Yesterday, the 4th episode of the new animated Ghost in the Shell series released on Prime Video. The new animated series is produced by Science SARU, based on Masamune Shirow’s 1989 manga series. The series began airing on 7th July on a simultaneous global release schedule, with weekly episode drops, giving the worldwide community the chance to discuss the series episode by episode. 

So far, the episodes have mostly furthered The Puppet Master arc, whilst simultaneously world-building. We’ve had the inception of Division 9, after a bit of a false start, then a couple of cases of mistaken identity with regards to The Puppet Master. There have been a couple of good action scenes, and a bit of philosophising over the line between human and non-human, and the nature of the ‘ghosts’ of the title. All the while, whilst the animation has been great, some of the episodes have been oddly structured, with a lot of jumping around.

Episode 4 did not have the same issues with jumping around, and was the most ‘complete’ episode yet, concentrating on one plot. The storyline of episode 4 was self-contained. It was vaguely referencing, perhaps, the interlude last week with the Fuchikoma discussing a robot uprising, as this episode featured a series of robots malfunctioning and harming humans. After one specific incident, the team recover one of the affected robots, and track the cause to the manufacturer, Hanka Precision Instruments.

We got some character development with Batou and Togusa, as they investigate, and we were once again reminded of Togusa’s family commitments, which suggests perhaps some foreshadowing. It was, for us, the best episode so far, with an interesting story, some more world-building, with riots in the streets, and great action scenes. A long series with standalone episodes like this would be great, and though we don’t know what may or may not come after this series, we hope to see more episodes like this.

What did you think of episode four? Did you enjoy the standalone nature of the story, or would you rather they focused fully on the overarching plotline of The Puppet Master? Let us know in the comments.

You can watch the new Ghost in the Shell series on Prime Video with a valid subscription, and episodes will be released every Tuesday. You can enjoy the show’s opening sequence below –