Ghost in the Shell - Find the others, find the world -
What does "being yourself" mean?
If you replace your body to someone else's,would you still be yourself?
Those are probably an eternal themes for human beings, we want to believe there is something to make ourselves unreplaceable. And also that's why it is often a theme for many other movies such as "Al" or "I Robot".
"Do you have any idea how lonely I am?" Motoko(Mira) was living in a very small world consist of people of Hanka obotics, or section 9. According to brain science, we recognize ourselves through others as a reflection in the mirror. And usually we have many "mirrors" such as family or friends, lovers or colleagues.
But what if you have only few mirrors, or even worse, zero? How would you try to keep self-conscious?
Maybe that's why she bought a prostitute in her day off, since she doesn't have any mirror when she is off duty, and only touching someone makes her feel exist.
I imagined, what if Cutter tries to kill her early in the story? I don't think Motoko would answer "I belong to this world". Because at that moment she really didn't, what she barely had was very fragile herself.
But, she decided to stay in this world in the end. Motoko found her roots, and she finally found the world that she can relate to. However I wondered why she refused to run away to the cyberspace with Kuze for a while. Now I think that was because she didn't want to lose her body(shell) even though she was dying, since without the body that makes her feel exist by touching someone, what can convince her "You are still here"? We have a relationship with our own body too.
Her ghost needed the shell.
Although this is a Sci-Fi movie, I think the story is about how she find a relationship between the world.
I sometimes have a very emotional night, thinking about my existence and the world I see. And it could make me very melancholy since I can't guarantee anything is actually real. Is my love for someone real? What about my fear, anger? I could always calm down myself by taking medicine, if I numb my sympathetic nervous. Then why I can say my emotion matters? How do I relate to the world?
But these day I finally realized, no matter how deep I dig inside of me, I won't find anything. Because my existence stays always outside, between me and others. That's the relationship between me and the world.
