Ghost in the shell or Appleseed?

By far Appleseed.

I think Appleseed was Shirow asking some HUGE questions. What would a perfect society even look like and even then what problems would arise. Granted a lot of it focuses on the Swaty-swat-swat police violence that he looooves but the big ideas are all there. 

I feel like GITS was him readjusting where he thought the future was going but in a lot of ways just a reworked Appleseed. Even Batou and Kusanagi, seem like less interesting versions of Deunan and Bri. 

Not that GITS doesn’t have excellent storytelling and ideas as well. (I like in the 1st book where a man is implanted with memories of a fake ex wife so he’ll plant bugs for the bad guys) 

With Appleseed I have to qualify that I love the complex endlessly rereadable manga but all of the animated versions are awful (sooo bad, god so bad!) and GITS #1 is great but I am not a fan of the heavily computer worked #2 but 1.5 man machine interface is also great (smaller future cop stories) and I haven’t really delved too deep into the post Shirow stuff