In the vacuum she created due to her leave of absence, it seems like it takes three members to fill that void to make up for what she brought to the group: Batou with his combat strategy, Aramaki for his administrative role, and Togusa for his skills in solving puzzles in a case. Regarding the timeline, the stories in Human-Error Processor take place after the events from in the first book, but before those in the second hence the 1.5 in the title. So if that was a concern, then consider the balance having been restored as the third book, Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor, goes the other way by changing the focus back to Section 9 and following their adventures as they solve cases without Major Kusanagi to act as leader. Makes sense since it doesn't even include the old Section 9 team.

Some consider this to be Masamune's best book, but at the same time I can also understand why some fans of the original manga weren't so willing to accept it as a Ghost in the Shell book. Because of this the action was brought to a minimum, being used somewhat as a way to separate long conversations of dialog and to have a few pages include little to no word bubbles. The second book, Man-Machine Interface, decided to go further in the direction of smart discussions by having the focus of the book be more about the blurring between artificial intelligence and humans. This was the perfect combination of smarts and action to make it a successful hit. The ending brings up these issues front and center and includes two characters discussing the matter, bring an intelligent conversation to the subject. Balancing that out were a sprinkling of philosophical discussions about the distinctions between humans, cyborgs, and robots and related issues regarding artificial intelligence. With the first manga, we were introduced to another style of cyberpunk from a Japanese perspective chockfull of police cases packed with action where offensive and defensive strategies can be won with cyber tactics acting as a weight to tip the scales in your favor.

Ghost in the shell 1.5 manga