meant as a counterpart to the Major.
I hardly remember the movie at all, but what I'll never forget are the hacking loop and that ethereal parade scene. It's like these two scenes have codified the deeper message of the film so that the rest could be defragmented from my conscious memory.
Before speaking definitively about Buddhism, please be willing to investigate it with the kind of rigor and reverence you have with works such as Aion. "Separation of mind from body in order to achieve true enlightenment", or anything that could be derived as such, isn't found in the texts. Worse, it's completely refuted. In Buddhism, there are realms of existence in which the mind exists without a body. These are the formless, or Brahma, realms. The problem with these realms is that, even though they are a higher realm and a very nice place to be, they are still within samsara. The cycle of death and rebirth will still occur there, and a being will eventually be reborn in lower realms where dukkha (suffering or unsatisfactoriness) is worse. Enlightenment is the ceasing of this cycle of death and rebirth within samsara and everything that perpetuates the cycle (see: The Four Noble Truths). Therefore, even a being with bodiless-mind, if still within samsara, cannot be enlightened. I, of course, don't expect everyone to know this; but, for a channel that seemingly treats profound religious ideas with care, it's just unfortunate to hear something so misguided. Still, I did enjoy the video as a whole and appreciate your insight.
Yeah, a Hindu, I find it funny that Westerners or the layman think that being enlightenment is to just simply transcend the current plane, instead of escaping the cycle.
I like how kind you phrased your critique. And it seemed to open my mind even further. Alot of people here in the west get stuck with the western interpretations and mix ups of zen. For example Eckhart Tolle or Alan watts. Could u offer a good introduction to enter into the correct buddhistic worldviews? Thx, cheers
"This notion of separating the body from the mind in order to achieve true enlightenment" "The aim is to reject the illusion of the material world" are the relevant quotes from the video. It seems to me that the concept of some bodiless minds still being within the cycle of death while other bodiless minds have escaped the cycle of death is just additional detail not really in conflict with the point he was trying to make which was that he sees a connection between this concept and an ancient philosophy.
Max, this is, indeed, a really impactful moment. However, in regards to the Ghost in the Shell Universe I would have to admit I was deeply impacted by the 2nd season of S.A.C: Ghost in the Shell S.A.C: 2Gig. When Kuze explains his project as a revolutionary. I think it does encapsule the current political situations that dominate contemporary geopolitics. I think that whole season is criminally underrated. I hope you can check it out. Gret vid btw.
I do intend to do videos on S.A.C. Just currently going through other animes at the moment with my lady. Recently finished Cowboy Bebop and Terror in Resonance. Going through Wolf's Rain at the moment. After that, it's either going to be S.A.C. or Neon Genesis: Evangelion. Believe me when I say that there are moments from S.A.C. (1st and 2nd season) that I think would make for great content on my channel.
I always loved the movie but I slept on the series until last year, and wow, was I impressed. Every Single episode, amazing. The entire Kuze plotline was riveting, what a show. So much to think about
glad i found this; i watched this movie when it first came out when i was 8 years old. that set me down a path of reading and constant need to understand nostalgia and why people interacted a certain way towards others and how they percieve the world around them and how they evolve, what makes people exist overall in a sense. im not sure but i never percieved the way i thought after watching this and another anime titled "akira" from that time was influential in my upbringing animation films have always made a place for me, thanks for sharing.
Great Max, It is not describible how important is your work. It's totally perfect to claim that your perceptions about philosophy and art are the most precise and meaningful on the whole RUclips.... I really must say: We need to have you talking about Naoki Urasawa's "Monster". This animation deserves to be analysed by your perspective, indeed!! For me, the most profound animation of all time! It's implications, alongside a very dense atmosphere, surrounded by so many questions that humanity has are tremendous! I assure that Johan will be one of the greatest characters that you will ever see in your life...He gives me goosebmps just by thinking in his quotes... Godlike video, as always....
There are a few episodes in the series where the "Tashkomas" ( mini tanks ) start to become self-aware. The humans notice this and decide to take them all for a system complete wipe and re-boot. I have to say I felt some sadness in this action .... to destroy these burgeoning feelings of awareness. This is one of my most favoured ANIME shows for all the reasons you mention and more.
I found the tachikomas annoying at first due to their shrill, unreasonably high voices, but came to appreciate them over time as I came to see their value. I would probably feel differently about their memory wipe now.
Exactly, I can't help thinking of Huxley's "Brave new world", because if EVERYONE WAS INTELEGENT then no menial boring and repetitive important jobs or tasks would ever get done! soooo they created the "Gama" and even "Epsilon minus" Embryo's that inevitably grew into very simple people "Semi morons" so things could get done. Evil? Absolutely. That's why u did and I hope many others realized how wrong/abusive and inhuman that cold/evil decision really was. I even get Echo's of that in today's American Black Getto population, it's just too much of a close coincidence to be an accidental behavior and with such low IQ's and self awareness. Deliberate? without awareness and an internal voice for self reflection what is left but a machine.
@@AvvieLanche I think you're supposed to hate them at first , then get attached to them, then get rekd when they get wiped.I'm pretty sure it's deliberate.
This gets even more fun when you know of splitbrain theory, CCP Grey did a great video on that. In short, there is the talking you, and the silent you, each one of you half of the brain that makes up your mind, each working together to run the whole meatsuit that is you. One can talk, one cannot, but both are so used to working together you don't notice them. Sever that link between the two hemispheres of the brain though and things get weird.
I don't know that removing consciousness from a human meaty brain to an electronic brain really changes the level of fallibility. The nature of existence is what one perceives, which is always subjective. There is no objective consciousness, I would argue. Even just a camera filming something, it is limited in what it can perceive and is still fallible. Love your stuff, thank you so much for this video.
objective consciousness would require us to understand absolutely everything, which would mean enlightenment and/or becoming god. Even if we all got absorbed into LCL, our collective consciousness is limited to what all humans have perceived. Just like current AI systems like ChatGPT, its understanding of the universe is limited by what we feed it, so human understanding.
It is impossible to "transfer" or reproduce Human Consciousness from the "meaty" human brain. I'm a Neuroscientist and Complex Systems Scientist. We have demonstrated this mathematically. The human brain is what we call "Irreducibly Complex". That is - the internal complexity of it's structure is the computational limit for it's own understanding and replication. GITS is my favorite Anime and Manga though. Incredibly genius thought experiments. I suggest EVERYONE READ IT! Should be mandatory reading in high-school curriculum. No joke. It inspired me to commit to my careers in both Neuroscience and Art.
@@zpettigrew Hey! Do you have any books, articles, videos or information about what you said? (Not being able to transfer human consciousness and all of that) I want to know more about it, I think is pretty interesting, thank you.
@@davidmoreu3015 Start at reading or listen to: "The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed." by Christof Koch. He does a rigorous dissection. You can also just look at the computational limits of circuitry alone and how much energy/natural resources would be required. Look into Complex Systems Science, reductionism, and irreducible complexity. An intro to Chaos Theory may be helpful as well. Not just that - but its fairly obvious "simulations" are NOT material reality. Material reality is preeminent. Always and forever.
For me, the most profound moment in anime is from Berserk (1998). The bonfire of dreams monologue. The level of isolation he expresses and the reasoning is something I related to so strongly, in some ways I still do. It's partially the alone in a crowd mentality explained mixed with the absence of aspirations experienced by many of those abused as children. The feels are strong, the insights are deep, and the music toys with your soul.
Berserk is a masterpiece. I always think unironically that the Shinji and Asuka polemic scene in End of Evangelion is one of the most profound scenes in any medium. FLCL, Lain and Guntz are also very deep in their commentary on the human condition.
The first Ghost In The Shell movie was actually my reason to learn English... the German Synchronisation sucks and didn’t make sense. So I sat there dissecting the movie. I watched it over 44 times before I could understand everything that was being said. It’s also what sparked my interest in philosophy. That was 18 years ago... I still enjoy watching the movies and the series.
This video has opened up a lot more symbolism for me within the two movies. I never caught the "doll" philosophy, and the symbolism in the first film at the end with Motoko inhabiting the shell of a little girl, demonstrates this idea with excellence.
5 of the most profound moments in anime history (IMHO): 1 - "The Last 2 Episodes" (Evangelion TV series) 2 - "The Egg Breaks Open" (Angel's Egg) [The whole movie may itself occupy this spot, if you wish.] 3 - "Death of Riikishi Tohru" (Ashita no Joe) 4 - "Reinhardt von Lohengramm and Yang Wenli Meet" (Legends of the Galactic Heroes) 5 - "Revvy's 'These are Things' Speech" (Black Lagoon, episode 5)// "Rock's Breakdown" (Black Lagoon, episode 15) So many other moments belong on this list but, alas, there are only five spots.
+1 for Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It would be hard for me to pick a single scene from that massive masterpiece but that meeting and their discussion of republicanism vs dictatorships was very thought-provoking.
As someone who loves NGE's original ending, I think the End of Evangelion comes across as more profound, or at least more interpretive and self-reflective.
Dude this is seriously top notch work! I love GITS and next to Cowboy Bebop it’s my favorite anime. You seriously took the philosophical tinge that imbued it’s work and brought it to light in a fascinating way! Kudos to you!! I wish more people would watch GITS it’s like the Eastern version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
The movie, and especially the Kim scene, is heavily inspired by the story UEBER DAS MARIONETTENTHEATER from German author HEINRICH VON KLEIST, which dates back to 1810. It's about two guys talking about the aesthetics of puppets, and how the human conciousness and self awareness is a disadvantage in reaching that level of aesthetic perfection. After brief mentions about prosthetics, one of the guys remembers a story in which a Russian family held a bear that was an expert fencer because its lack of self awareness made it move instinctly, which reminded me about Kim mentioning the perfection of animals and gods. I'll just post an english translation of the last paragraph which ties in nicely with Kim's monologue about lack of conciousness/infinite conciousness: "Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god." "Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?" "Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."
I opened this video a few days ago in a new tab and hadn't watched it. Yesterday I watched the Lex podcast with S.Harris, coming to the conclusion that, indeed, our thoughts and feelings are not a conscious request. The role our conscious part of the brain plays is simply rationalisation and temporal consistency assurance. The unconscious parts of our brain feed our conscious part sensory information, context, and attributed emotion and we as conscious beings simply work with the information we are given. Although you could argue that rationalisation is also unconscious since it is discrete from consciousness as demonstrated in dreams; leaving us with consciousness just being something that experiences, nothing else. Kind of surreal to see this after realising all that, considering it has been sitting there all this time!
We are the Awareness. I doubt that It even thinks or has a memory. During life, It identifies with a brain that does, but that brain will become dust. The Awareness might go on. Most people believe It does. If It does, however, it isn't what most people think of as "I." It has no name, no identity. It just experiences the now.
Ever hear of Alzheimer's, @@alexradice8163? You can lose your memory before you even die. You can lose your ability to think. You can lose your personality. You can lose everything that makes you "you." That suggests that every bit of it originates in the brain and dies with the body - except, perhaps, the Awareness.
The Animatrix hit me especially hard regarding human will and what it means to have limits, and if they are breakable, or reachable, or if they even exist. Also kind of funny that humans, after being predictably merciless, ask or expect any kind of mercy.
Theory: it may be as we perceive the storage and transference of data or memory into hard material or resistant shell( brain case) and may be what we do to super computers to add a thermal sink or putting the processor into near zero or sub zero. Law of thermal dynamics. Is there really a soul ? Also with how tohgusa sees a change in reality, how would you know when it does. Is it thinking or is it something else.
Still can’t wait for a Max Derrat “Lost” analysis. Absolutely one of my favorite shows ever and one of the most complex and profound shows I’ve seen. IMO I don’t even mind the ending of the show and it made my speculation and digging feel very worthwhile. Awesome video again Max.
what a great video man; my uncle is philosopher and have worked in the Washington post and Miami herald as editor, have some books publicized and so on, he saw me once looking anime, in this case the anime in question was Ergo Proxy, and told me "grown man loosing time in child cartoons, what a shame Jose, so much you need to read still", after 2 days I choose the first movie in Ghost in the Shell(my favorite anime of all times), I copied to a pendrive(my blue ray ripoff) and deliver to him, I just said "do this for me and look at", he of course make some excuses and bla bla bla...after one week and some days, when I even didn't remember more about the trade, he came home and told me "we definitely need to talk"
The algorithm served me up this video and I have to say I’m glad it did. GITS is my top 3 anime. Great analysis and indeed the concept of perception and reality is indeed a profound moment and food for thought regarding future human cyborg advances.
I remember my final for my Philosophy class asked one question: Does a brain in a vat/jar still retain consciousness? Does it retain memories? Does it create new ones? How would a soul fit into that understanding? I had to utilize at least 3-5 of the philosophers’ teachings that we studied, and incorporate them into the essay. I immediately thought of watching Ghost in the Shell on AdultSwim, as a kid, and did my best to incorporate the ethos of the anime into the paper. On another note, if you haven’t already, you should watch and discuss Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It’s regarded as one of the best anime of all time and delves into many profound questions about humanity, the soul, God, religion, geopolitics, family, and the military. Incredible series
@@l0kumidit641 Shit man, wish I knew. Was a while ago. As my class had almost 500 students, my professor didn’t post final exam grades, just final grades. I ended up with an A in the class but I don’t know what my actual grade was on the final exam. Must have been decent tho 🤣
Which philosophers did you refer to on the paper? Sounds like a great way to bring in self defined by empirical observation Vs self as defined by a thoughts / forms
Absolutely agree, the first time I saw this scene it rocked me to my core.... took me a few days to wrap my head around the possibility... If I had to make a choice... neither... The human condition is only hackable if you let it therefore it is self contained. The decision to augment your brain changes the dichotomy only for those augmented. IE "are those augmented still human?" I'd argue no. They are transhuman, and therefore have completely different struggles. Therefore human philosophy does not apply, different game, different rules.
