A seamless merging of traditional cel animation with the latest computer graphic imagery. In a world where artificial intelligence is more than the real thing and cyborg cops spend their lives surfing on an electronic sea of living data, only the Ghost--the indefinable element of human consciousness--exists to determine who is alive and who is purely a creation of the Net. Major Motoko Kusanagi is an elite officer in the Section 9 security force: a cybernetic agent so heavily modified that little more then her Ghost remains. Kusanagi is set on the trail of a computer-criminal known as the Puppet Master, a data thief skilled enough to hack into the very minds of his victims. His human marionettes live out existences that are nothing more than computer-generated fantasy, unwittingly committing their masters crimes while the Ghost-hacker hides in the darkness. But as Kusanagi digs deep into the secrecy surrounding the case, it appears that the Puppet Master has a special interest in her. And when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs enters the scene, Kusanagi becomes tangled in a web of plot and counterplot. (Credit to lifestop)