Kusanagi's body: Gender and technology in mecha‐anime

This article comments on the increasing significance of the action heroine in media entertainment by focusing on Mamoru Oshii's animated film, Ghost in the Shell. The author argues that the body of the film's protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, serves as ‘a battleground for conflicting representations of power in an era of global capitalism...’ and represents ‘a desire to preserve the feminine and the human in the midst of an increasingly mechanized modern world where patriarchal capitalism reigns supreme.’