I freaking love how the songs covered all kind of refer to the story of the game. Earth Angel... My Boyfriend’s Back... If I Only Had A Brain... It’s one of the most well constructed, thematically perfect OSTs ever.

Thanks, but I’ve already read all the wikipedia stuff myself, that’s how I originally came to the conclusion that it would be possible (not likely, just possible).

Korea has a darker history with Japan than most other countries, it’s not fair to use that as a comparison. I’m not claiming the Major could have been Korean, and the rest of what you said there, I can’t find any evidence for that, so perhaps you can link to what you have found. Perhaps you have an account of people…

I’m not saying immigrants in Japan are common, but they definitely exist (and existed before 1989), and if they’d had kids in Japan who grew up and were educated in Japan, spoke perfect Japanese, respected Japanese culture AND held a government job that they are exceptional at, dealing with the security of the…

“GitS portrays the future as an exaggerated version of the present, as is typical for the cyberpunk genre”

You’re grasping at straws with your first point, it’s like saying John Anderton couldn’t from a family of German origin in Minority report because it’s set in future America, but the only relevant part is that he is a member of American society. The only relevant factor in GITS is that Motoko is familiar with Japanese…

You can question whatever you like, it doesn’t change the fact that Kusanagi’s ethnicity is not a factor in the story.

You misunderstand again. Each of those things you talk about only happens in one version of Ghost In The Shell, they are not in continuity with each other, and at no point is Motoko’s gender or age a key part of the story, just like the other examples I mentioned. What is key is that Motoko can choose whatever body…

Then you’ve misunderstood me. I said she COULD be non-Japanese, not that she was! The same way Harry Potter could be blonde, or Doctor Who could be a woman. The Major could have been an old lady, or a dude, or a computer program. There is nothing in any of the versions that forces her to be Japanese except her name…

Well I’ve never claimed the Major was always white, my original claim was that her ethnicity is unstated, and it is, so what has you issue been?

“It’s alternate universe now, but it was meant to be straight future back in 1989 when it was first conceived”

The fact that this is a separate continuity is the only thing that even matters here. They aren’t going back and changing the ethnicity of the Major, this is a new continuity with Scarlet Johannson as the Major, the old one still exists.

Maybe in the Japan of today...

She’s not a secret agent, she’s a black-ops agent. She could look like a box on legs as far as anyone in that universe would be concerned. Anyway, it’s a separate continuity from the other versions, so it really doesn’t matter, it stands alone.

The year is irrelevant, it doesn’t represent our future, it’s the far future of an alternate history that diverged from our own decades before the start of the story, after WWII if anything.

She lives in far future Japan, it’s not strange that it might have become a little more multicultural by then!

Indeed! It could be addressed in the story! I don’t remember her mother even appearing in any of the previous versions (although it’s been a while since I read the manga and I barely remember Innocence)!

As far as I can tell, SAC, the movies, and the manga (and maybe the second series of manga) are in different continuities to each other. The live-action film is following the anime movies, but will be a fourth continuity anyway, so anything goes as far as her back-story is concerned.

I wouldn’t say it was likely... If she wanted to change her original body, why choose something similar to her original when she’d have a whole world of faces to choose from? Surely one completely different would be more likely, especially if she wanted to forget her former life, and the fact she never talks about it…

When did it ever say in the original manga or anime that Motoko was Japanese anyway? It’s even implied that her body and face are not the ones she originally had as a full human. Her Japanese grandfather could have married an foreigner, and their half-Japanese son could have done the same. She’d have a Japanese name…