The first installment, Ghost Pain (released on 22 June 2013), starts in 2027, one year after the end of the fourth non-nuclear world war. 501st Secret Unit agent Motoko Kusanagi looks into the death of her mentor, Lt.Col. Mamuro, after accusations arise of his involvement in arms dealing. During her investigation, Motoko meets Public Security Section 9 chief Daisuke Aramaki and JGSDF Ranger Batou, the latter of which suspects Kusanagi of having a bigger role in the case than she lets on. Unbeknownst to Kusanagi, the Secret Unit's head, Kurutsu, and the unit's elite cyborg agents have placed her under surveillance.
The second installment, Ghost Whispers (released on 25 November 2013), takes place after Kusanagi leaves the 501st Secret Unit and forms her own team. When someone hacks into the Logicoma, Motoko supervises a transport of the machines for an abnormality scan; along the way, an armed unit attacks the transport and specifically targets Motoko. Not long after the attack, Motoko meets up with Batou, Ishikawa (an Army hacker and a longtime Batou's associate), and Borma (an electronic warfare expert), and recruits them into Section 9.
The third installment, Ghost Tears (released 28 June 2014), follows Section 9's investigation on the terrorist organization, whose symbol is the Scylla, an ancient sea-monster. Meanwhile, Togusa investigates a murder of a man who possessed a prosthetic leg manufactured by the Mermaid's Leg corporation. His findings are connected to Motoko and Section 9's case and it all leads to someone who is in a relationship with Motoko.
The fourth and final installment, Ghost Stands Alone (released 6 Sept 2014) takes place in the winter of 2028. Tensions are rising in New Port City as demonstrations are held concerning the interests of foreign cartels. This leads to a shooting incident involving riot police. It all started with a cyberbrain infection released by the terrorist "Fire Starter." Section 9 entrusts the suppression of the situation. As they investigate further, the group discovers a deeper revelation regarding the terrorist.
A manga adaptation of Arise released simultaneously with each OVA episode. In the spring 2015 anime season, a 10-episode TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Alternative Architecture aired. Alternative Architecture is the original 4 OVA episodes split up into two episodes each for TV broadcast; the final two episodes are a new arc called Pyrophoric Cult, which concluded the Fire-Starter Myth Arc.
The Arise continuity was concluded with the release of Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie on June 20, 2015.
An anime VR movie known as Ghost In The Shell Virtual Reality Diver was released in English and Japanese in July 13, 2018 for Apple and Android smartphones.
Funimation licensed the show for release in North America; initially releasing a Limited Edition subtitled Blu-Ray. The dub of Episode 1 and 2 was released in October 2014. Episodes 3 and 4 followed suit in October 2015, and Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie was released in April of 2016.
Ghost in the Shell: Arise contains examples of the following tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Anastasia Muñoz has played a well-known person who dabbles on the side as a secret arms dealer.
- Adaptation Expansion: The original manga's first chapter started off with all of Section 9's members undergoing a mission that would also serve as a test. They had to prove their worth to the government so that they could be established as an official operation. These OVAs show Motoko eventually being recruited by Aramaki in order to form Section 9 in the first place. In the manga, the character's backgrounds are never shown or reflected upon.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us / The Siege: The UN PKO base at the Republic of Kuran before and after rogue Kuran Air Force fighters bombed the base.
- Alternate Continuity: Kenji Kamiyama confirmed that he was not involved in this project, which itself was confirmation that it is not part of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex continuity (Kamiyama was the head of the entire SAC series.) Motoko's origin story in this series completely contradicts her backstory in SAC, making it impossible for them to be connected. Batou's, Ishikawa's, and Saito's backstories are also completely contradictory.
- Anachronic Order: Alternative Architecture starts off with the "Ghost Stands Alone" arc, turning the other three OVA arcs into a Whole Season Flashback.
- Armies Are Evil: The JSDF in general and the JGSDF in particular are shown to be pretty damn shady. True, they're in rather awkward situation (and financial black hole), what with the grand reorganization and mass downsizing after the war, but it's not really a justification for putting their cyborgs into debt peonage, engaging in illegal arms deals, street murder, covert foreign interventions, general corruption and whatnot.
- Arms Dealer: A sub-plot in the manga shows that Unit 501 covertly backs a military government in the Republic of Kuran to earn income for the unit by selling them weapons and military gear.
- Colonel Mamuro's attempts to blow a whistle on this drive the whole plot of the first OVA.
