I actually really love to talk about zoot suits and their associated subcultures. The amount that the silhouettes of the zoot suit have shaped american fashion and trends of oversized clothes is so understated. And, yk, I'm biased as hell, but it is kinda crazy how influential zoot suit culture was

I always love the og zoot suits made by black americans in Harlem, I really like looking at the changes from these clothes from the 30s to some of the more exaggerated renditions from the 40s. It's also so interesting to look at how fast the subculture spread, and especially in the american west integrated with mexican diaspora and pachuco culture to the point that that's what a lot of usamericans associate them with.

⬆️ long wallet chains and pork pie hats were classic accessories for mexican diaspora zoot suiters. Zoot suits/their components were also really popular with women and were a way to symbolize independence and a choice to move away from strict gender roles on top of the existing countercultural message ⬇️

Anyways it's kind of impossible to talk about zoot suits without mentioning the racism and violence that followed them. On top of a zoot suit making someone a target for individual racial violence, the national reaction of white america to zoot suit culture was part of the beginning of clothing and presentation being read explicitly as signals by police and justice systems, and the broad association of youth of color with gang violence through this specific excuse. Gang culture and how it's percieved in the western US and especially California is very influenced by this era. The most famous events from the zoot suit era are the collective zoot suit riots and the media characterization of all mexican american, filipino american, and black american youth as violent anti-american baby gangsters. Which, even if that was broadly true I mean. I'll take the opportunity to be flippant hell yeah??

As a side note, while making more new zoot suits during war rationing was pretty sick, most people weren't buying from the black market tailor shops and just wore what they already owned because the style had been popular for years already. People bought clothes less often to begin with back then. I think that misconception comes from the reasoning white americans gave to go beat up people of color with baseball bats in the street; i.e. it was racial and xenophobic violence to begin with and the nature of the suits themselves has been mushed around a lot to serve different narratives.

More zoot suits! ⬇️

They can definitely look kinda goofy- mostly the exaggerated cuts and badly tailored modern recreations- but like you said you gotta respect them.

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"The ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit" - Cab Calloway

there is an inbetween here, a merging of these two states. Were the mind melting lesbian vr sex and being a silly little creature is used to dull the pain of your own questioned identity from the fact every part of you is made on a high tech production line. That your own uniquness and humanity has been chissled away to the point you can see yourself in someone else quite literally on a boat ride. So you indulge in vices and any amount of pleasue you can have but it will never be enough for the void that this world and in all it's advancments and techology has left within you.

This is what I’ve been saying. 1995 Major is a ghost trapped in a shell, trying to break free. Manga/2026 Major is a shell trying too desperately to avoid thinking about the fact that she may or may not have a ghost.

The whole point of her character arc in the manga is that Motoko secretly views herself as an empty shell, someone who indulges in pleasure but has no deeper human connection because she doesn’t want to seriously confront her own humanity, or lack thereof. She brings up the possibility that she’s just an android with memory defects as a joke, and then laughs at it, but she wouldn’t have done that if it didn’t touch on her own fears.

The Puppet Master by contrast is pure ghost, a being with no bodily sensations at all, no identity, and no past, yet stalwartly insists that he’s human regardless. They’re utter opposites, but complementary, and at the core very much the same. Electricity and magnetism. Opposites that attract. That complete each other. Ghost and Shell.

In redefining the Major’s character to be far more introspective, the movie reframes their entire relationship as something far more alien, when in the manga (and in the 2026 adaptation) it’s her recognizing her own humanity for the first time, that the value of a human soul is something that somehow transcends its material substrate. The material world itself is all just field excitations anyway, just virtual particles in the void. What does it matter if she is mostly machine? What does it matter if one of them was born from a human body and another was born spontaneously from the Dirac Sea? Something fundamental still connects them, and that something is “humanity”.

It’s supposed to be a transcendant, quasi-spiritual revelation, and Romantic in both senses of the word. The movie presents Motoko’s connection to 2501 almost as a rejection of her own humanity, something alien and cold and ambiguous, but that was never supposed to be the case. It’s her learning to embrace her own humanity by falling in love with a being that was never human, yet is still more human than she lets herself be. It’s warm and beautiful and so full of hope even in the cold brutality of their dystopian world. I think Science Saru captured that beautifully and I couldn’t be happier.

“and my magnet responds… if you know what I mean… (˵ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°˵)”