Grade:

Ghost in the Shell is probably Masamune Shirow's masterpiece. In is generally thought to be the piece which all other Cyberpunk manga and comic books is measured against. It features all the stuff you would associate with Shirow, cool looking women, tons of complex machines, a search for truth, a complex and detailed story, and super detailed art.

While I think Orion is Shirows best work, but many people love Ghost the most. And it is easy to see why. The story is a true epic but it never looses sight of the human part. There was a huge debate over a missing page in the TPB. A decision had to be made for if it was left in it would have required the book to carry a mature readers only lable. Deleting it would make hard core fans cry about censorship. It is gone but really it was not an issue. If you really want to see it get the Irion Depot book. It is there along with all of Shirows color work from the begining to about 1990 or something like that. The funny thing is the Irion Depot book has no lable on it, unless it is in Japanese, the whole book is. However it is 40.00 and that is a lot for something you can not read unless you Japanese is pretty good and just has work avaliable elsewhere. Still, it was Shirow choice to get rid of the page and I still recomend getting the TBP for it really had no relevance to the plot or characters. At 25.00 Ghost in the Shell is a bargain.

Rumors of Ghost in the Shell 2 have been floating around for a while and my feeling is it will come out after 2000 along with Appleseed book 5.