- One of the main political conflicts on the postwar Japan in the Arise world is whether the military development (and, naturally, sales) should be domestically based, or outsourced to the Third World.
- Avengers Assemble: The main premise of the OVA where Motoko recruits the men who would be the future members of Public Security Section 9.
- Big Bad: The New Movie reveals that Kurutsu was the perpetrator of the entire storyline, right from the moment she and Motoko first met when they were children. She's the Firestarter, she created the Altered Memories Virus, she was responsible for the Prime Minister's assassination and her own so-called "death".
- Boxed Crook: The Major recruits half her team this way.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Motoko spends the first episode inadvertently infected with a virus that produces Fake Memories, causing her to obsess over proving Mamuro's innocence, while unconsciously following impulses the memories instruct her to, which winds up incriminating her for the murder.
- Car Fu: A Big Damn Heroes with an armored Toyota Koukidousha.
- Cramming the Coffin: The first episode opens with Public Security disinterring the grave of a military officer whose cyber brain they need to access. Instead they find the coffin empty except for an android that tries to kill them. Later Motoko goes back to the gravesite and finds another coffin buried underneath the first, with the officer's body.
- Creepy Doll: The landmines definitely look the part. Especially when Motoko starts seeing them everywhere because of the virus.
- "Die Hard" on an X: Episode 2, "Ghost Whispers". Unlike most examples, the "Die Hard" here isn't isolated to a single building, but is more reminiscent of "Die Hard With A Vengeance": All of Niihama's transportation is held hostage, and Motoko, cut off from reinforcements and supplies, is forced to play a game of cat and mouse against a JGSDF military unit gone renegade across the frozen city.
- Dissonant Serenity: Border 4 begins with cyber-hacked riot police opening fire on peaceful protesters before turning the guns on themselves. All while "Jingle Bells" plays through the streets.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Motoko's JGSDF uniform closely resembles those worn by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. This isn't a coincidence in the slightest.
- Dramatic Thunder: The scenes at the cemetery.
- Dream Team: Motoko scouts out 6 potential members to join the team that Aramaki and Section 9 is allowing her to create. He thinks it's pretty absurd that she's setting her standards impossibly high, yet everyone she recruits fits her expectations perfectly.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Well, Section 9 and the JGSDF's Ranger-trained soldiers for starters.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Motoko lets the Logicoma shoot the tires of a Jeep, drives past it and then suddenly go kablooey.
- Fake Memories:
- In the first OVA, a computer virus which infected both Mamuro and Motoko. This somehow messes up Motoko's memories as she investigates Mamuro's death which prompts other investigators, including Batou, to believe that she's responsible for his death.
- In the second OVA, this also happens to Batou, Ishikawa, Borma and their squad leader, Col. Soga, where they're led to believe that Soga didn't massacre the refugees in Qhardistan. Though it turns that the refugees are armed guerrillas. The child Batou remembers giving water to was a deadly child soldier gunning for him.
- In the third OVA, a mysterious hacker involved in Qhardistan underground movement and whose ghost gets dubbed onto Akira Hose's mind, turns out to be Motoko herself, then on a mission from the 501st, and made to forget about it by installing fake memories into her cyberbrain.
- In the fourth OVA, the virus makes a riot police unit to see the armed terrorists within the largely peaceful demonstration, massacring it as a distraction for an assassination attempt on a runaway hacker and a head politician.
- The most devastating use of this is in The New Movie: the prime minister's son was infected with the Firestarter virus. He was the one who delivered the explosive briefcase that killed his father. He goes into a Heroic BSoD when the Major cures his infection and he realizes what he did.
- Frame-Up: Motoko doesn't believe that Mamuro is involved with arms dealing and then, she also got accused for his death. But it turns out it's a gambit to expose the Defense Vice Minister's corruption and Mamuro and Motoko are just pawns.
- Googling the New Acquaintance: The manga starts off with Aramaki prepping the team with a new mission, but they're waiting on Batou to finish bringing some supplies back to HQ. Motoko figured it'd be best to let a pro handle it, revealing that Batou worked in a delivery service before he joined the military. Batou was not amused.
- Government Agency of Fiction: Possibly for the actual National Security Agency. The series has the name of the agency as the "National Secret Agency" and the logo is taken from the actual FBI.
- Hack the Traffic Lights: Organized by rogue JGSDF Rangers in order to prove that they are serious when they want their imprisoned CO freed of false charges.
- Heavy Sleeper: Saito is constantly napping throughout Borders 3 and 4, even inside Motoko's cyber lobby.