Im sorry to be late, but is being a child human? You brain isn`t devoleped enough yet to understand adults problems and perspecrive. So you have your own, but does this unhumanise you? My thoguths : No, it`s simply a state of physical being. What you are defined by is you, but if you can`t define yourself by the lack of perspective or meaning chosen, you will be defined by others. Nothinges is just absense, but I don`t see problems to fill it as you see fit with more room to spare you will have more room to fill. These who transend human perspective are just extending what they see, but rules are the same and not within it, but beyond lies sorrow like it ever was if puzzle didn`t fit. And again there is emotions and choice of what to do with what you have discovered beyond and choice is the same : defense, illusions, caving and manipulation or risk, dispair, time and humbleness
@@TheMasillo a person is the sum total of their experience making them unique with their own unique set of problems. The human experience starts at conception, the reason I say this is a complete set of information is formed, a complete set of unique DNA. The potential of that unique being is unrealized and coded to some degree in that set of information but it is still human and self contained within that potential being over time... With out the augmentation ...while thoughts and ideas can be influenced indirectly through suggestion, coercion, manipulation without the augmentation... The augment has the potential of a direct approach editing sight, sound, feeling and thought... Completely different set of issues that a natural human being does not have to contend with. Uniquely inhuman, but not unhuman.
@@Fragninja and perceived through brain. How does it matter if your videocard is 4080 if your cpu is seleron?. + There is more to dna that we know, Epigenetics for instanse explains a lot of things and raises a lot of questions about unrealised potential you are talking about. Some subtle things that happened to you when you were just 3 month or even in your mother can define your behaviour now, but it also can be rewritten. I guess I want to say that potential is not truly a real thing, but variation of your own self is. I mean even addiction to something can be modified through epigenetics methylation. Would you agree that addiction to cocaine is not exactly sound to "realising your potential' right? , but it is part of it. What is potential is not chosen to persived through what is good or bad, but it just is there. Like edited sight, sound or feeling you are already edited by things you don`t even know about, but augmentation you can atlreast chose and as long it is not your brain we are changing you are still just a human. And by logic of what I said before if person had bad vision thought their whole life and now they did medical operation are they transhuman? I mean when can you say if some parametrs is human or not ? Is being 2.3 meters tall is human? "Perfect" pitch? sight that better than what is called healthy ? It`s not common for sure. You don`t really know the limitation because you can`t know all the variations and so it`s impossible to judge by using them. You can also just have devices with you that is just not installed in you. Like does car make you transhuman? I mean normaly people can`t go through 150 km distance in an hour.
@@TheMasillo that's a stretch, the difference is that thoughts, feelings, sight and sound can be directly edited... I already explained how a human can be coerced, and manipulated externally... Having direct access to a other persons brain is different... With external devices and stimulus you can (for the most part) choose to disengage. As for perfect pitch, and being 2.5 meters tall... Things that happen in utero etc already mentioned that: "unique set of DNA" that's encoded encoded in their DNA, part of the potential I was talking about. None of that is inhuman, that literally the human experience. The whole inhuman problem brain augmentation you are no longer self contained... "Ghost hacked humans are so pathetic it's a shame, and this poor bastard was hacked pretty badly" scene in gits is a prime example of these problems in a reality where it's possible. I've had more than 27 years to think about the problem....
This whole idea pretty much sums up my exact reaction to this scene and the entire GItS series as well as the concept of the technological "ascension" of the human mind. My fear is this exact concept combined with the dilemma presented by Soma. We simply can't know by the very nature of the problem, and thus it is inevitably left to us to "find out," which is still potentially inherently flawed. Ghost in the Shell so perfectly describes this entire thought experiment in every nuance and possible interpretation to a an uncanny degree, and with things like Neurolink paving the way for precisely this sort of future, the question definitely feels more important now than it ever has. Thank you for making these videos. I can't even begin to describe the joy I find in seeing someone explore the intricate realms of thought and philosophy that I find myself mulling over on a daily basis.
It's much more mature in it's themes than Ghost, but another franchise that asks similar question with regard to identity and human conscious is Murdoc Scramble. Then of course Ergo Proxy, which shares many of the same themes as Ghost in regards to what it means to "transcend" human consciousness. I really need to go back and finish that one!
Not really, in the process of "finding out" we perhaps can finally prove that mind cannot survive the body, for it needs the inputs of the body to be able to reason, or it could be the other way around completely, and our mind can survive our bodies just fine, while our bodies are not able to perform even the autonomic tasks in order to be kept alive. Thing is, if our minds are dependant on a biological brain to be implanted on a synthetic body, then it is proven that we NEED body to have a mind. If we can simply "download" the brain data, to be implanted on a synth brain, than we have an even bigger situation on our hands, as mind AND body are superfluous, and only the data accumulated on your brain being what we can call "consciousness".
I've enjoyed cartoons like most as a child in the 70's, it wasn't until the late 90's as a young adult that I was introduced to Japanese anime. I'd like to say that maybe it was Captain Harlock, but I'm not certain as since then I have inundated myself with this particular media. Even today I am still playing catch up with a number of series that I missed due to not having it readily available until relatively recently. Ghost in the shell was the first anime dvd that I purchased. I was mesmerized by the visuals and the story and wondered why american tv couldn't/wouldn't at least try to capture the essence of anime. I figure that they may have thought that the complexity of the stories might have been too much to gain an audience here, or that it was just for kids ? It is [I think] odd that "serious" movie buffs won't even consider watching anime. And this superhero movie craze is sooo overdone and quite redundant, boring actually. And as I was told when I was a kid... "You don't want that ? More for me then".
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a must-see. Sci-fi space warfare with sociological and political philosophy strewn throughout. Serious questions about human nature and psyche on the personal and grand scales alike. It's a masterpiece and well-worth the 110 episode watch time. Just don't get too attached to anyone, hoh boy.
The biggest problem I see in digitized consciousness is that it has to be stored somewhere physically regardless of body. If all storage of it would somehow be destroyed or rendered unfunctional then that consciousness would no longer exist. I think the sacrifice of the Tachikomas is a good example.
Nowadays, this idea of Cyberbrains seems even more in the realm of sci-fi than it was before. You can put all your memories on a thumbdrive and put it into a mechanical being, but it would still be a copy of you, NOT you as a person. This copy could think like you and act like you but it will not BE you. That I believe is where souls come in. You cannot remove such a thing unless you body is unable to take care of it anymore. The moment of death is the moment the soul leaves.
@@kaytlinjustis5643 The brain replaces its own cells constantly. By age 50 or so, the part of the brain that stores memory - that stores 'you' - has been completely replaced. What makes one copy sacred, and another false?
@@TehCakeIzALie1 is the internet tangable? Arent websites just recycled electrical signals over and over, is the same current ever the same except the moment it is observed. Learn quantum my friend and you will see.
@@TehCakeIzALie1 Memories, are like data stored in a Motherboard. They are often altered or hidden away due to aging or trauma. The Soul is all that you are; memory, emotions, ideals, faith, etc. It grows with you, which is why as our memories change, we change as people do. The reason I believe that the 'memories left behind' is from one episode of CSI, is the fact these scientists created their own AI doubles (a mechanical figurehead) that looks and acts like the person they are copied from. It isn't a perfect process, because one of the AI's belonged to the murder victim of that episode, and the 'memories' were incomplete because the REAL person wasn't able to download the remaining information before death. The AI was also incapable of thinking for itself; you can ask it a question from that person's past and it will answer and 'remember' except for the victim's death.
@@ansonburgdorf3940 how soul enters the body? let's say the soul is present somewhere(in higher dimension that can't be percieved) in the universe before you are born then what kind of signal is created to bring your soul to a body. if you manage to recreate that same signal you can access your soul back in new body or computer.
This remind me of Platón's world of ideas, where our body and perceptions can be illusions and basically a cell for our soul or rational being and the death as our only escape of it, but maybe in the future it won't be the only escape Great video man
Separating the physical ties to emotion such as pain, anxiety, and even pleasure, in my mind, would separate the thrill of life from consciousness. If you've ever felt like you lacked motivation, I feel on some level it stems from a piece of your reward center for pleasure to be absent. So in theory if there were pieces of your own consciousness attached to biology that were no longer present, would you only be capable of living out a "flattened" sense of life? Could you live like the ocean? Or like a rock? Is that the thing you want? and if it isn't, are you stuck there forever? Would that be an eternity of hell like depression? Conscious and unending, unfeeling. Could you ever return to life as a being of impermanence or did you just lose out on everything that makes you unique and human? Also, my feeling is that if the "something that thinks" is the true culprit of all consciousness, then it chose to have many cells like any other organism. Our part as pieces is just to perform the functions of the whole which could be largely knowledge driven, discover what we can, pass on this knowledge to other cells to further more knowledge, and reproduce.
Hello, you mentioned anime is “outside your area of expertise” so I’m assuming you haven’t seen a lot. So I have some recommendations that I consider on par with GITS in terms of profundity. Give them a watch if you’d like. Ergo Proxy (very similar to GITS), Monster (a must watch), Devilman Crybaby (hit or miss depending on the person), and Code Geass (maybe not as profound as the others however I really enjoyed it).
Ok I just realized you already have an Ergo Proxy video out that also mentions Monster😅. However seeing as you read manga as well I’d recommend 20th Century Boys, Oyasumi Pun Pun, and Homunculus.
I watched ghost in the shell when I was in elementary school, late at night at my grandparents house on Adult Swim. It blew my mind. The series and 1995 movie will never leave my mind. I have the movie, all the shows, comics. It's made me ponder humanity and life so many times.
Haha I had a similar experience. I was like 10 and I wasnt allowed to watch adult swim, however my identical twin and I would watch after my parents went to bed. They had full metal alchemist, evangelion, ghost in the shell, etc. I would always say that GITS was my favorite show. I would just sit and watch it with my brother, pretending to like it even though it was way too complex for my young mind. I watched the series again when I was in high school and it blew me away. Such a great show.
the most profound moment in animation history is the final scene in end of evangelion, and also in berserk when griffith says i sacrifice, rip kentaro miura :(
I don't really know if there is a "most profound" moment, so yeah this video was good, and I'm really happy I watched it because I couldn't understand much of that repeating scene in Ghost in the Shell 2... but was it really the most profound? I guess it's just to attract viewers, but "one of the most profound" would have worked too man... I did also thought of Berserk when I read the title first, but I think it is actually really subjective, some of these moments will impact us more than others. Personally I'm a sucker for the Sibyl System in Psycho-Pass X)) , so it's true discovery by the end of season one really shook me, and there is a LOT to think about it, but then again, same as in Berserk, NGE, Black Lagoon, Monsters, Parasyte (a lot of animes from old seinens in general)...
When I was eleven, I became deeply paranoid that I only just started existing, and every memory before that moment was fake. Maybe I wasn't real, maybe I was a robot or something I didn't know existed. I started thinking that the memories of those moments of thinking about being fake were some sort of test by who ever made me. Maybe other people were the same as me. I was completely obsessed. I could never see my own brain, even when someone explained brain scans to me, that's just a computer screen. You might as well be showing me Minesweeper. The years go by, and I never stop having this feeling, and I happen upon GitS. Kusanagi says during the boat scene exactly what I always asked people, "Have you ever seen your own brain?" That's it, this is a message, either from the tester, or someone who wants me to be free. I'll never be sure if I am real or not, or if what I see is real, or if this message I'm typing is just a memory of something that never happened. I don't know what the point of it all is. I don't know what reality means or is, but this is the one I know and that I have to exist in. Maybe I'll stop existing when the experiment is over.
It makes no difference whether you are an artificial consciousness that only exists for a moment with fabricated memories in a sophisticated simulation or a human being with a real past in a real world. In the end, what matters is what you do with the moment you exist in.
well,the point of existence is to learn from your experiences,and grow closer to the intelligence behind the creation of the universe...to become one with the heart of all reality...which is where the truth can be found
It's a question that can't really be answered at the end of the day, which for the type of people that really enjoy shows and concepts on the level of gits only makes the question more interesting and profound. It's poking at the fabric of reality itself, and we shouldn't take that lightly or write it off
People forget that when you transfer something through a digital medium you are not actually moving something from one place to another, you are just creating a copy of it in another place, the idea of self transfert is a fallacy because what is transferred isn't the self, just a copy of it, if the self exists for the purpouses of this isn't really important but if anything it might further invalidate the proposition as in that case neither part of the concept, "self" and "transfert", are meaning bearing. This concept is explored in soma in quite a bleak, if quite fascinating, way.
If you want "profound" look up some speeches from Alan Watts. This man is one of the pioneers that brought eastern teachings to the west...he definitely had some profound things to say, though he did go in circles a lot as well.
Rewatching this for my assignment in a class. The idea in this video was in my head for a very long time and I'm happy that I can bring up this topic for discussion.
I don't believe the ending of GITS 1 has to do with merging mind, body and technology to achieve godhood. It has to do with merging what is unlimited, infinite and non-local - with what it lacks; limitation, finitude and locality. It is the merger of a locus of experience, with the field of potential experience. It's the great work of alchemy.
