Ghost in the Shell

In the future, new advancements in technology  allow humans to enhance themselves with cybernetic   parts. A company known as "Hanka Robotics", which  is funded by the government, is taking this one   step further by transplanting a human brain into  a fully synthetic body. The first patient to go   through this procedure is Mira, who wakes up  in the lab and only remembers drowning. Doctor   Ouelet, the scientist in charge, explains that  her parents were killed in a cyber-terrorist   attack and Mira's body was heavily  damaged. Her brain was fine though,   meaning that while her shell is synthetic, her  mind and soul, which Ouelet calls "the ghost",   are completely human. Mira then begins having a  panic attack and must be sedated, so Ouelet goes   to talk to Cutter, the company's CEO. Cutter wants  to use Mira as a weapon, not caring about Ouelet's   protests against the idea. A year later, Mira  is part of the counter-terrorism bureau Section   9 under Chief Aramaki and has reached the rank of  Major. Today's mission consists of watching over a   business meeting between Hanka's representative  Dr. Osmond and an African Ambassador,   who are being served by geisha-bots. From her  spot on the roof, Mira notices that a group of   men in black force their way into the building and  begin killing people and robots alike. Since her   coworker Batou hasn't arrived with the backup  yet, Mira decides to ignore Aramaki's orders   and go in anyway. By using her body's special  cloaking device, Mira appears invisible as she   jumps through the window just in time to find  the geisha-bots attacking every person in the   meeting. In the shadows, a mysterious man known  as Kuze is controlling the bots and ordering them   to hack into Osmond's mind. With great speed, Mira  destroys all the men in black and the geisha-bots,   and one of them tells her "collaborate with Hanka  Robotics and be destroyed" before she shuts down.   When Batou arrives with the rest of the team, he  notices Mira got her arm wounded, which almost   never happens. Later at home, Mira recharges  her body and sees a hallucination of a cat,   so she takes a special medicine that keeps her  brain from rejecting her body. The next day,   the team gets together to discuss what happened  and learns that three more Hanka scientists were   murdered at the company's central laboratory.  All of them showed signs of cerebral hacking,   and in all the crime scenes this Kuze guy left the  same message: "collaborate with Hanka Robotics and   be destroyed". After assigning each agent a new  task, Aramaki scolds Mira for her recklessness   and reminds her she's more than just a weapon.  Batou and Mira leave together for their next job,   but first Batou stops to feed his dogs. He  wants to learn more about Mira's personal   interests in return, but she admits her mind is  nothing but fog. On their way to the labs, Mira   sees a hallucination of a Japanese hut. A moment  later, Mira meets with Ouelet and gets her wound   fixed while telling the doctor about the glitches  she's been seeing. Ouelet just deletes them from   her memory and reminds Mira to take her medicine.  Next, Mira and Batou go to see Dr. Dahlin, who has   been working on the geisha-bots to find clues. The  geisha has been a Hanka companion bot that someone   reprogrammed for cerebral hacking. Her data  was destroyed after Kuze logged off her drive,   so Mira decides to take a Deep Dive to see if she  can retrieve anything. Batou reminds Mira that she   would expose her mind to Kuze, but she thinks  the mission is more important. Dahlin connects   Mira to the geisha's drive, and now Mira can see  a data recreation of the night of the attack. As   the images around her slowly crumble, Mira goes  further inside and finds Kuze looking at her own   body. Suddenly Mira is surrounded by aggressive  black shadows that represent Kuze trying to hack   into her. Dahlin isn't able to disconnect her  because of Kuze's protection, so Batou pulls   the wires by force. Luckily Mira wakes up sane  and knowing Kuze's location. In the evening,   Mira and Batou go to a yakuza nightclub known  for its black market merch. Batou is stopped   by bodyguards and he pretends he's here just to  drink while Mira finds a yakuza and pretends she's   here to buy merch. The men take her to a private  room and handcuff her to a dancing pole. The boss   can tell Mira isn't completely human and begins  tasing her to make her talk while Batou realizes   he can't communicate with Mira because her signal  is being blocked. Since there are no clues there,   Mira begins beating the yakuza up with her great  strength. Batou is approached by the yakuza too,   but when he hears Mira's commotion, he starts  fighting as well. Once all the bad guys are dead,   Mira goes into the back room and sees the hut  hallucination from before, but this time it's   on fire. After the glitch disappears, Mira  sees Kuze, who repeats his usual message   before disappearing as well. As Batou arrives as  well, Mira realizes this is a trap and pushes her   friend out of the way before a bomb explodes.  