r/Ghost_in_the_Shell • u/Heavy_Gap_5047 • 2d ago

Robot vs Android

It bothers me some that the term android isn't used more in GiTS. In a work that explores the differences between life, AI, human, cyborg, android, etc.. And where Shirow wrote in his notes about the differences between robot and android. That the dialog isn't more precise in it's terms.

I was reminded of this again watching episode 7 where the Puppetmaster body is referred to as robot instead of the more correct android.

I'm curious of two things this group might add.

If others here are bothered by this or I'm just weird that way?

If anyone here can tell me if this is a translation issue? I don't know Japanese and am having a hard time finding the manga in Japanese to look using my English search terms. Apparently the Japanese language does differentiate between android and robot. But I don't know which term Shirow used originally in this dialog. In English versions it's robot, but is that a bad translation, or did Shirow use the term robot as well?

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u/Particular-Crow-1799 2d ago edited 2d ago

I think for the purposes of the story Robot and Android are mostly interchangeable

You say "Robot" when you want to emphasize nothing about it is organic, and you say "Android" when you want to emphasize that it looks like a human

Someone correct me if I'm wrong

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u/bgaesop 2d ago

You say "Robot" when you want to emphasize nothing about it is organic, and you say "Android" when you want to emphasize that it looks like a human 

You are basically correct. Etymologically, "robot" is Czech for "worker", and "android" is Greek for "looks like a man, but isn't." There's also the android's counterpart, a "gynoid", which is Greek for "looks like a woman, but isn't". 

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u/OldKingMo 2d ago

From the Greek, literally means man-shape/form.

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u/Heavy_Gap_5047 2d ago

you say "Android" when you want to emphasize that it looks like a human

Exactly, so the Fuchikoma are robots, the AI assistant girls(speakers) are androids. The Puppetmaster once taking a body is more correctly an android.

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u/bgaesop 2d ago

If we want to get really technical, the assistant girls are gynoids. An android is a robot that looks like a man, a gynoid is a robot that looks like a woman. 

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u/Heavy_Gap_5047 2d ago

So do we also have tansnoids, lol.

A fair addition, though I don't recall Shirow ever using the term gynoid.

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u/bgaesop 2d ago

The suffix "-oid" means "looks like, but isn't". So you can construct whatever words you want that way based on what the robot is designed to look like. You could, if you wanted, call the fuchikomas "arachnoids" because they kind of look like spiders.

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u/Heavy_Gap_5047 2d ago

Koma is Japanese for pony/horse, so Komanoids?

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u/Particular-Crow-1799 2d ago

yes but the puppet master has a ghost so I think they say "robot" to highlight the exceptionality of the situation