I think it's about how humans and living creatures have a connection, much like the internet. Among many other things. But something about them hearing the whispers of ghosts in their shells.. it seems to me they are talking about spirits or souls.
goosebumps a second in, i now this is going to be good, of course i have seen ghost in the shell 10+ times, but puting the profound into words isnt my strongest subject, but i love hearing what i feel deeply explained....and a few seconds later bits of tool - parabola video goosebumps cover me ....
For me personally, when in regards to profundity. Neon Genesis Evangelion's super introspective existentialism really hit me hard. It's had me mulling it over and obsessing over the show for weeks now. Would highly recommend it, it also has a lot of philosophical and psychological themes. It get's a lot of hate and has it's issues, but it really has hit me hard and I think it's truly something special. It looks into mental health and the realities of humanity and existence how our emotions affect our life and relationships. That's just what's on the surface though, there's so much more stuff to it as well. I'm really biased though and really only looking for any excuse to talk about it, simply because it has hit me so hard. I could honestly go on but I don't want to spoil anything else about it.
Adore Eva, and I think its ideas spoke to me more than something like Ghost in the Shell. Its philosophy isn't caught up in hypotheticals, and I think I'm just more interested in Eva's approach to optimism and humanity.
Thank you for making this video. GITS is my favorite series/film/anime franchise. Ever. By far. By a long mile. All of the films. All of the series. Theyre all really freaking good, deep, thought provoking, beautifully animated, wonderful character dynamics.
Innocence is a sleeper that's underrated but... it's pretty heavy and people get lost. Also, to be fair it's quite a character change for Bato and Togusa, but they do address that, in so much to say, without the major Bato was able to rise up from his experiences with the Major and grow as it were... into ceasar. It's just a curious thing but I love the rivalry between Togusa and Bato. Togusa ever the paragon and dependable man of justice and Bato wallowing in his own brutal struggle of earthly existence and the existential concerns of life beyond. Bato's justice is that of a god delivering divine fury upon the people, like that Yakuza scene... he just brings Armageddon to those guys... fucking rocks but also shows how he is a demi god almost in his stride. Very interesting movie for sure.
It makes sense that he would be considered a demi God. The way some of the characters talk about him, he is apparently a famous/ infamous soldier. It could also be said that when he fights the rangers, they know who he is, so within military circles he is definitely well known.
Your description of Batou as a Ceaser like demi-god rings true. Interesting to have never heard of him described in this way after all this time but have it still resonate. I appreciate your comment.
One profound moment for me was seeing Lilth in Evangelion for the first time held up like Jesus and it made think about how they basically crucified their own God. They became more powerful than God.
Power, and the pursuit thereof, is a poison of the soul. What pathetic God would be upset if another being believed it was more powerful than it, especially if it were untrue?! There is no duality. There is no Satan.
@@tychoMX Yeah Batou doesn't strike the viewer as wise because he's the muscle and is more mellow than Motoko. But even Goda is surprised at how thoughtful he is at the end of s2.
I watch it every year. I actually watched it two days ago for the same reasons as this video states. And yes to angels egg, and anything from satoshi kon, as well as serial experiments lain... Yes... Xx
11:26 When "Kim's mind exists in the virtual world," it's just running on a different substrate. The collection of data that - for the purposes of this discussion - we are considering "Kim's Mind" has only changed its "location." What is the nature of the change - other than the nature of the substrate - such that it would have any significance? My mind "runs" on my brain. In this way, I distinguish process from platform. "By separating the mind from the body, the mind won't be corrupted by the body's imperfection." Indeed, the mind is shaped by these imperfections, in many ways making us who we are. Most of these seem to be bad: we forget things, we distort our recollection of the past, we unknowingly report false data. (Wikipedia even has a list of Known Human Cognitive Biases.) Each mind is intimately shaped by the brain on which it runs. In some ways, this is a blessing: the pain of the loss of a loved one is usually attenuated over time (YMMV.) It seems fair to assume that an organic brain will create a very different operating environment from a silicon one. It will therefore create a very different mind. But if that mind was already distorted by the initial runtime it had on an organic brain, unless the silicon substrate has error-correction fundamentally built in, those flaws will persist after the move to silicon. Kim gets the worst of both worlds: distortion inflicted by the original substrate is immortalised in silicon. At the moment, there is even some linguistic confusion about "uploading" wherein people who use the term do not consider that "moving" a dataset [i.e., their mind] from one substrate to another involves copying it and destroying the original, at least until we can develop a non-destructive way to actually move data rather than copy and delete. But will the process that is "me" perceive this difference? How much will it be affected by it?
I want to throw out a very small but perhaps interesting tidbit about the famous Descartes statement. The phrasing of "I think therefore I am" can be referenced as a confirmation of a higher power, specifically of the Abrahamic faiths. According to the book of Exodus in the old testament of the Bible, Moses is confronted by a bush that is on fire, but is not consumed by the fire. When he asks "who shall I tell them sent me" the Bush replies "tell them 'I am'". In this context, it reaffirms the 6 day creation story, in which humans are created in the image of God and given the ability to think and have free-will. Literally "I think, therefore God made me". "I am" is also a literal translation of the Hebrew name for God, יהוה / Y'hw'h, pronounced Yah-way (apologies if the Hebrew is incorrect, I used a translator). In the secular sense, if a Kusanagi gains sentience after being created by human hands, are we not gods to them, as we made them in our image?
It's suggested that Kusanagi still had essential core parts of her original brain, thus her consciousness was stored throughout, so sentience technically never left her.
At a fundamental level, the scene in the second movie is the antithesis of the first. Its message, that human subjective reality is a transient illusion, is too nihilist for my tastes. Compare it with the message of the first film, which is fundamentally optimistic: The Puppet Master and the Major join their minds the way humans join their DNA. The result is a new consciousness that is a unique mixture of the two. Recall that, in the scene immediately prior to this, a tank shoots up a carving of the evolutionary tree-reducing it to rubble. The message is pretty unambiguous. Biology is no longer the only way to create sentient life. The message goes further, however. Because the “new” Major we see at the end of the film is more than the sum of her parts. Not merely a mixture of the Puppet Master and Kusanagi-she in fact IS that heaven-sent angel we glimpsed at the moment of the Major’s destruction! In other words, a new soul was born from their union, not merely a new consciousness. And that is the affirming message. That we human beings have always had a spark of the divine within us, and now so do our creations. God has given life to what before were "mere dolls."
I thought it was a World tree? Admittedly I don't know if the World tree is synonymous with evolution or not, but I'm especially not sure how "evolutionary tree getting reduced to rubble" somehow means biology isn't needed anymore. Couldn't this transcendence, advancing into a new form of being, be itself seen as part of evolution?
I think the point of the second moment, supported by the fact that Kim is somewhat of a villain, is that one cannot escape the body. At least not a body in some shape or form. You could say that Kim's perception is even more limited in his doll-like form because he is perceiving through "The Net" His material world is limited to what a computer can detect. If he escaped even this, the mind would be in a vacuum without any reality at all.
It was Martin Heidegger that was the first philosopher to question Descartes as something comes before “human”, that is “being”. We are just “beings” in the world. The notion we just “think” so therefore we are is not entirely true as “being” comes before. It’s primordial. Like a man using a hammer, he never stops and looks at the hammer and “thinks” and looks at it strangely. He picks it up and does what he’s supposed to do like riding a bike.
@@gamingnero6269 Well.. we are obviously not THE God. but we all have the divine spark, which also makes us eternal. so in a way, yes - We are gods in construction.
First of all, Max, I'd just like to say that I have appreciated each of the videos of yours that I've seen. The video on Metal Gear Solid 2 is one that I remember quite fondly, and will probably return to if I ever decide to take a course on philosophy. I know you would not necessarily agree with the choices I have made and the life I choose, given the points you've spoken about in previous videos, but as a person of a Christian background, your videos have helped me realize some very important things about my faith. First of all, I would like to challenge the concept of "merging with the machine" or "detaching the mind from the body" -- these machine systems, even ones that become self-propagating, I do not feel it would be unfair to reiterate that these systems find their origins with mankind. And assuming as you have that our sense of self can someday be quantified and laid bare, ripe for manipulation, how would merging that imperfect, flawed consciousness with an imperfect, flawed machine in any way create a perfect state of being? I don't believe it would necessarily be perfect, or even better, just different. And moving on to the concept posited by Kim in Innocence, detaching the mind and leaving the body behind as a doll, even a human creating a machine will be a copy of a copy -- an imperfect thing creating another imperfect thing. We as humans strive for perfection, because we seek to find some measure of control in our lives. "Surely I don't require the cautious, caring advice of a living, loving God -- no one knows better about my life than me, and anybody who tries to tell me otherwise is a liar." The major difference between Christianity and every other world religion (that I know of, anyway) comes down to this issue of control. The Judeo-Christian God calls for us to let go of our control, to shake off our yoke and let Him bear our burdens, because He loves us and He wants to see us prosper and he knows how that will happen... all we need to do is give up our control. When we remove God from the picture, the infinity of possibilities opens up to us, and we begin to crave control. We have not been able to travel through time, or visit alternate universes, or create anything that can truly be deemed "perfect", because each of us have our time and our place and our means to live and make the most of it, and if we choose Him, we will go to live with Him forever. I suppose what I'm trying to say is... if someday this comes to pass and humans become as gods or as dolls, I will not join them, because I have faith in something greater than this life. I believe in something that we will never be able to truly quantify, and anything we do make will be nothing but cheap theater... because I have faith.
Clarify yourself, there is no judeo christian faith, or religion, they are 2 different and opposing sets of beliefs. God Almighty is Truth and He has revealed that the Religion He sent for us, is called not christianity nor judaism, not submitting or worshipping idols, false gods, one's self desires or other created beings, But Submitting and Worshipping The One True God Almighty, The Only One worthy of worship, The name of The Religion of accepted by God Almighty for us is named by Him Himself, called Islam, not judaism, nor christianity, nor budism, not any other idolatry or disbelief ideology or philosophy. Christ, Isa a.s is a messenger of God Almighty just like all other messengers, and the Last of Messengers was Muhammed a.s. Jews have denied Christ, Isa a.s, therefore deviated their faith, christians, have denied Muhammed a.s and done the same, worshipping creatures, having a triune polytheist belief. And people who refuse to take The Messengers, the Arguments and Revelation of God Almighty seriously but choose to believe and follow confused and disbeliever philosophers and cursed devil's lies about God Almighty, are in for a big surprise on The Day of Judgement
I would suggest as an interesting inversion of the Deus Ex Machina of the 'Shell is the series 'serial experiments lain' its not so much ghost in the machine - as much as ghost in the network.
One thing worth mentioning is that, while it still keeps it ambiguous, the comic suggests that Motoko was never actually human. It's why there's the scene where she's commenting about having never seen her own brain. The comic goes into the creation of a synthetic brain in the first issue, with the allusion being that it was used to make Motoko.
Makoto was human. We see glimpses of her childhood in the second anime series, unless that is considered non-canon for some reason. She was cyberized from an early age, but there was a time when she had a human body.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn You've clearly never read the comics. Everything in the movie and the second series are part of the original comic, and both the movie and the series leave stuff out.
interesting that i came to this conclusions why wondering how to write my game. without knowing about niche, or really watching ghost in the shell. now this is opening my mind to start consuming these works to get a better perspective of my thought process on these matters. Thank you Max
Animation in western countries is typically seen as a medium specifically catered towards children and children's stories. Animation in Japan is often used to tell stories for all age ranges covering a wide span of topics. Studio Ghibli is family friendly while still being able to capture the nuances of more mature subject matter. Satoshi Kon making some of the best animated thrillers/dramas I've seen.
@@__vha ironically though even Western Animation has broken the stereotype multiple times and told some really profound stories....take the Avatar shows for example, seems like they're geared towards kids, but if you watch them as a adult, there are so many mature themes centred around prejudice, death, overcoming obstacles, imperialism, capitalism, socialism and so many other themes that just hit you to the core and leave you in deep thought....and in the same vein, it's not like there are no Japanese anime shows that aren't strictly for kids and have nonsensical plot lines that only cater to specific audiences, I can assure, there's absolutely nothing profound and deep about an anime like Hamtaro, or Kill La Kill....as an animator myself it kinda irks me when audiences try to place Western and Eastern animated shows or films into these neat little boxes when both of them have crossed boundaries multiple times....Ghost in the Shell isn't deep because it's anime, it's deep because it's sci fi and many of the themes it explores can be found in Western sources that predate it's release such as the numerous Western sci fi novels from the 60s to the 80s, stories like Blade Runner or Neuromancer, the world of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, all had a profound influence on Ghost in the Shell, but what makes Ghost in the Shell unique and sets it apart from Western sci fi....isn't the fact that it's anime, but that it also incorporates Eastern religious beliefs and philosophy, many of these ideas can also be found in Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism as well which manifest themselves into different sects and belief systems across Asia.
Thank you for this. I've been noodling on the concept of 'I' and whether a virtual being could have an 'I', kind of the Theory of Mind taken into the virtual world. Taking that Descartes - Nietzche track into Ghost in the Shell, and you connected some things in my brain, and now I cant' stop thinkiiiiingggg...
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
If you wish to see the actual moment in question without my commentary, click on this link: ruclips.net/video/btFW5kwowec/видео.html
Thanks Max!👍
You know, I fucking hate anime, but I liked Ghost in the Shell. I think it's literally the only Japanese anime show I actually like.
