You don’t seem to mention Oshii’s original plans for the making of Avalon (some of which are summed up in the leaflet that comes in the UK DVD). He says that he had the idea for a person with the uncanny ability to travel between realities. If the ‘real world’ is as it seems then what he said here would be null and void…
The thought I am sticking with now is that the real world IS the real world however Ash is not in it for the duration of the film. It looks how we see it except it is in full colour with everything behaving normally. She is becoming so addicted to the game that the lines are becoming blurred to her viewpoint. Her final entry into class real is representative of the game steadily becoming more and more real, the final failsafe (or just conincidance) of the utterly unreal citadel is not enough to stop her decent into being convinced the game is real and so she sees it as real and enters class real. Something else to consider is that the ‘real world’ is clearly a bad place, looks like it has been through some rough times, the main game is going through some tough times- it is a war zone. Whilst class real is the modern world. I believe there is a backwards tl of sorts here. First there is our world represented by class real, then there is the war which the game is about (much in the same way we have countless WW2 games) and the real world is post-war. Class real being the modern world could be Ash striving to escape the crap reality in which she lives, her madness making her somehow believe by setting the war right she can reclaim the glory days of civilization.
Welcome to Avalon I am utterly confused about. One part of me says that this is her accessing the main ‘source code’ of it all if you will , she has completed it all and reached paradice. Another says though that the rather nasty look on the ghost’s face combined with her growing madness means she has died (or become unreturned) and been wisked away to Avalon/heaven.
One thing I forgot to mention [in the first email; this paragraph is from the second] and doesn’t seem to be mentioned though it could be significant- When Ash first enters the real world she wears glasses and has the typical film ‘nerdy girl’ look. When she checks Bishop’s data after seeing him do the helicopter mission though and its revealed there is no data she takes the glasses off. I can’t remember ever seeing them again. Some kind of referance to realities blurring and her believing herself to be her in game character (as per later in the film with her looking for her gun and other minor instances)