Major
Motoko Kusanagi is one of the most beloved characters in anime—hence the strong
emotions riled up by the “white-washed” casting of Scarlett Johansson in the
live action Hollywood adaptation. Fans will be happy to see the real anime
Kusanagi is back, but she only has fifteen minutes to save near-future Japan in
Hiroaki Higashi’s Ghost in the Shell:
Virtual Reality Diver, an immersive VR short that screened (or goggled)
during the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.
If
it is your heart’s desire to freefall over a dystopian Tokyo than Diver is about as close as you can get,
for now. The experience might make some headset wearers a little nauseous, but
try to enjoy the scenery on the way down, because the panoramic 360 field of
vision was rendered by Production I.G with their usual attention to detail and
flare for spectacle. In fact, if you are not constantly looking around, you are
missing out.
Fans
also will not want to miss an original and entirely self-contained Ghost in the Shell story. Having the
just completed her latest tune-up (more of a rebuild), the now entirely
cyborg-ized (but fully conscious) Kusanagi is scrambled to defend a Kuzan peace
delegation from terrorist Okitatsu Oribe. To do so, she will have to fight him
both in physical reality and in cyberspace, both of which are pretty trippy to
plunge into via VR.
Yet,
maybe the coolest thing about Diver is
that screenwriter Junichi Fujisaku and the I.G team still find ways to address
the franchise’s over-riding theme: just what does it mean to be human in a cyber
age? Kusanagi is keenly aware of her cybernetic status and the awkward fact
Oribe’s weaknesses are rotted in his acutely human condition.
So
yeah, there is some substance there, but the whole point is soak up the visuals
and feel the rush. Clearly, I.G takes their bread-and-butter franchise world
seriously, because they took considerable care translating it to a VR short
format (still considered pretty gimmicky by a lot of folks). Although Ghost in the Shell: Virtual Reality Diver is
now available on several VR platforms, many fans’ best chance to see it will
during festivals, like this year’s Fantasia, where it was a selection of the
virtual reality section.
