At Annecy 2026, the team making the new Ghost in the Shell remake said the series is being done entirely by hand. No generative software, none at all.
Director Toma Kimura, who also goes by Mokochan, told the Annecy crowd it’s a “hand-drawn show made by humans.” Reports say that line got applause. Producer Kohei Sakita followed with a simple point of his own: animation has its appeal because it’s “something drawn by a person.”
You can spot that decision in the tiny stuff, too. The Ghost in the Shell team is even hand-drawing the series’ strange street-sign lettering, including that odd, worm-like text, because the slight imperfection suits the energy of Masamune Shirow’s original work.
And for this story, that choice makes sense. Ghost in the Shell has always been about consciousness, identity, and where the boundary sits between people and technology. Doing it by hand doesn’t just look right. It belongs there.
If human-made anime matters to you, this is one to keep an eye on, all the more because more studios have been leaning on machine-assisted tools for in-betweening, backgrounds, and coloring under labor shortages and punishing schedules. Wit Studio took heat in 2026 for machine-generated backgrounds in Ascendance of a Bookworm season 4, which were later replaced. Toei Animation ran into backlash over similar plans. Reported figures also show that 38% of Japanese animation professionals are worried about losing jobs, while 64% of fans think the emotion could be lost.
The Ghost in the Shell series was presented at Annecy 2026. Release details and streaming platform information still haven’t been announced.
