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The Shell is different, but the Ghost remains the same.

After watching 12 episodes of first season on Netflix, I would simply put it: Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 stays true to its legacy, a legacy left uncharted since 2006.

15 yeas has passed, both in our world and the world of SAC, things must've change.

For starter, the staff could no longer create an anime TV series like they did 15 years ago. The industry, the internet, and the audience, are all changed. People change, as they always do.

This is arguably the reason why Kenji Kamiyama(神山健治) builds up this new series with a ... six-episodes-long and action-packed opening. It offers a opportunity for new audience to familiar with our old characters, and our old audience to familiar with the new setting.

After six episodes, the series return to its Stand Alone Episode mode, assure its audience that it's still the same SAC narrative. SAC_2045 clearly has its own interesting social observation to our gradually internet world. What's the impact of the economic crack-down to the aging society like Japan? How about the witch-hunting on the social media, the cyberbully from anonymous netizen, and the "NTH Room-like" scandal of the dark web?

It's not until the midpoint of the story(or nearly the end of the first seasons), does SAC_2045 reveals the core literature reference of this new series: George Orwell's 1984.

And that makes all the difference. We could now gradually grasps the reason of the new setting in SAC_2045, such as "sustainable war".

In retrospect, the original SAC series in 2002 also reveals its reference to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye only after the mid-season. Therefore I would not be surprise if Kamiyama decided to do the same.

The story ends with a fantastic cliffhanger in its mid-season, and we have to wait til the end of 2020(at least) to figure out Kamiyama's whole plot of SAC_2045. I'll keep my fingers crossed for the next season.

In a nutshell, SAC_2045 is a loyal expansion to the classic SAC series. There're a few downside nonetheless, OP and OST in particular, but the motif and characters are the same.

The Ghost returns, in the new Shell, and it is for our audience to decide, whether we determine a ghost base on its shell.