Aside from the squeaky robot voices (from their helpers), none of the superficial, 'anime' qualities I hate are here--just good writing and Japanese style--which is why I was not at all surprised to see it mentioned here. There's enough psychology and detective work to make Batman get a hard on.
I'm glad you brought up both Akira and Ghost in the Shell. The second movie does an amazing job at making you question what is real and what isn't. I tripped out the first time I saw that in college, and it's stuck with me since. Animatrix also does a great job at displaying this.
I sometimes have the feeling like we are all the universe focusing in on itself though filters and limitations in order for it to happen. In that sense, it is the Oroburo eating it's own tail, or watching itself, metaphorically. We are all the universe looking at ourselves through an imperfect lens.
@@nickcurrant2254 I feel like there are a lot more Anime out there that you would really like if you gave them a chance, Ghost in the Shell is by far not the only one that is serious, has brilliant writing and thoughtprovoking, deep philosophical themes and storys as well as (sometimes) gorgeous animation (Stuff like NGE, Monster, Ergo Proxy, AoT, Violet Evergarden, anything by Satoshi Kon, etc. etc. come to my mind immediatly for example (those are my favorites in that direction obviously, anyone is free to disagree and call my taste bad^^)).
I dont mean to tell you what to do and what to like, but everytime i see someone say the "hate Anime" i cant help but think thats kind of an ignorant statement because to me it sounds like someone saying "i hate all movies", because Anime isnt a genre, its a medium just like film and books. You cant genealize "Anime" like that because thats not how it is, Anime is as diverse and nuanced as any other storytelling medium.
I think what you really hate is the typical "Anime" marketing bullshit, right? And yeah true, most of the shows and movies out there are just mindless pandering bullshit made for pure marketing purposes or pure escapism. But in that giant pile of mass produced trash and mediocrity there are some true artistic masterpieces that are worth anyones time who likes good art.
Just consider giving some stuff a chance, you might be surprised what you have been missing out on.
@@datzfatz2368 Thumbs-uped your reply because you're being so polite in response to my rhetoric.
Yeah, when I say 'I fucking hate anime' I am generalizing in conjunction with my own experience. It's kind of like someone saying they hate a genre of music, but really there are aspects or iterations of it they would enjoy--it's just that their experience has generally been granted things they don't like.
I have had a number of recommendations over the years, precisely due to my bombastic outlook on anime, and I have found other things I like. Princess Mononoke, for example, didn't blow me away, but I liked it. On the other hand, Howl's Moving Castle was a wonderful piece of imagination, until it went full 'anime' and he turned into an angel love story.
I know there are other good things in anime, so I am aware that my opinion is like saying 'I hate sandwiches', even though a sandwich could contain just about everything, but on the whole, I find the stuff that gets pushed Stateside is middle-school level rubbish. And that's not even getting into the tropes and cliches that I hate, much like the problems with modern American 'cinema'.
"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."
But you are original because all of these others flowing through your life have made something very unique... If only society would finally learn a deep respect for everyone's unique individuality and very special creativity which is no doubt at least a little original... Many things come down to how our language is limited in its ability to really explain what mysteries we sense happening all around us🌌
@@charlesbogle6544 +1, perceptive Better to be unique than "original". WTF would that even mean wrt a human being? Made of balogna? 32 eyes?
every new painting is made of colours that exist and provided by the nature so Does that mean the Picture that anyone Draws isnt original...i dont think so
@@mehboob9101 But it's only original because we are beings limited by capacity and time. Originality and uniqueness are conceptual constructs of the mind to define an occurrence in time that only happens once in the perceptual frame. There are really two scenarios depending on the nature of the universe. If entropy always increases, there can be a certain uniqueness in that, in the process toward the heat death of the universe by particles spreading so far that they can no longer interact, there may be configurations of the universe that only happen at a single point in time. But much like the painter who is inspired and creates a painting, the nature of the paint is not unique, the nature of the painters inspiration is not unique, the atoms that make up the painter are not unique, they are all pre-existing, but the instant of creation of the painting may be unique. The uniqueness comes from the universal state in which atoms and whatever other quantifiable aspects are arranged in a specific pattern. That pattern may be unique if entropy holds. But once you get into infinite multi-versal territory, all occurrences recur infinitely, so there is no uniqueness.
Aside from that, my beef has always been humanity's inability to accept the mechanistic nature of the universe. For if the universe were, as far as our perceptions can tell (It's really the only benchmark we have) not mechanistic, machines would not function and science could not use repeatable experiments to prove hypothesis. I know it gets funky when you throw the quantum into the mix. But that seems more to me to be a scale perception issue than an non-quantifiable state...
(I'm a layman BTW, but have been a techno-philosophy nerd as long as I can remember. Any actual scientists who can flesh out the ideas and make corrections, I'm all ears...)
Well, then you are a unique manifestation of all those beings. At any point along the way. You may have never been. You, all of us are miracles.
What about when Squidward threw the pizza at that guys face and then told Spongebob that the guy ate the whole thing just to make Spongebob feel better?
;_; such beauty...
Gives me chills to this very day.
THIS ONES ON THE HOUSE! *assaulted with a pizza*
Yup, ate the whole thing in one bite
Or that that time Spongebob and Patrick experienced the horror of war defending the Krusty krab?
Spongebob is already a mindf**k considering that they live in a a place called "Bikini Bottom" which is a direct reference to the point where nuclear bombs were first used... Hence all the nukes that go off in the show.
As a person who's struggled with a frail, severely asthmatic body for 65 years, I was seriously impressed at the notion of becoming partly or fully cybernetic when I first watched the GITS original movie. It seemed a dream come true. No fears of being hacked as I would choose to not have the brain external connectivity. After watching the entire Stand Alone Complex series seasons one and two, however, I began to think that I would lose so much of what has made me who I am. My compassion for others, my understanding of human limitations, even my choice of work and recreation - those things that make me who I am would be gone. With a perfect body, capable of all I've ever dreamed of doing I might be a wholly different person and have developed very different philosophical ideas. So, despite my limitations, pain and occasional suffering I think I will stick to what I've got. A shorter warranty certainly, but at least I am me.
Well said, and a fantastic perspective to have.. Applauds to you lady.
I second the reply above mine. You have a great perspective
I very much validate our inability to question who we have become as a direct result of our life experience. I also do not summarily disregard our potential absent same. I literally cannot fathom my affect outside my choice and circumstance, nor can I dismiss my capacity beyond them. The lack of choice does not merit admiration outcome.
@Luke Skywalker You can make your own and also make it mostly positive. Any 100% positive outlook is doomed to failure, but as someone who was a horrible cynic most of his life I can say the other side is just as bad. Life sucks, but you rule, and you have a body and brain that are insane bio machines.. You're better than an android, you're human.
Youre a beautiful super nova 🥺😳never change please
Ah, the brain studying himself, always a complicated thing.
A brain in a tub of its own juices feeling and seeing the world through a network of nerves that cant be trusted by design. Questioning if the world its processing is real or not. Of course that is questionable. Brains reality is a cramped skull. Everything beyond doesnt really exist if you strip the senses. Strip away every sense a human has and only leave the brain alone for monitoring. Would you then experience true reality? Maybe out of sheer boredom and lack of any external stimuli the brain might create its own delusional reality and declare it real. The difference being is that its the master of its own delusion rather than being fed one from the outside. If this reversal can be done then how do we unravel "reality". Dive into a black hole? Is it death perhaps? is it taking absurd amounts of drugs that completely scramble the senses. All of those questions and more can be answered with some inhumane experiments in due time.
Not the brain, it's counciousness studying the brain. We are part of the ultimate counciousness. Like little boats in a boundless sea. Everyone grasping a little bit on his way drawn by ripples made by himself or not.
"The brain is the most interesting thing" -The Brain
@@itsfine5818 lol :D vanity is hardwired into us it seems
All while we process our perspective of the universe we're from, helping it to study itself.
The second movie is so underrated. The cinematography was so ahead of its time.
a lot of the anmimation choices are pretty garbage though
@@Mach1Greeble What there is no anime that has surpassed GITS 2 in terms of animation
Ahead of its time sure... but the heavy use of poor quality CG was bad then, and hasn't aged well since. I like the idea of that movie a lot... but it is hot garbage to watch. I would love to have them get another crack at it, but it did sooooo extremely poorly that it almost killed the franchise. Will probably never get another chance.
@@CaedenV Huh, I recently saw a GITS movie or show on Netflix that was truly atrocious to watch. It was full CG and looked like a PS2 or PS3 game or so, because the animations were so stiff. Couldn't stand to watch more than 10 minutes of it. What a shame.
briliant film...a worthy sequel
That angel scene reminded me of one of Terry Pratchett's quotes
"Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."
Saw the first GITS as a teen, and it was such a mind blowing experience. Was raised catholic and never questioned much of anything, but as the movie went on a bunch of questions kept popping up in my head, by the end I was in shock on how good it was and that somehow I was changed by the concepts it presented and the stuff I just didn’t have an answer to.
One of the best films I’ve ever seen.
This is exactly why I love Ghost in the Shell. It's my favorite anime. It's very deep and I think really describes accurately and in great detail where humanity will inevitably go. It asks and answers some questions that we would have if we decided to take the next step. Either machines will take over or we accept them completely and merge them into us, evolving what humanity is as a whole. I love how the advantages and disadvantages of this are considered in the movies and the series. The latest iteration of the series is sadly very watered down in my opinion.
@Tiger rivers People should use more of those glowing stars I and probably you used to have. They are the shit, try it!
@Tiger rivers I know bro, I was just adding to the narrative.
@@minimushrom they still make those?
The series is the best Cop show out there. Fleshes out the Team of Section 9.
the most profound moment in animated film is a direct rip off of blade runner? ummm okay?
The scene where the puppet master says something along the lines that" for all of your art and science you humans cannot explain what life actually is", blew my mind. I saw it was like "damn".
We can't even define what a woman is 😀
@@adamburgins441 An apparent designated arbitrary social role classification.
It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself.
Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual only because of his intangible memory. But memory cannot be defined, yet it defines mankind.
The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization.
[..]
And can you offer me proof of your existence? How can you, when neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is?
@@adamburgins441 Featherless bipedal bird.
@@KaizoeAzurum hahaha thats good, plato.
The first question is - how our consciousness will react to detaching it from it's biological platform. We often forget how much our biochemistry affects our mind's work, if we will remove it and transfer our "selves" onto a different base - will it become a pure intelligence or it will become completely indifferent to everything what's going on outside?
Based on real world experiences, a human without emotions does not become a perfect, logical, rational machine. Quite the opposite, in fact:
This doctor Antonio Damasio treated a patient who lost the ability to "feel" emotions after a brain surgery. This man lost his job, his family, most of his life savings, and his home, and he didn't seem to care at all.
The man was perfectly normal, his reasoning was good, his memory was great, and he showed no signs of depression or anxiety. In fact, he showed Zen-like calm after a lot of misfortunes caused by his own negligence.
After the surgery, this man stopped caring about his job, his family, his life savings that he lost to a con artist, until he was effectively homeless and his brother took care of him. It was obvious that "something" changed after the surgery, and after visiting many doctors who couldn't find anything wrong with him, this doctor Damasio measured his ability to _feel_ instead of thinking.
After talking to him and hearing him explain the rationale behind all of his mistakes (missing an investor's meeting to buy a new stapler, for example), one of Damasio's colleagues showed him several gruesome pictures of burn victims, starving children, accidents, etc.
The man was actually surprised at how he didn't feel anything after seeing pictures that would make any other person look away in shock and horror. He admitted that he _should_ have turned away in disgust, but he felt nothing.
So this puzzled the doctors, because at points we wish we didn't have emotions. Emotions drive us to do stupid shit we later regret... But there was this man, devoid of emotions, and his life was a dumpster fire.
Doctors asked themselves: Why the fuck, if his reasoning was intact, didn't he figure that meeting his job and family obligations was the most logical thing to do?
Even sociopaths figure that out, but he couldn't do it. To him, a school recital invoked the same joy and fatherly pride as buying a pair of socks, losing $1M in savings felt the same as pumping gas...
So, doctors figured that we need emotions to strive for "something better". If our brain was a car, the driver wouldn't be our "logical mind" it would be our emotions, while our "thinking mind" is the GPS, only suggesting a course of action, but is ultimately our emotions the ones deciding where are we going.
So, I think that without emotions, we would all die of indifference no matter how "logical" and "rational" we think we are, as they are the driving force of our lives, and if they have a biochemical basis, which is the most likely, detaching ourselves from it without a form to replicate them, will harm our psyche as a whole...
@@DonVigaDeFierro "So, doctors figured that we need emotions to strive for "something better". If our brain was a car, the driver wouldn't be our "logical mind" it would be our emotions, while our "thinking mind" is the GPS, only suggesting a course of action, but is ultimately our emotions the ones deciding where are we going."
Here. This sentence resumed what Jung took BOOKS to describe as "Conscience" and "Unconscience".
@@DonVigaDeFierro Yes! I think we are more our bodies than we like to admit. Human consciousness is more than the ability to think rationally or the capacity to feel instinctively. It's the combination of these and other factors what makes posible human consciousness and the sense of self.
The thing is: feelings exist to make us do stuff. If we don't feel anything, what will drive us? It's the same with animals although we often prefer to call their feelings "instinct". The wolf will howl in order to find it's peers or tell strange worlfs to stay off it's territory. Finding peers is a necessity to survive, that is driven by a need, some sort of desire, which we refer to as instinct in non human animals but when we are talking about humans we call it a feeling, a desire not to be lonesome.
