Few anime series manage to put together a coherent point of view on a single philosophical theme. I had watched both Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series around the time they came out, but had little recollection of them. Marathoning through both seasons during a vacation, I noted that GitS:SAC manages to put together three themes in an admirable fashion: ghosts, governance and geopolitics.
1. Ghost, memory, body
The most obvious is of course the nature of the “ghost” and its relationship wioth “pure data” of the mind (that is, memories) and the body. This theme has been commented on quite a bit by far more knowledgeable posters, so I won’t discuss this further.
2. Good governance, or what Section 9 is fighting for
In the first season, the nominal “adversary” is a hacker attempting to expose the dealings of a corrupt medical-industrial complex; in the second, a terrorist/freedom-fighter seeking to protect refugees in Japan from a rising tide of jingoism. On the other hand, politicians are generally portrayed as corrupt, the people as gullible and cowardly, and the media as little but scandal-mongers hunting for the next scoop. Yet it is the latter that Section 9 will defend against the former.
While it could be said that Section 9 is defending a liberal democratic state and its institutions against unelected interlopers, particularly Aramaki’s dedication to a Right Way seems rather strong to support this conclusion. While liberal democratic states often lay claim to some moral foundation in principle, this basis is usually rather vague and relativistic in practice. And while Section 9 exists within the framework of the liberal democratic state, it’s certainly not an organization that such a state would want to admit sponsoring.
Rather, Aramaki and by extension his subordinates act on the basis of a more absolute moral guide (which is occasionally contrasted with CIA operatives’ arrogant anything-goes-as-long-as-we-win attitude), that of Confucian ethics. While Aramaki seeks to maintain virtue, he also seeks to maintain the relationships that constitute society, that is, a “natural order” of the ruler and the ruled. While a subordinate may criticize their superiors, this does not mean that they may seek to take over the place of their superiors. Therefore, Section 9 will usually defend the status quo and act on the guidance of less than virtuous officials, not because the status quo is the ultimate good in itself (an assumption liberal democracies often make), but in expectation that in the long run, upholding proper relantionships and by acting with virtue will lead to the ideal state.
This is particularly evident in the second season, where the action centers on the highest echelons of the government. The inexperienced prime minister, Kayabuki, becomes the virtuous leader willing to protect the people. The extremely competent Gōda uses his power for self-aggrandizement and treats people as pawns, and is finally defeated.
The policitical stance of GitS:SAC is in a sense extremely conservative; however, it is a conservatism that explicitly denies the watchwords of the modern Conservative: jingoism, militarism, unquestioning subordination to authority. Particularly in relation to militarism, the authority of military to escape the proper relationships of the Confucian state is strongly denied in both seasons through bringing down conspiracies modeled on those that brought on the Japanese military state of the 1930s. In the first season this is the corrupt minister using Navy connections for his own purposes; in the second, the terrorist acts and the suicides of the Particularist Eleven (mirroring the May 15th Incident) are shown to be meaningless and (according to Gōda) something that only virgins would do.
3. Japan’s place in the world
The worldwide situation isn’t discussed in detail until the latter half of the second season. The events of the series take place around 2030, by which time there have been two new world wars, a nuclear and a non-nuclear one followed by a major consolidation for most countries (and breakup for others). Neverthless, the foreign policy themes in GitS:SAC’s Japan are still familiar ones.
Probably the most important motivation for the westernization and modernization movement in the early Meiji period was to make Japan one of the Great Powers among the colonial empires of Britain and others, and avoid China’s fate. Even though the colonial powers have retreated back into their home countries and the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is now but a right-wing fetish, the desire for independence in global affairs has been present in Japanese politics ever since. Notably, this also includes independence from the US; while the 60s ANPO protests advocated pacifism, they also opposed Japan’s subordination to US foreign and defence policy (the subordination which Kishi and pals then used to create the “economic miracle” and steamroll US manufacturing industries).
The situation hasn’t changed much by 2030. Clearly the SDF has been expanded through creative interpretation of the constitution as has been done in reality, but Katabuki explicitly mentions Japanese independence as her goal and opposes the plot to extend and expand ANPO. To hammer the point home, the last episode directly quotes an actual (can’t remember name, too lazy to check) Meiji statesman about Japan’s need for independence.
Neverthless while the series has a clear pro-independence (in the sense of 独立, as opposed to nominal sovereignty) agenda, it still speaks against typical 右翼 jingoism and clearly states that there are no magic bullets for fixing the country’s problems. Obviously the evergreen right-wing shibboleth “throw out the refugees/foreigners/bums leeching our tax monies and the Golden Age will come rolling back” is included.
An interesting aside is that Japan has taken over Etorofu and possibly other disputed Kuril islands during one of the aforementioned wars. It’s unclear whether this is a statement on the 北方領土問題 or an incidental background detail.