GITS is highly relevant today, but I can understand why the Hollywood remake gutted the original story, because GITS is a highly subversive work that directly a

GITS is highly relevant today, but I can understand why the Hollywood remake gutted the original story, because GITS is a highly subversive work that directly attacks the authoritarian state's bureaucratic power structure. It's also the story of the transformation of a loyal servant of one of the state agencies, Major Kusangi, into an independent rogue agent who abandons that power structure in alliance with some form of synthetic intelligence, Project 2501. What sets it apart from similar rogue spy stories is the heavy emphasis on philosophical concepts - the Ship of Theseus in the context of a cyborg human whose every part has been replaced over time, the nature of self and other in the context of the merger of the Major's identity with that of P2501, the point at which obedience to the authoritarian state is abandoned and the rationale for that choice - all notions that make established power structures uneasy, and which accounts for the atrocious garbled plot line of the Hollywood remake.