- Inhumanable Alien Rights: In this version, Motoko's pregnant mother was killed in a chemical accident, and they saved Motoko by giving her a full-prosthetic body right out of the womb through an emergency procedure. While technically she's a full citizen, her bodies were paid for by the JGSDF and legally belong to them. She's emancipated at the end of the first episode and promptly resigns her commission to work for Aramaki.
- Interservice Rivalry : The 501st and the Rangers in the manga are shown not to get along at all. And both hate Military Intelligence with a passion.
- It's Personal: In the first OVA, Motoko investigates Mamuro's death which goes with disregarding her superior's orders to not get involved. Batou digs in the case because his Ranger friend who was killed is connected to Mamoru.
- Just Between You and Me: Motoko gets a ready confession from a corrupt politician, but only because his cyborg mooks are waiting outside his vehicle. Unfortunately Motoko is talking remotely via a fem-bomb under her optical camouflage, so he gets a nasty surprise.
- Kaiju Defense Force: In-Universe, Motoko used to be with the JGSDF's 501st Secret Unit. Batou was in the Rangers, taken from the SAC universe. Pazu and Aramaki were in the JGSDF military police, though Aramaki was in the Investigations Department, not enforcement, and was later transferred to the Military Intelligence (which is a plot point in "Ghost Stands Alone"). Ishikawa, Saito and Borma are said to be with the Rangers in the Arise 'verse, while other incarnations have not made it clear which part of the JGSDF they belong in.
- Karma Houdini: Unit 501 in general and Lt. Col. Kurutsu in particular, who were never taken to task for all the treachery, confusion, and destruction they've caused.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Colonel Hozumi gets her comeuppance in Pyrophoric Cult. Unit 501 gets wiped out in The New Movie, notably Ibachi is killed by the Major, and Raizo gets shot dead by a Logicoma. Meanwhile, Kurutsu is revealed to have been a sickly girl all along who decides to leave the physical world behind and join the Net.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Happens twice with Batou and Motoko, before he's forcibly recruited into her squad.
- Lonely Bachelor Pad: Young Motoko Kusanagi's apartment is pretty sparse - consisting of a four walls, a bed, a bathroom, and a chair. This is in stark contrast to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend in the original manga, which is more decorated - at least until it's blown up.
- Loss of Identity: In Ghost Tears, Motoko admits to suffering from this while she was using the "Scylla" identity in the Republic of Kuzan's civil war and constantly switching bodies. The mental trauma she experienced from this is why she sticks with only one body upon returning to Japan.
- MacGuffin: "Pandora" in Ghost Whispers, a database that allegedly contains all kinds of classified government information. Colonel Kazuya Soga is attempting to hack into it to clear his name regarding a massacre he and his unit participated in during the Qhardistani conflict. In reality, Soga was being manipulated by an official in the Defense Ministry, who in turn was playing into a situation that was engineered by the AI impersonating the American agent VV in a desperate ploy for it to find some kind of meaning to its existence after it attained sentience.
- Made a Slave: The JSDF essentially puts its cyborgs into indentured servitude, due to astronomic costs of their prosthetic bodies and dire financial straits the military is in. It's bad enough that by default their every expense has to be authorized by an assets board, unless given a waiver by a superior officer. Once they've paid out their cost they could be their own person again, though.
- Madness Mantra: The Lt. Col. is innocent. The Lt. Col. is innocent.
- Mexican Standoff: Motoko and Batou's first encounter with each other would have resulted in one of them killing the other, had it not been for the intervention of the person who revealed that both of them were assigned to protect. Batou's height gave him the advantage. By the end, his gun was aimed point-blank to her head at full arm's length, but Motoko's knife wasn't quite close enough to his neck.
- Also happened in the first OVA when Motoko confronts armed public security officers at a military cemetery. Also crosses to Motoko Is About To Shoot You.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Motoko keeps getting Mirror Scare moments of the fem-bomb being in the room with her. Turns out she's been there all the time, but the virus kept editing her out.
- New Tech Is Not Cheap: The JSDF funneled enormous amount of money into the research and production of military cyborgs during the war in Kuran. This is the main reason for their current Perpetual Poverty. The issue is brought up in The New Movie where it is stated that technology continues to advance at such a fast rate, that production lines move from one thing to the next, and cyborgs are outdated and become incompatible with new tech. They can't continue doing anything productive to society at large.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse:
- Motoko pretty much coerces Saito to join Section 9. She threatens to hack his bank account and give back all the money he's accrued from gambling over the years if he didn't. She at least pointed out that he would still be paid for his work though.
