Set in the year 2029 and following World Wars III and IV, a Japanese-led Asian block dominates world affairs. The alliance maintains its international supremacy through its elite security force whose cybernetically enhanced operatives tackle an array of hi-tech terrorists and other threats to international security. These augmented agents can "ghost hack" (i.e., download their consciousness) via the now omnipresent internet into other machines and human/machine cross breeds. Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cybernetically augmented female agent, has been tracking a virtual entity known as the Puppet Master with her crack squad of security agents. The shape-shifting Puppet Master, a rogue creation of a rival agency of the security apparatus, has concluded that it is a life form in its own right, "born in sea of information," and requested political asylum and true physical existence in defiance of its creators. (Source: Manga Entertainment, edited)

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is a remade version of the 1995 movie made to commemorate the release of The Sky Crawlers, which opened the following month. The new edition replaced Iemasa Kayumi (Giant Robo's Chief Chuujou Shizuo, RahXephon's Ernst Von Bähbem) with Yoshiko Sakakibara (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence's Harraway, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki) as the enigmatic Puppet Master and reunited majority of the cast from the original movie for a new 6.1 surround sound recording. The animation was reproduced using new computer graphics and digital effects. Randy Thom of Skywalker Sound (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) oversaw the new soundtrack, which included original music by Kenji Kawai as well as a final mix.