Take it as axiomatic that a man with a billion dollars is "rich" and a man with no dollars is poor (wait, I'm going somewhere with this). Say you take 1 dollar from this man. He's still "rich", with his paltry nine hundred nintey nine million nine hundred and nintey nine dollars, right? And if you take another dollar? And another? The question is, when, exactly, does he stop being "rich".
Take is as axiomatic that you are "you". Say I replaced your finger with an articulated prostethic. You'd still be you, right? What about your whole hand? Your arm? Both legs? Your heart and lungs? What if I replaced your brain with an atomically exact duplicate? What if I replaced your brain with an artifical, cybernetic brain that was functionally exactly the same? Such that if you didn't know I'd done this, neither you nor anyone else could tell the difference. Would you still be you then?
Ok. So let's talk about the movie...
Let's get this out of the way first: This film is a visual triumph. It glorious to gaze upon its perfect beauty. Gaze upon Mamoru Oshii's works, oh ye mighty, and tremble!
Furthermore, it is gripping, exciting and edge of your blah blah blah. On a purely visceral level, this movie is fantastic. But if you were watching this movie on only that level, you would be frequently pissed of at the long, seemingly un-plot-related talky bits. Furthermore, you would be a fool.
Ghost In The Shell 2 fufills the promise that I felt was hinted at but never fully realized in the first movie. What does it mean to live in a world where your mind can be downloaded in to a cybernetic brain? Where your experiences and memories can be stored extrnally, where you can experience other's perceptions and memories, even artifically constructed experiences. How would you know what memories were your own? How would you know if what you were experiencing right now, right this very minute was actually happening, or someone else's dream? What is the meaning of "self" in a world where consiousness can be split from the body, divided up, and even mingled with other consiousnesses?
Innocence picks up an indeteriminiate amount of time after GitS1. The Major is still considered "missing" and Batou has been partnered with the beat cop from the first movie, Togusa. As members of Section 9, they are assigned to investigate a series of murders by certian model of "gynoid", a geshia robot. As they delve deeper in to the investigation, the learn disturbing information about the gynoid's manufacture, and explore the question (to paraphrase one of the characters) "why do dolls creep us the hell out?"
This movie is what you might get if you put Kant, Decartes and some other French and German philosopers in a blender with Douglas Hofstadter, a little bit of William Gibson, some Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom vintage Cory Doctrow, a great heaping cup of techno fetishism, and a scoop of excessive violence, and set it on puree.