- Batou was given a more merciful offer. Either he joined Section 9, or go to trial for his crimes and be left at the mercy of a court that would be unquestionably stacked against him.
- Older Than They Look: In Border 3, Akira takes Motoko to a wedding. She doesn't see anything unusual about it, just a bunch of young people getting married and enjoying the celebration. He points out that nearly all of them are around 70 years old, and how prosthetic bodies are able to give them a renewed life.
- Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The assets board that manages military cyborgs in Episode 1.
- Origins Episode: Following along with the first chapter of the manga, this series covers an aspect of Motoko's life right before she is recruited to Aramaki's Section 9 project. He had to make sure that such a team could work out first before having it officially approved by the government.
- Overranked Soldier: Both Motoko (a Major) and Batou (a Commandernote ) were wa-a-a-ay above the missions both did in the Kuran Republic.
- Parental Substitute: Lt. Colonel Mamuro is implied to be this for Motoko, and apparently transferred this responsibility to Aramaki, whose friend he was.
- The Plan: Kurutsu and Unit 501 plotted to expose the Defense Vice Minister's illegal arms trade by letting Mamuro take the fall for the crimes of the Vice Minister. Of course, they didn't anticipate the memory virus installed in Mamoru's cyberbrain and Motoko, attempting to analyze his cyberbrain and getting infected herself.
- Posthumous Character: JGSDF Lieutenant Colonel Giichi Mamuro, the former Unit 501 commander and Motoko's superior officer. His murder basically starts the whole plot of the first episode.
- Prequel: To Ghost In The Shell in general. The formation of Section 9 is something that isn't even covered in the manga aside from the first chapter, and this series goes much beyond that in detail. However, this trope is zigzagged, as while 2027 is the earliest setting in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, this series quickly establishes itself in its own Alternate Continuity from everything else.
- Private Military Contractors: The New Movie begins with Kurutsu and the 501st becomming PMCs, believing that corporations have already reached the point of overtaking governments.
- Product Placement: All over the place, sometimes to the detriment to the Willing Suspension of Disbelief — it's hard to believe that the current gee-whiz gizmos would stay relevant after 14 years:
- The first official reveal
◊ of all of Section 9's character designs is in an advertisement for Microsoft's Surface. - Aramaki drives high end Infiniti cars rather prominently.
- The first official reveal
- Promoted to Scapegoat: Kurutsu and Unit 501 had to let Mamuro take the fall for the Vice Minister's crimes so they can expose the latter. Motoko is not pleased with this.
- Really Gets Around: In Ghost Tears Motoko was said to go through six boyfriends in six months. In the same conversation Paz says that he never sleeps with the same woman twice as well.
- The Rival: Batou and Motoko to each other in their army days. After joining Section 9, they've settled into the more familiar Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Noroshi has this in the 1st manga chapter after JGSDF officers assigned to the Kuran PKO base evacuated without the Rangers to avoid being killed or captured by armed guerrillas when the base was attacked by rogue Kuran Air Force fighters. He didn't get a chance to bomb the hotel where the officers were since Batou told him that it won't bring back the dead civilians or their fellow Rangers from the dead.
- Room Full of Crazy: Motoko's room winds up ripped up and scrawled with a Madness Mantra as her mind subconsciously obsesses over the directives of her Fake Memories. In a twist, Motoko herself doesn't realize she did this, because of her self-censoring vision.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Aramaki's main tool on implementing the following trope. During his long and varied career he did a lot of favors to a lot of people, and he's not shy to call in on them.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Both Aramaki's and Major's team note modus operandi, for which Aramaki was even called out by one of his less scrupulous former colleagues. In fact, making this official (removing the Section 9 from the oversight of the blatantly corrupt Ministry of Interior) and setting it up as an independent agency is the main political conflict of the series.
- Showing Up Chauvinists: Batou often shows disapproval of being ordered around by the Major, who gave him the only option of joining her team instead of rotting in jail. When he finally confronts her about her leadership style, he takes a swing at her, but she easily dodges and lays him out in a single punch. In a later incident, she hacks his cyberbrain and make him punch himself out for saying something chauvinistically stupid.
- Shown Their Work: Realistic detailing on the Heckler & Koch MP7 as used by Motoko. The Rangers with their Howa Type 89s modded to take red dot scopes.
