Koukaku Kidoutai

In the year 2029, Niihama City has become a technologically advanced metropolis. Due to great improvements in cybernetics, its citizens are able to replace their limbs with robotic parts. The world is now more interconnected than ever before, and the city's Public Security Section 9 is responsible for combating corruption, terrorism, and other dangerous threats following this shift toward globalization.

The strong-willed Major Motoko Kusanagi of Section 9 spearheads a case involving a mysterious hacker known only as the "Puppet Master," who leaves a trail of victims stripped of their memories. Like many in this futuristic world, the Puppet Master's body is almost entirely robotic, giving them incredible power.

As Motoko and her subordinates follow the enigmatic criminal's trail, other parties—including Section 6—start to get involved, forcing her to confront the extremely complicated nature of the case. Pondering about various philosophical questions, such as her own life's meaning, Motoko soon realizes that the one who will provide these answers is none other than the Puppet Master themself.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kusanagi, Motoko Main

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Batou Main

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Togusa Main

Yamadera, Kouichi Japanese

Project 2501 Main

Kayumi, Iemasa Japanese

Aramaki, Daisuke Supporting

Ooki, Tamio Japanese

Ishikawa Supporting

Nakano, Yutaka Japanese

Garbage Collector B Supporting

Yamaji, Kazuhiro Japanese

Daita, Mizuho Supporting

Miyamoto, Mitsuru Japanese

Tsuan Gen Fang Supporting

Matsuyama, Takashi Japanese

Nakamura Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Ishikawa, Mitsuhisa Producer

Watanabe, Shigeru Producer

Iyadomi, Kenichi Producer

Oshii, Mamoru Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Dec 22, 2025

Jeffstrongman

Recommended

The show is a strong 8/10. It has great landscapes and ambient noises in the landscape scenes. The action scenes are few due to the movie being short, but they are well-directed. The movie conveys its thoughts on the world and understanding of evolution well. The downsides of the movie are that it is open-ended. The start feels like you have been thrown into the middle of the movie with very little understaning of the world and the ending leaves something to be desired. The movie could definitly be improved by increase the length as well as having more fight scenes and a better introduction ... to the world and a better conclution to the film

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Sep 19, 2025

danseaview

Mixed Feelings

Background: Started watching anime early 2010s, Moe was my era.

Pros: The Vibe, pure 90s anime vibe which is nice, slower pacing, more philosophical
Cons: A bit meh. Feels like they had the concept then tried to cobble a movie around it with limited success

The key issue was zero character/world development, it dives straight in with the concept and doesn't really introduce anyone or why you should care. No stakes, minimal characters, just concept.
Pacing is slower, normally a good thing but feels lop-sided. Like they wanted slow cinematic scenes but then have a massive concept to cram into the dialog and action scenes, so they turn out ... rushed or confusing. An cut the character/world establishing scenes.

If I watched it in the 90s would probably be a great movie since the concept would be new. Watching in 2025 the concept is 30 years old and there's no depth beyond a surface level covering of it. There's no character backstories, no real wants or needs driving the story, no real change or consequence. Just "hey check out this cool vibe and concept".

Not bad though so IGN 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 31, 2025

jlzap

Not Recommended

This movie is a whole bunch of nothing. There is ZERO character development and world-building throughout the whole thing. They throw you straight in but never give a backstory. You don't get attached to anyone or anything throughout the whole film, there are no stakes involved for the viewer. It makes for things to be either confusing, boring, empty, or all of the above.

The first actual bit of emotion we get from any character is an hour and fourteen minutes in; and as a viewer, I didn't even care what happened in that scene. It's a shame because this concept ... is great, but it was totally wasted. It was slow-paced, which was annoying some times and cool other times. I mean, it really shouldn't take over 30 minutes to actually begin the movie. The sound design was great and I really liked some of the cinematography but at other times it was giving "drawing is hard we're gonna just sit on the same frame for a minute to save our hands." And that's a fair thing to do, but not when you could instead be using that time to build characters so your viewers actually care about what's going on. It took a lot of pausing and checking how much time was left in hopes of it ending soon to get through this.

Why this is rated so highly is a mystery to me. I can only think that it's from people who claim it's a masterpiece because they consider it to be a classic, people who watched it around when it was released, and people who like the nudity.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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