Hours later, Mira wakes up in the lab. Ouelet   explains Mira took most of the blast, but Batou  still lost his eyes. While repairing Mira, Ouelet   discovers a bunch of glitches, and Mira admits  they've been getting worse since the deep dive.   Ouelet is worried, but Mira swears the glitches  mean nothing to her. Afterward, Mira checks on   Batou and discovers he's gotten new cyborg eyes  that give him new skills like X-ray. Meanwhile   Cutter tells Aramaki he isn't happy about how  much damage Mira has been receiving lately,   but Aramaki reminds him he answers to the Primer  Minister and not Hanka. In the evening, Mira can't   stop feeling weird about her own body because of  the glitches. She decides to hire a street worker   that is 100% human to touch her skin and learn  more about how different she feels. At the lab,   Dahlin is looking into the geisha's system and  finds a file named "Secure Project 2571". She's   suddenly interrupted by Kuze sneaking in, so she  saves the file in a memory stick and hides it in   her hand right before Kuze kills her. The next  day, Mira and Batou go check on Dahlin's murder   and find the memory stick. Mira looks at the file  and discovers a list of everyone who worked on a   project called 2571. This is the information Kuze  had stolen from Osmond and now he's killing every   name on that list. Ouelet is also listed, so Mira  urges her team to find her. Meanwhile Kuze hacks   into the brains of Lee and another sanitation  worker to make them drive their truck into   Ouelet's car. Then they shoot the driver  and catch Ouelet when she's about to escape,   but they're intercepted by the arrival of Mira  and her team. Batou kills one of the workers,   but Lee escapes by becoming invisible. Mira tracks  him by watching his footprints on the water, and   Lee suddenly becomes visible again when he reaches  the river because Kuze isn't controlling him   anymore. Becoming invisible too, Mira begins to  beat him up and Batou has to come to stop her from   killing the guy since they need to interrogate  him. Lee is taken to the team's headquarters,   where he swears he doesn't know anything. It seems  Kuze has wiped his memory and Lee's brain created   a new reality. Suddenly, Lee's mannerisms change,  and the team realizes Kuze has hacked into him   again by using the lie detector. Once again Mira  ignores Aramaki's warnings and enters the cell   cube to demand answers, but Kuze only asks her to  come to see him. The team manages to track Kuze's   location and Kuze disconnects, leaving Lee in  such a bad mental state that he ends things for   himself. Afterward, the team gets inside an  abandoned building where they find dozens of   people mentally linked in the same network. While  Batou and the others begin beating people up,   Mira goes deeper inside and discovers that  the network is formed by the minds themselves,   that's why Kuze's so hard to find. Mira keeps  looking around and sees the hut hallucination   again, this time it's on fire and people are being  dragged away from it. When the glitch disappears,   Mira is attacked from behind, and after exchanging  a few hits she gets tased into unconsciousness.   Moments later, Mira finds herself hanging from  a brain connection while Kuze watches her. He   explains that he felt something special when Mira  connected her mind to the geisha and it made him   realize he and Mira are the same. It turns out  Ouelet lied to Mira: she isn't the first brain   in a synthetic body. Project 2571 tried the  same procedure on dozens of people like Kuze,   and they were all discarded like garbage when  the experiments failed. Mira's body is only   successful because the doctors learned from  their past mistakes. Kuze managed to escape   the disposal and now he wants revenge, which he  sees as self-defense, but Mira still thinks he's a   murderer. Then Kuze disconnects Mira as he taunts  her into attacking, but Mira's shots don't do   anything. At that moment, Mira notices Kuze has a  tattoo of the hut on his chest. Kuze doesn't know   what it is, but the memory of that hut haunts him  just like it does Mira. The so-called medication   they give them actually suppresses their memories,  so Kuze wants Mira to stop taking it to find her   answers. At that moment, the team bursts in,  causing Kuze to run away. Mira ignores Batou's   calling and runs as well. Hours later, Mira  shows up at Ouelet's apartment and makes her   confess there had been 98 failed attempts before  Mira. Cutter brought the bodies and Ouelet never   asked questions, but she does know that the whole  thing about Mira drowning and her parents' death   were false memories they gave her to motivate  her to fight terrorists. Hurt by this betrayal,   Mira runs away and goes off the grid. Aramaki asks  Batou to find her, and Batou takes a boat to the   river because he knows Mira likes to go diving  to leave the network signals behind. When Mira   comes aboard, Batou assures her she can trust  him and takes her back to the city. Meanwhile   Ouelet tells Cutter that Mira knows the truth.  