It is unfortunately extremely accurate to the manga. In the manga has so many cliffnotes in the margins to explain things, and honestly it does not do that good of a job at it. You have to fill in the blanks a lot of the time. It’s also very fitting to cyberpunk media. Like Neuromancer is very obtuse and you have to fill in the blanks again.

Flag. It’s a real robot mecha set in modern times, the mecha is basically a tank. And its told as a documentary.

Ghost is meant to be your soul. That unquantifiable part of you that makes you human. The shell is just meant to be a cybernetic body.

So a Ghost in the Shell is a person’s soul/spirit inside of a robot.

Ironically this is very much how the manga was. There were a lot of cliff notes in the margins to explain things, or a few times to explain what Shirow intended but was too lazy to draw.