Feelings exist to drive us, to do make us do things.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Interesting, looks like a perfect depression to me, that state when everything just loses it's meaning and you just stop care... If even digital mind won't save us from this, then I don't know. It was good to believe that there is a hope
ghost in the shell still in my top 10 all time favourites.
Mine too.👍
FUNNY thing Is I've Never actually watch Ghost In a Shell 😭. But heard so Much about it
@@wiredgamez9929 You should definitely watch it. It's one of the greatest animes of all time! 😃
and to add to being such a good anime, the soundtrack is amazing too
what's your top ten?
GITS and Akira were the first anime I saw, and they fundamentally changed the way I saw myself, my future, and humanity. The first Dune novel also helped me understand the way that my emotions and my perceptions impact my decisions. I think all three of those (GITS, Akira, Dune) ask us if we're animals subject to our body's whims, or if we can choose to be human, to face our own weaknesses and flaws, and become more ourselves.
did you pass the gom-jabbar?
@@stevesamson3940 Not yet, but when life gets a little too real, I try to remember my humanity 😁
Have you seen samurai champloo?
When I saw these as a kid, I didn't know what to think. I was like 8 or 10, and I had no idea cartoons were even allowed to be this way. Profoundly changed little me. A couple years later we got Anime Network and I was flooded with cerebral stuff like this and never looked back
Same. Read Dune when I was 18 and it changed my entire way of thinking.,
He’s 20 seconds in, talking about profound media and shows a clip from a TOOL music video. Holy based.
Tool's cool!
I can't count Tool as profound because its intention is self-referential. It's like saying a house of mirrors is profound.
Saw the thumb of Ghost in the shell. Was curious. Saw the tool clip: You SOB, Im in.
@@Mahaveez It is a tool for what you see fit, after all. But I mean to say in this instance, TOOL’s actual sound itself is profound from an instrumental or technical perspective, music theory, ya dig?
My "holy based" moment was when I saw the Android from The Talos Principle at 0:40. That game is profoundly transcendental.
If you take the time to: 1, read all of the text files; 2, explore all of the QR codes (and their riddles); 3, listen to all of the doctor's voice recordings; 4, find the many Easter eggs; then The Talos Principle is so utterly transformative that you will never look at life the same way.
“Let me know what you would choose.”
I want to return to monke
Yeah sometimes all this awareness is a little much
Right!!?
🦍🦍🦍
That's basically equivalent to choosing dolls tho
monke happy noises
The "ego" isn't a collection of memories, but instead the very presence of the proces of thinking.
Not at all. The ego is not the process of thinking. The ego is an LLM, it is the presence of Language and the absence of actual thinking. The abstraction away from the ego, into the literally abstract of reality, is when thinking happens. Most conversations, including this reply, is a preconceived thought, the logic and language was determined long ago, via the language model and understanding it. You are still learning the language model, hence why you’re just wildly incorrect. Thats how most humans operate, inconceivably ignorant of what I just told you.
You literally used the ego to donexactly what I said, NOT THINK. And now that I challenged you, the real truth will arrive. You will either THINK, or use your ego to defend your mistake.
@@JT-np1opwhere did you learn this?
Ghost in the shell and Akira are fantastic movies, but can I just mention the train scene in spirited away? That's the most profound for me. Not one bit of dialogue but it says so much. Really impacted me at only 7 years old.
The one in the train?
Perfect blue is an amazing film aswell
as a 7 year old, could you really grasp the true emotional weight of profound, or existing in said state?
@@raidermaxx2324 yes
@@WheelChair-yy1ji Really? wow. .You must have been reincarnated and remember your past life, to be able to possess the knowledge and wisdom one would need to possess,(acquired from experiences and lesssons learned during life) to be able to realize the profound and existential meaning that this movie explores.. Or are you a super genius or something? help me understand who you are...
I'm a simple man, I see Ghost In The Shell, I click.
So many profound moments in these shows.
I think Innocence is one of the most profound films ever made, animated or otherwise. The whole thing deserves to be analysed in its entirety. It deals not only with how we create and elaborate our selves, but also with how it interacts with the world, how we try to affirm our presence by anchoring our selves in the world around us. It challenges our preconceived notions of selflessness and egotism by asking why we're so fixated on reproducing, always replicating our forms and thoughts through the environment we live in. The final scene is one of the most beautiful and complex moments in animation history. I'm glad you've talked about this film, it's a pity it is so ignored compared to the first one
Serial experiments lain has many great moments, I recommend it to anyone wanting a more cerebral, and profound experience.
@CrazyMiles I’m doin ok.
@@hellogoodbye3786 He's either a bible humping lunatic or possibly a bot.
As for Serial Experiments Lain, I found episode 9 to be my favorite, because of the documentary scenes. Very enlightening.
@@Animebryan2 bots these days, kinda crazy. I still gotta watch episode 13, but 9 is also my favorite, with 12 being not far behind.
Gate had a weirdly deep second when Rory Mercury was addressing the Diet and she corrected the congresswoman that the people who died from the Defense Force's mishandling of a threat weren't relevant. That those people would have died for their lack of involvement. The Defense Force's intervention actually created lives that were destined to die otherwise. It kind of impacted me that we're quick to criticism militaries that intervene without ever thinking about the outcome had they not intervened. It was all the more appropriate that the lesson of mortality was delivered by an avatar of death.
Anime has a lot of hot garbage philosophy but occasionally they land on some highly profound ideas.
Hell yeah bro top 5 anime for me
born in 94. grew up on late night adult swim. Ghost in the shell, Cowboy bebop, Trigun, Blue Gender, lain, manyyy gundam series. I have a strong love for 80's-90's anime and a few modern ones. Ghost in the shell and Cowboy Bebop are ABSOLUTE masterpieces in the anime genre. Nothing comes close in terms of story telling, world building, characters, plots. I will die on this hill and will carry this to my grave.
Evangelion: hold my beer
I'm not an anime fan in the least but I'd die on that hill along side you just for Ghost in the Shell :)
You should watch Outlaw Star and Space Dandy
Just watched 08th MS Team again. Dude the subbed and dubbed versions are both so good for 95. It was a way better dub than Wing was and the story was good.
Apparently they made another GITS manga after abandoning the manga timeline for decades. It takes place after the Major merged with the puppetmaster but before she resurfaces, and it's about section 9 investigating an anti-cyborg cult while also experiencing growing pains from bringing a "psychic channeler" into the group. It's honestly incredible seeing the series' usual take on spirituality from the opposite perspective, with a spiritual character as a permanent member of section 9 and how the other members grow to accept her and come to rely on her skills when dealing with the cult, especially when she's subtlety meant as a counterpart to the Major.
Does it have a specific title?
There's also 1.5 human interface error. Which is after mokoto left but before gits 2.0 it's a fun little romp.
@@michaelhoule2134 Holy 🐮. I had no idea 1.5 existed ! Thanks
What's the name of the manga?
for those who want the title, it's The Ghost in the Shell: The Human Algorithm
I hardly remember the movie at all, but what I'll never forget are the hacking loop and that ethereal parade scene. It's like these two scenes have codified the deeper message of the film so that the rest could be defragmented from my conscious memory.
Nice username, high 5.
lol....at least you remember something
Innocence will forever be my favourite movie. Thanks for this upload. You gave me goosebumps all the way.
Before speaking definitively about Buddhism, please be willing to investigate it with the kind of rigor and reverence you have with works such as Aion. "Separation of mind from body in order to achieve true enlightenment", or anything that could be derived as such, isn't found in the texts. Worse, it's completely refuted.
In Buddhism, there are realms of existence in which the mind exists without a body. These are the formless, or Brahma, realms. The problem with these realms is that, even though they are a higher realm and a very nice place to be, they are still within samsara. The cycle of death and rebirth will still occur there, and a being will eventually be reborn in lower realms where dukkha (suffering or unsatisfactoriness) is worse.
Enlightenment is the ceasing of this cycle of death and rebirth within samsara and everything that perpetuates the cycle (see: The Four Noble Truths). Therefore, even a being with bodiless-mind, if still within samsara, cannot be enlightened.
I, of course, don't expect everyone to know this; but, for a channel that seemingly treats profound religious ideas with care, it's just unfortunate to hear something so misguided. Still, I did enjoy the video as a whole and appreciate your insight.
Yeah, a Hindu, I find it funny that Westerners or the layman think that being enlightenment is to just simply transcend the current plane, instead of escaping the cycle.
Don't bother this guy cares more about looking smart than actually understanding anything.
@@matiastorres1510 hey, mistakes happen, don't hate on him. He made great Jung analyis'.
I like how kind you phrased your critique. And it seemed to open my mind even further.
Alot of people here in the west get stuck with the western interpretations and mix ups of zen.
For example Eckhart Tolle or Alan watts.
Could u offer a good introduction to enter into the correct buddhistic worldviews?
Thx, cheers
"This notion of separating the body from the mind in order to achieve true enlightenment" "The aim is to reject the illusion of the material world" are the relevant quotes from the video. It seems to me that the concept of some bodiless minds still being within the cycle of death while other bodiless minds have escaped the cycle of death is just additional detail not really in conflict with the point he was trying to make which was that he sees a connection between this concept and an ancient philosophy.
Max, this is, indeed, a really impactful moment. However, in regards to the Ghost in the Shell Universe I would have to admit I was deeply impacted by the 2nd season of S.A.C: Ghost in the Shell S.A.C: 2Gig. When Kuze explains his project as a revolutionary. I think it does encapsule the current political situations that dominate contemporary geopolitics. I think that whole season is criminally underrated. I hope you can check it out.
Gret vid btw.
I do intend to do videos on S.A.C. Just currently going through other animes at the moment with my lady. Recently finished Cowboy Bebop and Terror in Resonance. Going through Wolf's Rain at the moment. After that, it's either going to be S.A.C. or Neon Genesis: Evangelion. Believe me when I say that there are moments from S.A.C. (1st and 2nd season) that I think would make for great content on my channel.
@@maxderrat Cowboy Bebop's one of my favorites.
@@maxderrat you should also check out Psycho-pass, i thought that had some profound moments perfect for you to talk about. Great work as always
I always loved the movie but I slept on the series until last year, and wow, was I impressed. Every Single episode, amazing. The entire Kuze plotline was riveting, what a show. So much to think about
@@maxderrat Please watch Evangelion, it's right up your alley, and also watch the movie End of Evangelion too, it's a cinematic masterpiece.
Full quote: dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")
glad i found this; i watched this movie when it first came out when i was 8 years old. that set me down a path of reading and constant need to understand nostalgia and why people interacted a certain way towards others and how they percieve the world around them and how they evolve, what makes people exist overall in a sense. im not sure but i never percieved the way i thought after watching this and another anime titled "akira" from that time was influential in my upbringing animation films have always made a place for me, thanks for sharing.
Great Max,
It is not describible how important is your work. It's totally perfect to claim that your perceptions about philosophy and art are the most precise and meaningful on the whole RUclips....
I really must say: We need to have you talking about Naoki Urasawa's "Monster". This animation deserves to be analysed by your perspective, indeed!! For me, the most profound animation of all time!
It's implications, alongside a very dense atmosphere, surrounded by so many questions that humanity has are tremendous!
I assure that Johan will be one of the greatest characters that you will ever see in your life...He gives me goosebmps just by thinking in his quotes...
Godlike video, as always....
There are a few episodes in the series where the "Tashkomas" ( mini tanks ) start to become self-aware. The humans notice this and decide to take them all for a system complete wipe and re-boot. I have to say I felt some sadness in this action .... to destroy these burgeoning feelings of awareness.
This is one of my most favoured ANIME shows for all the reasons you mention and more.
*tachikoma
I found the tachikomas annoying at first due to their shrill, unreasonably high voices, but came to appreciate them over time as I came to see their value. I would probably feel differently about their memory wipe now.
@@AvvieLanche I cried like a b*tch when they sacrificed themselves in the end of second season
Exactly, I can't help thinking of Huxley's "Brave new world", because if EVERYONE WAS INTELEGENT then no menial boring and repetitive important jobs or tasks would ever get done! soooo they created the "Gama" and even "Epsilon minus" Embryo's that inevitably grew into very simple people "Semi morons" so things could get done. Evil? Absolutely. That's why u did and I hope many others realized how wrong/abusive and inhuman that cold/evil decision really was. I even get Echo's of that in today's American Black Getto population, it's just too much of a close coincidence to be an accidental behavior and with such low IQ's and self awareness. Deliberate? without awareness and an internal voice for self reflection what is left but a machine.
@@AvvieLanche I think you're supposed to hate them at first , then get attached to them, then get rekd when they get wiped.I'm pretty sure it's deliberate.
To think that human beings with all their flaws, pettiness, greed, self importance, etc. will be transformed into super beings is horrifying.
Damn, really sad that RUclips removed community subtitles. Would love to translate a video like this.
It can still happen, it just requires using external tools and cooperation with the uploader.
That speech matoko makes on the boat in the first movie was just amazing
Kims mansion is one of my favorite scenes from the dialogue and scene setting to the accompanying music.
This gets even more fun when you know of splitbrain theory, CCP Grey did a great video on that. In short, there is the talking you, and the silent you, each one of you half of the brain that makes up your mind, each working together to run the whole meatsuit that is you. One can talk, one cannot, but both are so used to working together you don't notice them. Sever that link between the two hemispheres of the brain though and things get weird.