- Batou's pistol strongly resembles a M1911A1 in the tie-in manga.
- Shout-Out: In the movie, a Unit 501 contractor shoots the Major with a WA2000 sniper rifle at close range, similar to how Sho Kanaya fatally wounds Yu Ominae in Spriggan.
- Signature Move: Motoko's hacking, which is how she beats enemies that are stronger than her.
- Sleazy Politician: Everyone with even a tiniest bit of political connection, except Section 9 chief, Daisuke Aramaki, though he's more of a bureaucrat than politician in the strict sense.
- Technical Pacifist: Aramaki is at least 60 years old, and when he was in the Military Police he was a detective, not an enforcer, but he's still the only member of his team not incapacitated by and fighting back against the booby-trapped gynoid in the supposed Lt.Col. Mamuro's casket.
- Throw-Away Country: The Republic of Kuran is where the main conflict of the war took place in the manga. The series adds that Qhardistan ended up getting devastated in the conflict as well.
- Tomato in the Mirror: A lot of many characters' memories and visuals aren't real, but rather phantoms induced by various viruses and hacks, such as those that were used to make Mamuro drop his investigation, which Motoko got from his cyberbrain; or fake memories installed into Col. Soga and his men about their op in the -stans.
- Trail of Blood: Batou and Togusa follow a red blood trail when they were investigating a suspect behind a series of bombing attacks involving prosthetic limbs. While it led to a crumpled bullet head, the two detectives were caught in an ambush from the back.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: 2027, placing it closer to now than the rest of the franchise.
- Two Beings, One Body: Tsumugi is a pair of twins whose brains were placed within a single cyborg body.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: It starts with the Belligerent Sexual Tension in the manga, where Batou and the Major are still major rivals, through their usual Vitriolic Best Buds and Well, Excuse Me, Princess! dynamic, to the pretty blatant last scene of the fourth OVA.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Batou and Motoko, as usual. Batou is still fond of telling racy jokes about Major and her love life, while she likes hacking him to punch his own face for that. They still have an incredible chemistry together.
- We ARE Struggling Together: JSDF isn't a cohesive and responsible fighting force at all — it is, in fact, more of a loose group of various units and factions barely held together by the corrupt brass and Sleazy Politicians. On the other hand, given who they stand for, it's inevitable. It was so bad that it often ended in an intra-service schemes. Cases in point:
- In the first episode, Unit 501 is used as a cover for illegal arms running under the nose of its supposed commander. When said commander tried to blow a whistle on that, it ended in his death and intra-unit civil war, not to mention the shootouts with various other branches like the JGSDF's Rangers and Public Security.
- In the second, the corrupt Defense Ministry official created a long and convoluted Batman Gambit installing fake memories into Col. Soga and his men, and then setting him as a scapegoat for a civilian massacre, all in hopes that he will use a stolen American military computer he was given access to in order to hack into the secret ministry database in an attempt to clear his name. The official in question then intended to sell his own military's dirty underwear to the outside world and flee Japan.
- In the third episode, the Military Intelligence unit in support of the outsourcing the weapons development to the third world enters into the illicit deal with a foreign company producing the cyborg parts, in which it uses the sales of water from an impoverished Third World country to finance the production of booby-trapped prosthetics. Then MI smuggles the limbs into Japan and the uses a strung-out former military cybernetics expert (and the Major's current boyfriend) to install them on various high-placed officials to blackmail them.
- In the fourth episode, the Unit 501, which supports the domestic military development, tries to kidnap a runaway hacker (a 17 y.o. war orphan girl involved into the aforementioned MI unit schemes) until it all runs into Section 9 trying to investigate both. It ends with the said MI unit disbanded, its colonel arrested, Unit 501 getting off scot-free, Section 9 emerging as an independednt investigative agency, and the poor hacker girl (and her boyfriend) dying and dispersing their Ghosts over the 'Net.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her efforts were to find a way for mankind to transcend physical bodies and exist as data on the net. Kurutsu fabricated the entire Arise storyline from the moment she first met Motoko as a child.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Rangers who were left behind by their officers after the PKO base was attacked by rogue Kuran Air Force fighters despite strong objection from a JASDF crewman. This was the reason why Noroshi wanted to assassinate them.
- Zeerust: While still taking place in the future, instead of the creators adapting the technology to reflect upon what we have in today's world, such as smart phones and the like, it takes elements from the original manga from back in 1988. The most notable example are the huge and numerous cables plugged into Motoko as she learns how to use her body in the trailer.
