They may still get lost among all the rabbit trails, however. As the film begins, Public Security Section 9, under Togusa's lead, is tackling a hostage situation that ends when the hostage-taker abruptly shoots himself. The event leads Section 9 to investigate a string of other suicides, which point to a mysterious individual called "the Puppeteer." (Not to be confused with the Puppet Master from the original Ghost in the Shell movie.) Section 9 chases down various people and leads, which mostly dead-end, but in the process they encounter cyborg star Major Motoko Kusanagi, who left Section 9 and is now investigating cases on her own. As she flickers in and out of the story, her old partner Batou comes to believe that she herself might be the Puppetmaster.

The plot threads are many and varied: records show thousands of children are being kidnapped without apparent outcry, a case of ampules of a killer "micromachine virus" is on the loose, a sniper tries to kill a prominent politician for reasons that make little sense, a group of senior citizens living on life support has something to do with things, and various dire warnings are dropped about the Solid State Society. Ultimately, the few non-dead-ended plot threads come together, amid a lot of quiet still frames of contemplative characters and a lot of dialogue about whatever the latest goal is.

A whole lot of threads, no coherent cloth

An awful lot of Solid State Society feels like mere busywork, as Section 9 blows a bunch of time on one lead or another only to have their quarry suddenly die, or part of their case otherwise come to nothing. Some of the twists are pointless: At one point, Section 9 is taken off the Puppeteer case, there's a bunch of explanation of the politics behind the decision, and then they're almost immediately put back on it. The plot is extremely busy, but until the second half of the movie, it's almost all talk and no action, as the characters endlessly explain who their latest target is and what their latest theories are, only to have it come to nothing.

Once the Puppetmaster's schemes get personal, there's some riveting business with tremendously high stakes, but it comes awfully late in the film, after a lot of purposeless tail-chasing. The tone somewhat recalls Mamoru Oshii's two Patlabor films , but with even more police procedural work and less philosophy. Ghost in the Shell films so far have focused heavily on ontology, particularly the question of the soul, the actual "ghost in the shell." Solid State Society isn't nearly so high-minded, which is fine, given how windy the other GITS movies sometimes were, but it's so obsessed with piling subplot upon subplot that it doesn't particularly develop the characters or move them forward in any interesting ways, either.

Nor do the visuals really move the series forward. Stand Alone Complex was a great-looking series, and the film mirrors that, but apart from a couple of brief showcase sequences, the film doesn't do anything new with the animation; it could just be another set of episodes of the show. Fans of the series will probably like this latest installment just fine, in a "more of the same" kind of way, but they won't find many grand revelations or new story developments. Solid State Society is serviceable enough entertainment, but in a lot of ways it feels like it's just killing time until a third season of the show can be produced.