... Are you talking about the bicameral mind?
I don't know that removing consciousness from a human meaty brain to an electronic brain really changes the level of fallibility. The nature of existence is what one perceives, which is always subjective. There is no objective consciousness, I would argue. Even just a camera filming something, it is limited in what it can perceive and is still fallible. Love your stuff, thank you so much for this video.
What you described as subjective consciousness is what many religions refer to as the "soul".
objective consciousness would require us to understand absolutely everything, which would mean enlightenment and/or becoming god. Even if we all got absorbed into LCL, our collective consciousness is limited to what all humans have perceived.
Just like current AI systems like ChatGPT, its understanding of the universe is limited by what we feed it, so human understanding.
It is impossible to "transfer" or reproduce Human Consciousness from the "meaty" human brain. I'm a Neuroscientist and Complex Systems Scientist. We have demonstrated this mathematically. The human brain is what we call "Irreducibly Complex". That is - the internal complexity of it's structure is the computational limit for it's own understanding and replication.
GITS is my favorite Anime and Manga though. Incredibly genius thought experiments. I suggest EVERYONE READ IT! Should be mandatory reading in high-school curriculum. No joke. It inspired me to commit to my careers in both Neuroscience and Art.
@@zpettigrew Hey! Do you have any books, articles, videos or information about what you said? (Not being able to transfer human consciousness and all of that) I want to know more about it, I think is pretty interesting, thank you.
@@davidmoreu3015 Start at reading or listen to: "The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed." by Christof Koch. He does a rigorous dissection. You can also just look at the computational limits of circuitry alone and how much energy/natural resources would be required. Look into Complex Systems Science, reductionism, and irreducible complexity. An intro to Chaos Theory may be helpful as well.
Not just that - but its fairly obvious "simulations" are NOT material reality. Material reality is preeminent. Always and forever.
For me, the most profound moment in anime is from Berserk (1998).
The bonfire of dreams monologue.
The level of isolation he expresses and the reasoning is something I related to so strongly, in some ways I still do. It's partially the alone in a crowd mentality explained mixed with the absence of aspirations experienced by many of those abused as children. The feels are strong, the insights are deep, and the music toys with your soul.
Totally agree. I never forgot that moment in Berserk.
Very true! It’s extremely deep!
Berserk is a masterpiece. I always think unironically that the Shinji and Asuka polemic scene in End of Evangelion is one of the most profound scenes in any medium. FLCL, Lain and Guntz are also very deep in their commentary on the human condition.
@@ricardofilho2626 You totally got that right
There are many great and profound animes, but for me the berserk stands above the rest.
The first Ghost In The Shell movie was actually my reason to learn English... the German Synchronisation sucks and didn’t make sense. So I sat there dissecting the movie. I watched it over 44 times before I could understand everything that was being said. It’s also what sparked my interest in philosophy. That was 18 years ago... I still enjoy watching the movies and the series.
Having you interpret that scene really brought home what l watched. I’ll have to watch it again because this video made my brain literally vibrate
This video has opened up a lot more symbolism for me within the two movies. I never caught the "doll" philosophy, and the symbolism in the first film at the end with Motoko inhabiting the shell of a little girl, demonstrates this idea with excellence.
5 of the most profound moments in anime history (IMHO):
1 - "The Last 2 Episodes" (Evangelion TV series)
2 - "The Egg Breaks Open" (Angel's Egg) [The whole movie may itself occupy this spot, if you wish.]
3 - "Death of Riikishi Tohru" (Ashita no Joe)
4 - "Reinhardt von Lohengramm and Yang Wenli Meet" (Legends of the Galactic Heroes)
5 - "Revvy's 'These are Things' Speech" (Black Lagoon, episode 5)// "Rock's Breakdown" (Black Lagoon, episode 15)
So many other moments belong on this list but, alas, there are only five spots.
+1 for Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It would be hard for me to pick a single scene from that massive masterpiece but that meeting and their discussion of republicanism vs dictatorships was very thought-provoking.
Patlabor 2
As someone who loves NGE's original ending, I think the End of Evangelion comes across as more profound, or at least more interpretive and self-reflective.
Dude this is seriously top notch work! I love GITS and next to Cowboy Bebop it’s my favorite anime. You seriously took the philosophical tinge that imbued it’s work and brought it to light in a fascinating way! Kudos to you!! I wish more people would watch GITS it’s like the Eastern version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
I need to go back and watch Stand Alone Complex again.
@@TheMetalGaia
That moment when Oriaga’s Inner Universe kicks in. It’s totally worth it.
The movie, and especially the Kim scene, is heavily inspired by the story UEBER DAS MARIONETTENTHEATER from German author HEINRICH VON KLEIST, which dates back to 1810. It's about two guys talking about the aesthetics of puppets, and how the human conciousness and self awareness is a disadvantage in reaching that level of aesthetic perfection. After brief mentions about prosthetics, one of the guys remembers a story in which a Russian family held a bear that was an expert fencer because its lack of self awareness made it move instinctly, which reminded me about Kim mentioning the perfection of animals and gods.
I'll just post an english translation of the last paragraph which ties in nicely with Kim's monologue about lack of conciousness/infinite conciousness:
"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."
"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"
"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."
I opened this video a few days ago in a new tab and hadn't watched it. Yesterday I watched the Lex podcast with S.Harris, coming to the conclusion that, indeed, our thoughts and feelings are not a conscious request. The role our conscious part of the brain plays is simply rationalisation and temporal consistency assurance. The unconscious parts of our brain feed our conscious part sensory information, context, and attributed emotion and we as conscious beings simply work with the information we are given. Although you could argue that rationalisation is also unconscious since it is discrete from consciousness as demonstrated in dreams; leaving us with consciousness just being something that experiences, nothing else.
Kind of surreal to see this after realising all that, considering it has been sitting there all this time!
Ideas and thoughts come and go. Therefore, we are not our thoughts. We are the place that receives them. We are the knowing, not the knowledge
We are the Awareness. I doubt that It even thinks or has a memory. During life, It identifies with a brain that does, but that brain will become dust. The Awareness might go on. Most people believe It does. If It does, however, it isn't what most people think of as "I." It has no name, no identity. It just experiences the now.
Ever hear of a "memory"? You're wrong
This right here. AUM.
Ever hear of Alzheimer's, @@alexradice8163? You can lose your memory before you even die. You can lose your ability to think. You can lose your personality. You can lose everything that makes you "you." That suggests that every bit of it originates in the brain and dies with the body - except, perhaps, the Awareness.
@@racookster once that happens then the person is dead
The Animatrix hit me especially hard regarding human will and what it means to have limits, and if they are breakable, or reachable, or if they even exist. Also kind of funny that humans, after being predictably merciless, ask or expect any kind of mercy.
Theory: it may be as we perceive the storage and transference of data or memory into hard material or resistant shell( brain case) and may be what we do to super computers to add a thermal sink or putting the processor into near zero or sub zero. Law of thermal dynamics. Is there really a soul ?
Also with how tohgusa sees a change in reality, how would you know when it does. Is it thinking or is it something else.
The whole Matrix franchise was inspired by and massively influenced by GITS. Wichowski Bros said that was the main driver for their work.
@@vangelisgru7271reiterate or elaborate that because i’m bit confused about what your trying to say
Still can’t wait for a Max Derrat “Lost” analysis. Absolutely one of my favorite shows ever and one of the most complex and profound shows I’ve seen. IMO I don’t even mind the ending of the show and it made my speculation and digging feel very worthwhile. Awesome video again Max.
what a great video man; my uncle is philosopher and have worked in the Washington post and Miami herald as editor, have some books publicized and so on, he saw me once looking anime, in this case the anime in question was Ergo Proxy, and told me "grown man loosing time in child cartoons, what a shame Jose, so much you need to read still", after 2 days I choose the first movie in Ghost in the Shell(my favorite anime of all times), I copied to a pendrive(my blue ray ripoff) and deliver to him, I just said "do this for me and look at", he of course make some excuses and bla bla bla...after one week and some days, when I even didn't remember more about the trade, he came home and told me "we definitely need to talk"
Cool story... if I understood correctly that is.👍
@@CerealKiller is real, and you can't imagine the conversation about games.....he is chaped in old style
may i know how long ago this happened?
@@Deurization 7 years before, now sadly we live far each other
The algorithm served me up this video and I have to say I’m glad it did. GITS is my top 3 anime. Great analysis and indeed the concept of perception and reality is indeed a profound moment and food for thought regarding future human cyborg advances.
I remember my final for my Philosophy class asked one question: Does a brain in a vat/jar still retain consciousness? Does it retain memories? Does it create new ones? How would a soul fit into that understanding?
I had to utilize at least 3-5 of the philosophers’ teachings that we studied, and incorporate them into the essay. I immediately thought of watching Ghost in the Shell on AdultSwim, as a kid, and did my best to incorporate the ethos of the anime into the paper.
On another note, if you haven’t already, you should watch and discuss Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It’s regarded as one of the best anime of all time and delves into many profound questions about humanity, the soul, God, religion, geopolitics, family, and the military. Incredible series
What was your grade for your final?
@@l0kumidit641 Shit man, wish I knew. Was a while ago. As my class had almost 500 students, my professor didn’t post final exam grades, just final grades. I ended up with an A in the class but I don’t know what my actual grade was on the final exam. Must have been decent tho 🤣
I’m so enthralled with your concept, Connor, how did you write the paper? What did you say to substantiate it?
Which philosophers did you refer to on the paper? Sounds like a great way to bring in self defined by empirical observation Vs self as defined by a thoughts / forms
Absolutely agree, the first time I saw this scene it rocked me to my core.... took me a few days to wrap my head around the possibility... If I had to make a choice... neither... The human condition is only hackable if you let it therefore it is self contained. The decision to augment your brain changes the dichotomy only for those augmented. IE "are those augmented still human?" I'd argue no. They are transhuman, and therefore have completely different struggles. Therefore human philosophy does not apply, different game, different rules.
Im sorry to be late, but is being a child human? You brain isn`t devoleped enough yet to understand adults problems and perspecrive. So you have your own, but does this unhumanise you? My thoguths : No, it`s simply a state of physical being. What you are defined by is you, but if you can`t define yourself by the lack of perspective or meaning chosen, you will be defined by others. Nothinges is just absense, but I don`t see problems to fill it as you see fit with more room to spare you will have more room to fill. These who transend human perspective are just extending what they see, but rules are the same and not within it, but beyond lies sorrow like it ever was if puzzle didn`t fit. And again there is emotions and choice of what to do with what you have discovered beyond and choice is the same : defense, illusions, caving and manipulation or risk, dispair, time and humbleness
@@TheMasillo a person is the sum total of their experience making them unique with their own unique set of problems. The human experience starts at conception, the reason I say this is a complete set of information is formed, a complete set of unique DNA. The potential of that unique being is unrealized and coded to some degree in that set of information but it is still human and self contained within that potential being over time... With out the augmentation ...while thoughts and ideas can be influenced indirectly through suggestion, coercion, manipulation without the augmentation... The augment has the potential of a direct approach editing sight, sound, feeling and thought... Completely different set of issues that a natural human being does not have to contend with.
Uniquely inhuman, but not unhuman.
@@Fragninja and perceived through brain. How does it matter if your videocard is 4080 if your cpu is seleron?. + There is more to dna that we know, Epigenetics for instanse explains a lot of things and raises a lot of questions about unrealised potential you are talking about. Some subtle things that happened to you when you were just 3 month or even in your mother can define your behaviour now, but it also can be rewritten. I guess I want to say that potential is not truly a real thing, but variation of your own self is. I mean even addiction to something can be modified through epigenetics methylation. Would you agree that addiction to cocaine is not exactly sound to "realising your potential' right? , but it is part of it. What is potential is not chosen to persived through what is good or bad, but it just is there. Like edited sight, sound or feeling you are already edited by things you don`t even know about, but augmentation you can atlreast chose and as long it is not your brain we are changing you are still just a human. And by logic of what I said before if person had bad vision thought their whole life and now they did medical operation are they transhuman? I mean when can you say if some parametrs is human or not ? Is being 2.3 meters tall is human? "Perfect" pitch? sight that better than what is called healthy ? It`s not common for sure. You don`t really know the limitation because you can`t know all the variations and so it`s impossible to judge by using them. You can also just have devices with you that is just not installed in you. Like does car make you transhuman? I mean normaly people can`t go through 150 km distance in an hour.
@@TheMasillo that's a stretch, the difference is that thoughts, feelings, sight and sound can be directly edited... I already explained how a human can be coerced, and manipulated externally... Having direct access to a other persons brain is different... With external devices and stimulus you can (for the most part) choose to disengage.
As for perfect pitch, and being 2.5 meters tall... Things that happen in utero etc already mentioned that: "unique set of DNA" that's encoded encoded in their DNA, part of the potential I was talking about.
None of that is inhuman, that literally the human experience.
The whole inhuman problem brain augmentation you are no longer self contained... "Ghost hacked humans are so pathetic it's a shame, and this poor bastard was hacked pretty badly" scene in gits is a prime example of these problems in a reality where it's possible.
I've had more than 27 years to think about the problem....
You should check out the Orion's arm universe building project. Lots of cool ideas in there.
Just started the vid and the fact you included Tool - Parabola in there was freakin top notch. I love that vid!
This whole idea pretty much sums up my exact reaction to this scene and the entire GItS series as well as the concept of the technological "ascension" of the human mind.
