What is Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor?
The “lost” volume: four finished stories that waited up to twelve years for a book.
After the original manga, Shirow kept drawing Section 9 stories he intended for the sequel. Four of them, published in Young Magazine between 1991 and 1996, were set aside when Man-Machine Interface changed direction, and they stayed uncollected until Kodansha issued them as Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor on July 17, 2003. The numbering is the point: this is not a lesser sequel but the missing half-step between the two numbered books, Shirow’s own filing system made public.
THE FOUR STORIES
Kodansha’s own first-appearance recordFat Cat (1991)
First printed in Young Magazine Kaizokuban issues 10 and 11 of 1991: a father’s strange behavior turns out to be remote control of his cyberbrain, investigated by Section 9.
Drive Slave (1992)
Young Magazine issues 26 and 27 of 1992: the Major, now working under the name Chroma, collides with Section 9’s witness-protection operation.
Mines of Mind (1995)
Young Magazine issues 49 and 50 of 1995, the story that gives the volume its themes of planted memories and secondhand minds.
Lost Past (1996)
Young Magazine issue 33 of 1996, the last of the four and the closest in spirit to the original book’s case-file structure.
THE 2003 EDITION
A book with a disc in it184 pages and a CD-ROM
The first Japanese edition pairs a 184-page booklet with an e-manga CD-ROM presenting the stories with digital effects and music, plus a screen saver: a very 2003 idea of a deluxe manga.
First right-to-left in English
Dark Horse’s 2006–07 English release, eight comic issues then a trade, was the first Ghost in the Shell manga published in the US in the original right-to-left orientation.