At the harbor, Mira throws her medicine away.   Then she finds herself surrounded by Hanka guards  that immediately arrest her and take her to the   lab. When she's handed over to the scientists,  Mira gets sedated, and she sees a hallucination   of two desperate patients reaching for each  other before she falls asleep. Moments later,   Cutter orders Ouelet to terminate Mira because  she's a terrorist now. Ouelet refuses because   Mira isn't a failed model, but Cutter threatens  her into obeying. In order to distract Cutter,   Ouelet gives Mira an injection, but she uses  medicine instead of poison. Then she hands Mira an   address with information about her past and allows  her to escape. While Mira beats up every guard she   comes across and leaves the building, Cutter kills  Ouelet as punishment. Afterward, Cutter meets with   Aramaki and tells him Mira killed Ouelet, now he  wants the team to chase her as the criminal she   is. Nobody believes Cutter's story, so they'll  have to make a plan. In the morning, Mira goes   to the address Ouelet gave her and finds the cat  she saw in her hallucination. This cat belongs to   Hairi, who invites Mira in when she notices the  cat surprisingly likes her. Inside Mira finds a   figurine of the hut inside an abandoned bedroom.  Hairi explains it belongs to her daughter Motoko,   who died a year ago. The ministry sent the  ashes and told Hairi that Motoko ended things   for herself, but Hairi never believed it. Motoko  had been a happy girl living in the lawless zone   with her friends and writing manifestos about  how technology destroyed the world. Hairi admits   Mira reminds her of her daughter, making Mira  realize that her brain is Mokoto's. Overwhelmed   with emotion, Mira runs away and gets in contact  with Aramaki, telling him the whole story. Aramaki   believes her, but they can't prove it because  Ouelet is dead. Hearing this makes Mira furious   and she asks Aramaki to put the conversation  on the grid on purpose so that Kuze can find   her. Aramaki promises to meet with the Prime  Minister to make Cutter pay for his sins, and this   conversation is overheard by Cutter as well. Hanka  guards are sent to kill Section 9, but Aramaki   expects them and easily shoots them all down. Then  he warns the members of his team, who act quickly   and easily kill the guards too. Meanwhile Mira  enters the lawless zone, and her route is tracked   by both Kuze and Cutter. In an old alley, Mira  finds the burned hut, which causes the memories to   rush back to her: Hanka guards came to arrest the  rebels on purpose to stop their anti-technology   message and gain some bodies for their experiments  at the same time. Kuze shows up and realizes he   had been part of this too, and Mira points out  that the graffiti on the wall that says "Motoko   and Hideo" are their real names. Kuze wants Mira  to join him in his network and get revenge, but at   that moment, a bomb explodes in the hut. Cutter  sends a special tank to hunt the cyborgs down,   and Mira immediately opens fire on it as defense.  After exchanging a few shots, the tank makes   the floor where Mira's standing crumble and the  scanner announces she's dead. Then the tank turns   on Kuze, but before it can shoot, Mira reveals  she's been hiding with invisibility and jumps on   top of the tank to destroy it with her bare hands,  causing her to lose an arm in the process. Kuze   asks Mira to come with him again, but Mira turns  him down because she still thinks she belongs   here. Their conversation is interrupted when a  Hanka helicopter shows up and Cutter's sniper   shoots Kuze. Then he tries to kill Mira too,  but Aramaki sent a sniper as well and with just   one shot he makes the helicopter crash. Batou  shows up and Mira promises both the Major and   Motoko are alive together in her ghost. Meanwhile  Aramaki shows up at Cutter's office and with the   permission of the Prime Minister, he kills Cutter  for his crimes. Some days later, Mira visits   Mokoto's grave and bumps into Hairi, who finally  realizes who Mira is and hugs her, accepting her   as her daughter. Afterward, Mira rejoins the team  to continue working on keeping the city safe.