My fear is this exact concept combined with the dilemma presented by Soma. We simply can't know by the very nature of the problem, and thus it is inevitably left to us to "find out," which is still potentially inherently flawed.
Ghost in the Shell so perfectly describes this entire thought experiment in every nuance and possible interpretation to a an uncanny degree, and with things like Neurolink paving the way for precisely this sort of future, the question definitely feels more important now than it ever has.
Thank you for making these videos. I can't even begin to describe the joy I find in seeing someone explore the intricate realms of thought and philosophy that I find myself mulling over on a daily basis.
It's much more mature in it's themes than Ghost, but another franchise that asks similar question with regard to identity and human conscious is Murdoc Scramble.
Then of course Ergo Proxy, which shares many of the same themes as Ghost in regards to what it means to "transcend" human consciousness. I really need to go back and finish that one!
Not really, in the process of "finding out" we perhaps can finally prove that mind cannot survive the body, for it needs the inputs of the body to be able to reason, or it could be the other way around completely, and our mind can survive our bodies just fine, while our bodies are not able to perform even the autonomic tasks in order to be kept alive.
Thing is, if our minds are dependant on a biological brain to be implanted on a synthetic body, then it is proven that we NEED body to have a mind. If we can simply "download" the brain data, to be implanted on a synth brain, than we have an even bigger situation on our hands, as mind AND body are superfluous, and only the data accumulated on your brain being what we can call "consciousness".
Hey Max did you hear about anime Ergo proxy? It is strongly philosophical and would perfectly fit for you.
I loved Ergo Proxy, but it need not be analyzed
Ergo Proxy is so underrated.
Ergo Proxy is fantastic. It's not exceptionally deep, but it's my favourite manglobe show.
@@lordquaz7154 Hey Quaz, what is Manglobe!?
@@jojipoji2322 The studio that made Ergo Proxy, samurai champloo and dead man wonderland. They went bancrupt a few years back unfortunately.
I come back to this video alot when im really struggling with the meaning in my life and what its all for. thank you for this.
Funny how a youtuber can understand Ghost in The Shell more than a multimillionaire studio
That Scarlett Johansson movie? 🤭
Just shows that, apart from the underappreciated writers, Hollywood people aren't really smart...
its not that they dont understand, its that they dont care. all financial interests benefit from the stupification of media.
@@animeboitiddies6146 yup.
Hollywood is a business, they don't give a fuck about art they only care about money.
I've enjoyed cartoons like most as a child in the 70's, it wasn't until the late 90's as a young adult that I was introduced to Japanese anime. I'd like to say that maybe it was Captain Harlock, but I'm not certain as since then I have inundated myself with this particular media. Even today I am still playing catch up with a number of series that I missed due to not having it readily available until relatively recently. Ghost in the shell was the first anime dvd that I purchased. I was mesmerized by the visuals and the story and wondered why american tv couldn't/wouldn't at least try to capture the essence of anime. I figure that they may have thought that the complexity of the stories might have been too much to gain an audience here, or that it was just for kids ? It is [I think] odd that "serious" movie buffs won't even consider watching anime. And this superhero movie craze is sooo overdone and quite redundant, boring actually. And as I was told when I was a kid... "You don't want that ? More for me then".
Have you seen Starblazers? Very '70s. The Battleship Yamamoto. The Wave Motion Cannon.
Record of Lodoss war and Tank Police. Tank police the first movie was pretty deep.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a must-see. Sci-fi space warfare with sociological and political philosophy strewn throughout. Serious questions about human nature and psyche on the personal and grand scales alike. It's a masterpiece and well-worth the 110 episode watch time. Just don't get too attached to anyone, hoh boy.
I haven't liked (pressing the button) any videos in years. Your refreshment on effect of this made me rethink some of my choices.
Love your content.
The biggest problem I see in digitized consciousness is that it has to be stored somewhere physically regardless of body. If all storage of it would somehow be destroyed or rendered unfunctional then that consciousness would no longer exist. I think the sacrifice of the Tachikomas is a good example.
Nowadays, this idea of Cyberbrains seems even more in the realm of sci-fi than it was before. You can put all your memories on a thumbdrive and put it into a mechanical being, but it would still be a copy of you, NOT you as a person. This copy could think like you and act like you but it will not BE you. That I believe is where souls come in. You cannot remove such a thing unless you body is unable to take care of it anymore. The moment of death is the moment the soul leaves.
@@kaytlinjustis5643 The brain replaces its own cells constantly. By age 50 or so, the part of the brain that stores memory - that stores 'you' - has been completely replaced. What makes one copy sacred, and another false?
@@TehCakeIzALie1 is the internet tangable? Arent websites just recycled electrical signals over and over, is the same current ever the same except the moment it is observed. Learn quantum my friend and you will see.
@@TehCakeIzALie1 Memories, are like data stored in a Motherboard. They are often altered or hidden away due to aging or trauma. The Soul is all that you are; memory, emotions, ideals, faith, etc. It grows with you, which is why as our memories change, we change as people do. The reason I believe that the 'memories left behind' is from one episode of CSI, is the fact these scientists created their own AI doubles (a mechanical figurehead) that looks and acts like the person they are copied from. It isn't a perfect process, because one of the AI's belonged to the murder victim of that episode, and the 'memories' were incomplete because the REAL person wasn't able to download the remaining information before death. The AI was also incapable of thinking for itself; you can ask it a question from that person's past and it will answer and 'remember' except for the victim's death.
@@ansonburgdorf3940 how soul enters the body? let's say the soul is present somewhere(in higher dimension that can't be percieved) in the universe before you are born then what kind of signal is created to bring your soul to a body. if you manage to recreate that same signal you can access your soul back in new body or computer.
This remind me of Platón's world of ideas, where our body and perceptions can be illusions and basically a cell for our soul or rational being and the death as our only escape of it, but maybe in the future it won't be the only escape
Great video man
Damn dude, what a mission statement at the beginning. Excellent work here. Thanks for your work.
Separating the physical ties to emotion such as pain, anxiety, and even pleasure, in my mind, would separate the thrill of life from consciousness. If you've ever felt like you lacked motivation, I feel on some level it stems from a piece of your reward center for pleasure to be absent. So in theory if there were pieces of your own consciousness attached to biology that were no longer present, would you only be capable of living out a "flattened" sense of life? Could you live like the ocean? Or like a rock? Is that the thing you want? and if it isn't, are you stuck there forever? Would that be an eternity of hell like depression? Conscious and unending, unfeeling. Could you ever return to life as a being of impermanence or did you just lose out on everything that makes you unique and human? Also, my feeling is that if the "something that thinks" is the true culprit of all consciousness, then it chose to have many cells like any other organism. Our part as pieces is just to perform the functions of the whole which could be largely knowledge driven, discover what we can, pass on this knowledge to other cells to further more knowledge, and reproduce.
Thank you for demonstrating why Ghost in the Shell is my favorite anime.
Hello, you mentioned anime is “outside your area of expertise” so I’m assuming you haven’t seen a lot. So I have some recommendations that I consider on par with GITS in terms of profundity. Give them a watch if you’d like.
Ergo Proxy (very similar to GITS), Monster (a must watch), Devilman Crybaby (hit or miss depending on the person), and Code Geass (maybe not as profound as the others however I really enjoyed it).
Ok I just realized you already have an Ergo Proxy video out that also mentions Monster😅. However seeing as you read manga as well I’d recommend 20th Century Boys, Oyasumi Pun Pun, and Homunculus.
I watched ghost in the shell when I was in elementary school, late at night at my grandparents house on Adult Swim. It blew my mind. The series and 1995 movie will never leave my mind. I have the movie, all the shows, comics. It's made me ponder humanity and life so many times.
Haha I had a similar experience. I was like 10 and I wasnt allowed to watch adult swim, however my identical twin and I would watch after my parents went to bed. They had full metal alchemist, evangelion, ghost in the shell, etc. I would always say that GITS was my favorite show. I would just sit and watch it with my brother, pretending to like it even though it was way too complex for my young mind. I watched the series again when I was in high school and it blew me away. Such a great show.
the most profound moment in animation history is the final scene in end of evangelion,
and also in berserk when griffith says i sacrifice, rip kentaro miura :(
I don't really know if there is a "most profound" moment, so yeah this video was good, and I'm really happy I watched it because I couldn't understand much of that repeating scene in Ghost in the Shell 2... but was it really the most profound? I guess it's just to attract viewers, but "one of the most profound" would have worked too man...
I did also thought of Berserk when I read the title first, but I think it is actually really subjective, some of these moments will impact us more than others.
Personally I'm a sucker for the Sibyl System in Psycho-Pass X)) , so it's true discovery by the end of season one really shook me, and there is a LOT to think about it, but then again, same as in Berserk, NGE, Black Lagoon, Monsters, Parasyte (a lot of animes from old seinens in general)...
There is a third option - reject both of those options & retain your organic & natural humanity like Togusa
Great analysis max! Every fullmetal alchemist fan knows trying to become a god is a bad route ! I challenge you to do an analysis of wicked city.
Wicked City's wicked man!🤘
I just ♥️ 80's anime.
When I was eleven, I became deeply paranoid that I only just started existing, and every memory before that moment was fake. Maybe I wasn't real, maybe I was a robot or something I didn't know existed. I started thinking that the memories of those moments of thinking about being fake were some sort of test by who ever made me. Maybe other people were the same as me. I was completely obsessed. I could never see my own brain, even when someone explained brain scans to me, that's just a computer screen. You might as well be showing me Minesweeper.
The years go by, and I never stop having this feeling, and I happen upon GitS. Kusanagi says during the boat scene exactly what I always asked people, "Have you ever seen your own brain?" That's it, this is a message, either from the tester, or someone who wants me to be free. I'll never be sure if I am real or not, or if what I see is real, or if this message I'm typing is just a memory of something that never happened. I don't know what the point of it all is. I don't know what reality means or is, but this is the one I know and that I have to exist in. Maybe I'll stop existing when the experiment is over.
Bro you gotta go back to monke
It makes no difference whether you are an artificial consciousness that only exists for a moment with fabricated memories in a sophisticated simulation or a human being with a real past in a real world. In the end, what matters is what you do with the moment you exist in.
well,the point of existence is to learn from your experiences,and grow closer to the intelligence behind the creation of the universe...to become one with the heart of all reality...which is where the truth can be found
It's a question that can't really be answered at the end of the day, which for the type of people that really enjoy shows and concepts on the level of gits only makes the question more interesting and profound. It's poking at the fabric of reality itself, and we shouldn't take that lightly or write it off
You've disassociated.
Get out more and workout.
People forget that when you transfer something through a digital medium you are not actually moving something from one place to another, you are just creating a copy of it in another place, the idea of self transfert is a fallacy because what is transferred isn't the self, just a copy of it, if the self exists for the purpouses of this isn't really important but if anything it might further invalidate the proposition as in that case neither part of the concept, "self" and "transfert", are meaning bearing.
This concept is explored in soma in quite a bleak, if quite fascinating, way.
You should watch psycho-pass. It’s something that brings up a lot of philosophy in a futuristic setting like ghost in the shell
Seconded
If by ''brings up" you mean "shoehorns in" then yeah, you're right.
If you want "profound" look up some speeches from Alan Watts. This man is one of the pioneers that brought eastern teachings to the west...he definitely had some profound things to say, though he did go in circles a lot as well.
Rewatching this for my assignment in a class. The idea in this video was in my head for a very long time and I'm happy that I can bring up this topic for discussion.
I don't believe the ending of GITS 1 has to do with merging mind, body and technology to achieve godhood. It has to do with merging what is unlimited, infinite and non-local - with what it lacks; limitation, finitude and locality. It is the merger of a locus of experience, with the field of potential experience. It's the great work of alchemy.
I think it's about how humans and living creatures have a connection, much like the internet. Among many other things. But something about them hearing the whispers of ghosts in their shells.. it seems to me they are talking about spirits or souls.
Not sure what you said but it sounds profound.
@@mitchellzollinger1100 It's the one thing god lacks: finitude.
@@DougRobertson
Why would he want it?
@@mitchellzollinger1100 To be complete. God needs us, and we need god.
The most profound moment in the history of animated film is when Mayart visits a Soapland in Wicked City.
i will never forget the spider
@@thefullmetalheart_ No one should.
goosebumps a second in, i now this is going to be good, of course i have seen ghost in the shell 10+ times, but puting the profound into words isnt my strongest subject, but i love hearing what i feel deeply explained....and a few seconds later bits of tool - parabola video goosebumps cover me ....
You know where you have to go next, sure as night follows day:
*Neon Genesis Evangelion!*
This!
What can be said about NGE that hasn't already been said?
For me personally, when in regards to profundity. Neon Genesis Evangelion's super introspective existentialism really hit me hard. It's had me mulling it over and obsessing over the show for weeks now. Would highly recommend it, it also has a lot of philosophical and psychological themes. It get's a lot of hate and has it's issues, but it really has hit me hard and I think it's truly something special. It looks into mental health and the realities of humanity and existence how our emotions affect our life and relationships. That's just what's on the surface though, there's so much more stuff to it as well. I'm really biased though and really only looking for any excuse to talk about it, simply because it has hit me so hard. I could honestly go on but I don't want to spoil anything else about it.
Adore Eva, and I think its ideas spoke to me more than something like Ghost in the Shell. Its philosophy isn't caught up in hypotheticals, and I think I'm just more interested in Eva's approach to optimism and humanity.
