For fans of Mamoru Oshii it has been a 4-year wait since Avalon, or g-year wait since Ghost in the Shell. The sequel is set 4 years from 2029, the setting of the original Ghost in the Shell. What heroes and heroines will feature in this sequel? Without forgetting Kusanagi, the captivating heroine of Ghost in the Shell, that questioned human existence and identity in a cyber information orientated society, this time the only remnants left of humanity are traces of his brain and the memories of a woman called The Major. Those who are perceptive will have already guessed at the identity of the hero of Innocence. Carried over from Ghost in the Shell is the character of Batou, who was Kusanagi’s cyborg partner from Security Police Section 9. A succession from when Kusanagi escaped into the vast sea of the Net, Batou expands upon the atmosphere, story, message and themes of Ghost in the Shell. The actual circumstances closely resemble the case in Ghost in the Shell. A wave of homicides is striking at members of the city’s powerful political and financial elite committed by girlish sexual pleasure robots that begin turning on their masters. Batou is called in to investigate and enters the digital communication world in order to solve the case. This is a world where the coexistence of humans and cyborgs is tainted by their constant suspicions of the other's true nature, a world where the boundaries between the physical and spiritual are blurred. It is a combination of a progressive personality and Milton; a world created by a mixture of Descartes, Western cyberpunk literature genealogy (the name of the pleasure robot is Adalie, a character from the highly lauded foundation of cyberpunk literature L’Eve Future) and Japanese animation’s obsessional themes. The sea of the Net being deeper and wider than in the previous volume, means the messages in Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell are presented again like a twisted Mobius Strip. The vastness of the Net is the gravity of the physical body and its connection, transmitted to us in the following message: “Every time you enter the sea of the Net, I’ll be with you.” (KIM Ji-hoon)