This is the first MAL review I've written. It was unavoidable because I felt compelled to write it.

I will keep this somewhat spoiler-free, so things will mostly be kept in general.

After reading the book, I for the life of me am incapable of properly explaining the general premise of the story to any accurate degree. It was all a blur. It was basically something along the lines of a roller-coaster ride of the main character "Motoko" being in the classic GITS digital world in a series of panty shot randomness escapades. Mix in more classic Masamune Shirow elements (e-thugs, cyberbrains, hacking, body swapping, attack barriers, viruses, over-your-helmet techy talk, etc.) and multiply it by an order of magnitude of more panty shots, and you got yourself The Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface.

In a general sense, Motoko's duty is something along the lines of hunting down some baddie(s) in the digital realm for some reason. Of course the end result is the classic GITS trope of the main character "fusing" her cyberbrain with the enemy to create a new unified version of the two, thus them each losing their individuality and creating a better, blended version... I think. Of course throughout this entire escapade, Motoko does her classic body-swapping multiple times, thus we get many-a-pantsu shots from many-a-skimpily-clad female characters. Hot dayam ( ๏ ͜ʖ ๏ ). Zero complaints for the ecchi fans. The skin-tight clothing is drawn exceptionally detailed, and the countless full-color pages (in the Deluxe edition only, if I'm not mistaken) make the eye candy a dream. I thoroughly enjoyed these vibrant colors in conjunction with Masamune Shirow's exceptional art.

The first book (The Ghost in the Shell), though convoluted, is an excellent read. It delivers the exceptional story in a complete and concise manner: an essential criterion that is the original source content of GITS. 9/10.

The second book (The Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor) is a series of off-beat short-stories involving mostly the other members of Section 9 (Togusa, Batou, etc.) These stories are short and to the point, a great read. 8/10.

This third book (The Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface) is mostly random ecchi eye candy and the attempted story confuses the reader more than bringing much to the table. There is a story, but it isn't delivered smoothly enough to enjoy or to grasp your attention to a pleasurable degree. I would suggest that only completionists or 1-handed page-flipper ecchi fans ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) tackle this one. 5/10.
I had a hard time reading this one straight through because of the story's confusing clusterfuckness, I kept losing interest and repeatedly put the book down/picked it up: it took me a course of over a month to get through reading the whole thing. The score I gave is a bit high for what I truly believe it deserves, but I am biased towards Ghost in the Shell as it's my favorite series, and I did thoroughly enjoy the art. Fight me.

Caz out.