Thank you for making this video. GITS is my favorite series/film/anime franchise. Ever. By far. By a long mile. All of the films. All of the series. Theyre all really freaking good, deep, thought provoking, beautifully animated, wonderful character dynamics.
oh my goodness, Max is talking that talk again. Show me the way Sensei Yellow
He knows da wae. Click click click click click click click click click click!
Innocence is a sleeper that's underrated but... it's pretty heavy and people get lost. Also, to be fair it's quite a character change for Bato and Togusa, but they do address that, in so much to say, without the major Bato was able to rise up from his experiences with the Major and grow as it were... into ceasar. It's just a curious thing but I love the rivalry between Togusa and Bato. Togusa ever the paragon and dependable man of justice and Bato wallowing in his own brutal struggle of earthly existence and the existential concerns of life beyond. Bato's justice is that of a god delivering divine fury upon the people, like that Yakuza scene... he just brings Armageddon to those guys... fucking rocks but also shows how he is a demi god almost in his stride. Very interesting movie for sure.
It makes sense that he would be considered a demi God.
The way some of the characters talk about him, he is apparently a famous/ infamous soldier.
It could also be said that when he fights the rangers, they know who he is, so within military circles he is definitely well known.
Your description of Batou as a Ceaser like demi-god rings true. Interesting to have never heard of him described in this way after all this time but have it still resonate. I appreciate your comment.
Well done, well thought out, and well explained video. Truly love listening to your take and insight on your videos. Keep up the good work!
One profound moment for me was seeing Lilth in Evangelion for the first time held up like Jesus and it made think about how they basically crucified their own God. They became more powerful than God.
Only Satan would claim he was more powerful than God.
@@spudpud-T67 Maybe they were Satan, in the storyline I don't know, it was pretty weird.
Power, and the pursuit thereof, is a poison of the soul. What pathetic God would be upset if another being believed it was more powerful than it, especially if it were untrue?! There is no duality. There is no Satan.
My favourite line in any film regardless of genre/type: "But no matter how far a jackass may travel, it will never return as a horse" - Batou
Batou's pragmatical philosophy is criminally underrated.
@@tychoMX Yeah Batou doesn't strike the viewer as wise because he's the muscle and is more mellow than Motoko. But even Goda is surprised at how thoughtful he is at the end of s2.
thanks it's been a while since i wanted to see this film and i needed this little push to actually do it
I watch it every year. I actually watched it two days ago for the same reasons as this video states. And yes to angels egg, and anything from satoshi kon, as well as serial experiments lain... Yes... Xx
YES!
11:26 When "Kim's mind exists in the virtual world," it's just running on a different substrate. The collection of data that - for the purposes of this discussion - we are considering "Kim's Mind" has only changed its "location." What is the nature of the change - other than the nature of the substrate - such that it would have any significance?
My mind "runs" on my brain. In this way, I distinguish process from platform. "By separating the mind from the body, the mind won't be corrupted by the body's imperfection." Indeed, the mind is shaped by these imperfections, in many ways making us who we are. Most of these seem to be bad: we forget things, we distort our recollection of the past, we unknowingly report false data. (Wikipedia even has a list of Known Human Cognitive Biases.) Each mind is intimately shaped by the brain on which it runs. In some ways, this is a blessing: the pain of the loss of a loved one is usually attenuated over time (YMMV.)
It seems fair to assume that an organic brain will create a very different operating environment from a silicon one. It will therefore create a very different mind. But if that mind was already distorted by the initial runtime it had on an organic brain, unless the silicon substrate has error-correction fundamentally built in, those flaws will persist after the move to silicon. Kim gets the worst of both worlds: distortion inflicted by the original substrate is immortalised in silicon.
At the moment, there is even some linguistic confusion about "uploading" wherein people who use the term do not consider that "moving" a dataset [i.e., their mind] from one substrate to another involves copying it and destroying the original, at least until we can develop a non-destructive way to actually move data rather than copy and delete.
But will the process that is "me" perceive this difference? How much will it be affected by it?
I want to throw out a very small but perhaps interesting tidbit about the famous Descartes statement.
The phrasing of "I think therefore I am" can be referenced as a confirmation of a higher power, specifically of the Abrahamic faiths. According to the book of Exodus in the old testament of the Bible, Moses is confronted by a bush that is on fire, but is not consumed by the fire. When he asks "who shall I tell them sent me" the Bush replies "tell them 'I am'".
In this context, it reaffirms the 6 day creation story, in which humans are created in the image of God and given the ability to think and have free-will. Literally "I think, therefore God made me". "I am" is also a literal translation of the Hebrew name for God, יהוה / Y'hw'h, pronounced Yah-way (apologies if the Hebrew is incorrect, I used a translator).
In the secular sense, if a Kusanagi gains sentience after being created by human hands, are we not gods to them, as we made them in our image?
It's suggested that Kusanagi still had essential core parts of her original brain, thus her consciousness was stored throughout, so sentience technically never left her.
At a fundamental level, the scene in the second movie is the antithesis of the first. Its message, that human subjective reality is a transient illusion, is too nihilist for my tastes. Compare it with the message of the first film, which is fundamentally optimistic:
The Puppet Master and the Major join their minds the way humans join their DNA. The result is a new consciousness that is a unique mixture of the two. Recall that, in the scene immediately prior to this, a tank shoots up a carving of the evolutionary tree-reducing it to rubble. The message is pretty unambiguous. Biology is no longer the only way to create sentient life.
The message goes further, however. Because the “new” Major we see at the end of the film is more than the sum of her parts. Not merely a mixture of the Puppet Master and Kusanagi-she in fact IS that heaven-sent angel we glimpsed at the moment of the Major’s destruction! In other words, a new soul was born from their union, not merely a new consciousness. And that is the affirming message. That we human beings have always had a spark of the divine within us, and now so do our creations. God has given life to what before were "mere dolls."
I thought it was a World tree?
Admittedly I don't know if the World tree is synonymous with evolution or not, but I'm especially not sure how "evolutionary tree getting reduced to rubble" somehow means biology isn't needed anymore. Couldn't this transcendence, advancing into a new form of being, be itself seen as part of evolution?
@@shira_yone Sure you can see it that way. Ghost in the Shell is a work of art. Not actual science.
Is it nihilist? Or is your pessimistic mind telling you that, enslaved to your own emotions and perspectives on life, good, and suffering?
I think the point of the second moment, supported by the fact that Kim is somewhat of a villain, is that one cannot escape the body. At least not a body in some shape or form.
You could say that Kim's perception is even more limited in his doll-like form because he is perceiving through "The Net" His material world is limited to what a computer can detect.
If he escaped even this, the mind would be in a vacuum without any reality at all.
It was Martin Heidegger that was the first philosopher to question Descartes as something comes before “human”, that is “being”. We are just “beings” in the world. The notion we just “think” so therefore we are is not entirely true as “being” comes before. It’s primordial. Like a man using a hammer, he never stops and looks at the hammer and “thinks” and looks at it strangely. He picks it up and does what he’s supposed to do like riding a bike.
"If someone asks you if you're a God you say yes!" Winston Zedimore.
lol
A god under construction. : )
@@Cangaca777if you are under construction, you are a building, a creation, not God. God is Eternal, not a building or creation.
@@gamingnero6269 Well.. we are obviously not THE God. but we all have the divine spark, which also makes us eternal. so in a way, yes - We are gods in construction.
First of all, Max, I'd just like to say that I have appreciated each of the videos of yours that I've seen. The video on Metal Gear Solid 2 is one that I remember quite fondly, and will probably return to if I ever decide to take a course on philosophy.
I know you would not necessarily agree with the choices I have made and the life I choose, given the points you've spoken about in previous videos, but as a person of a Christian background, your videos have helped me realize some very important things about my faith.
First of all, I would like to challenge the concept of "merging with the machine" or "detaching the mind from the body" -- these machine systems, even ones that become self-propagating, I do not feel it would be unfair to reiterate that these systems find their origins with mankind. And assuming as you have that our sense of self can someday be quantified and laid bare, ripe for manipulation, how would merging that imperfect, flawed consciousness with an imperfect, flawed machine in any way create a perfect state of being? I don't believe it would necessarily be perfect, or even better, just different.
And moving on to the concept posited by Kim in Innocence, detaching the mind and leaving the body behind as a doll, even a human creating a machine will be a copy of a copy -- an imperfect thing creating another imperfect thing. We as humans strive for perfection, because we seek to find some measure of control in our lives. "Surely I don't require the cautious, caring advice of a living, loving God -- no one knows better about my life than me, and anybody who tries to tell me otherwise is a liar." The major difference between Christianity and every other world religion (that I know of, anyway) comes down to this issue of control. The Judeo-Christian God calls for us to let go of our control, to shake off our yoke and let Him bear our burdens, because He loves us and He wants to see us prosper and he knows how that will happen... all we need to do is give up our control.
When we remove God from the picture, the infinity of possibilities opens up to us, and we begin to crave control. We have not been able to travel through time, or visit alternate universes, or create anything that can truly be deemed "perfect", because each of us have our time and our place and our means to live and make the most of it, and if we choose Him, we will go to live with Him forever.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is... if someday this comes to pass and humans become as gods or as dolls, I will not join them, because I have faith in something greater than this life. I believe in something that we will never be able to truly quantify, and anything we do make will be nothing but cheap theater... because I have faith.
Well said. I think you are on a very satisfying path.
You should check out gits sac. There are 2 episodes dealing with religion and cybernisation. And another episode about the human liberation front
Clarify yourself, there is no judeo christian faith, or religion, they are 2 different and opposing sets of beliefs.
God Almighty is Truth and He has revealed that the Religion He sent for us, is called not christianity nor judaism, not submitting or worshipping idols, false gods, one's self desires or other created beings, But Submitting and Worshipping The One True God Almighty, The Only One worthy of worship, The name of The Religion of accepted by God Almighty for us is named by Him Himself, called Islam, not judaism, nor christianity, nor budism, not any other idolatry or disbelief ideology or philosophy.
Christ, Isa a.s is a messenger of God Almighty just like all other messengers, and the Last of Messengers was Muhammed a.s.
Jews have denied Christ, Isa a.s, therefore deviated their faith, christians, have denied Muhammed a.s and done the same, worshipping creatures, having a triune polytheist belief.
And people who refuse to take The Messengers, the Arguments and Revelation of God Almighty seriously but choose to believe and follow confused and disbeliever philosophers and cursed devil's lies about God Almighty, are in for a big surprise on The Day of Judgement
"I think, therefore I am."
The act of questioning ones existence, proves ones existence.
I would suggest as an interesting inversion of the Deus Ex Machina of the 'Shell is the series 'serial experiments lain' its not so much ghost in the machine - as much as ghost in the network.
very much in the ouvre of Ghost in the Shell and Spirited Away
One thing worth mentioning is that, while it still keeps it ambiguous, the comic suggests that Motoko was never actually human. It's why there's the scene where she's commenting about having never seen her own brain. The comic goes into the creation of a synthetic brain in the first issue, with the allusion being that it was used to make Motoko.
Makoto was human. We see glimpses of her childhood in the second anime series, unless that is considered non-canon for some reason. She was cyberized from an early age, but there was a time when she had a human body.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn You've clearly never read the comics. Everything in the movie and the second series are part of the original comic, and both the movie and the series leave stuff out.
interesting that i came to this conclusions why wondering how to write my game. without knowing about niche, or really watching ghost in the shell. now this is opening my mind to start consuming these works to get a better perspective of my thought process on these matters. Thank you Max
Animation is so much more powerful than people realize, Neon genesis evangelion has some of the most profound things ive ever seen within a tv show.
Animation in western countries is typically seen as a medium specifically catered towards children and children's stories. Animation in Japan is often used to tell stories for all age ranges covering a wide span of topics. Studio Ghibli is family friendly while still being able to capture the nuances of more mature subject matter. Satoshi Kon making some of the best animated thrillers/dramas I've seen.
@@__vha ironically though even Western Animation has broken the stereotype multiple times and told some really profound stories....take the Avatar shows for example, seems like they're geared towards kids, but if you watch them as a adult, there are so many mature themes centred around prejudice, death, overcoming obstacles, imperialism, capitalism, socialism and so many other themes that just hit you to the core and leave you in deep thought....and in the same vein, it's not like there are no Japanese anime shows that aren't strictly for kids and have nonsensical plot lines that only cater to specific audiences, I can assure, there's absolutely nothing profound and deep about an anime like Hamtaro, or Kill La Kill....as an animator myself it kinda irks me when audiences try to place Western and Eastern animated shows or films into these neat little boxes when both of them have crossed boundaries multiple times....Ghost in the Shell isn't deep because it's anime, it's deep because it's sci fi and many of the themes it explores can be found in Western sources that predate it's release such as the numerous Western sci fi novels from the 60s to the 80s, stories like Blade Runner or Neuromancer, the world of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, all had a profound influence on Ghost in the Shell, but what makes Ghost in the Shell unique and sets it apart from Western sci fi....isn't the fact that it's anime, but that it also incorporates Eastern religious beliefs and philosophy, many of these ideas can also be found in Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism as well which manifest themselves into different sects and belief systems across Asia.
Angel's Egg is definitely my pick for most profound anime moment
Which moment though? I haven’t seen that animated film yet.
Thank you for this.
I've been noodling on the concept of 'I' and whether a virtual being could have an 'I', kind of the Theory of Mind taken into the virtual world. Taking that Descartes - Nietzche track into Ghost in the Shell, and you connected some things in my brain, and now I cant' stop thinkiiiiingggg...