Discussion Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Episodes: 25 | Source: Manga | Genres: Award Winning, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Adult Cast, Detective, Mecha, Military, Seinen
Synopsis
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In the not so distant future, mankind has advanced to a state where complete body transplants from flesh to machine is possible. This allows for great increases in both physical and cybernetic prowess and blurring the lines between the two worlds. However, criminals can also make full use of such technology, leading to new and sometimes, very dangerous crimes. In response to such innovative new methods, the Japanese Government has established Section 9, an independently operating police unit which deals with such highly sensitive crimes.

Led by Daisuke Aramaki and Motoko Kusanagi, Section 9 deals with such crimes over the entire social spectrum, usually with success. However, when faced with a new A level hacker nicknamed "The Laughing Man," the team is thrown into a dangerous cat and mouse game, following the hacker's trail as it leaves its mark on Japan.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

 

Episode 1 was pretty good. Interesting. Feels like the world is a mix of futuristic stuff, while also still having some older elements. Sure was something to see those old cream coloured crt monitors. It seems like a lot of humanity have become cyborgs too. It's also interesting that it's based in 2014.

IT didn't really do a great job of introducing the characters, but might just be more of a slow burn show. I don't even know if Motoko's name was introduced here, I swear it wasn't.. either way, she's part of some task force that seems to deal with crimes relating to cybernetics. Their team uncovered and dealt with a plot revolving around the foreign minster's body being hijacked by someone else to take classified intel to a foreign country. They barely caught him in time.

 

Episode 2 was good. So, the next incident they were involved in was a rogue tank robot. The story is, that a 28 year old engineer tragically died young. He had a frail body and was to die at age 21 unless he became a cyborg, but due to his parents religion, they refused this. He worked at a company developing this tank, which did have him living beyond his expected life, however, he decided to seek revenge on his parents due to their refusal for his transplant and had his brain put into the tank.

The tank did make it to the parents because they weren't evacuated as intended, but Motoko was able to fry the brain which stopped it, but as a result she saw some of his memories it seems. What a tragic story.

 

Episode 3 was good. A certain company had a number of a specific older model of their robots (Jeri-type) killing themselves. Section 9 investigated, and the manager illustrated that once upon a time it was their most popular model, but it had dwindled down to some 8000 in circulation and that it was easier to point to something that wouldn't cause such an issue vs something that would.

During their investigation, Motoko seemed to find that a virus was to blame, which they tracked back to the culprit. Turns out that it was the son of a Canadian diplomat. He seems to have fallen in love with his robot, and the point of the virus was to eliminate the others so his was unique.

There's a little bit of exploration on sentience and the bots. After they were trapped, the bot made the choice to delete the virus thus saving the guy.

When Togusa got back to his place, he was a bit shocked to see his partner watching a movie with the same lines the bot used, only it seems that the bot added more of its own words, as the lines didn't match entirely.

 

Episode 4 was good. One of Togusa's old colleges Yamaguchi was working late, only for the Chief Nibu to be weirdly skulking about. He seems awfully suspicious. Yamaguchi finished up and requested for Togusa to go over some sensitive data relating to the "laughing man case" he was analysing as he needed a second opinion. He noted that certain people were acting strange in the department. This is when he mentioned something about interceptors and ran off the road crashing and dying. Not suspicious at all. Togusa waited up all night, but he of course never came. That's when the news story broke of the crash. It was agreed that Togusa could investigate things for three days discreetly.

Togusa poured over things and eventually found out about people having the interceptors monitoring them, even on the agents of the department unlawfully, which has created a large scandal. A news press conference was held around this scandal, which was hijacked by The Laughing Man before it was cut off and the New was also hijacked. Wonder how this will turn out.

 

Episode 5 was good. Interesting that the chief believes it to be an act orchestrated by the Metropolitan Police which did conveniently push the interceptor scandal out of the limelight. Nanao Ei seems to have been the prime suspect in the laughing man case and had been under for the prior three months and he's the son of a police officer. He was involved in activism before being arrested. His background was hid and he became a programmer at a company which later fired him once it came to light and basically stole his work as a programmer which almost was all single handed done by him.

It seems like they did find the culprit behind the laughing man incident, and moved in to get him. Unfortunately, he was never in the location they thought, and all they found was a bot.

 

Episode 6 was good. Things took an interesting turn. Nanao fulfilled his role and seemed to be content on waiting for the authorities to show up, which is when his accomplice arrived. Nanao illustrated that it was planned for him to get arrested, only for the accomplice to pull a gun. Nanao was so sure that he wouldn't kill him, only for him to be taken out. Either way, the accomplice is sure even if he's dead, Nanao will be pinned as the one they're looking for.

All hell broke loose with the super intendent general and the cyber brain contamination seemingly spread and people went AWOL attacking him. Fortunately Motoko and the other guy were there to help. I find it weird that Togusa and Batou don't find it suspicious that Nanao was killed and seem to think it was another agency.

The super intended survived. There was also no trace of brainwashing or cyber brain contamination in the captured copycats that claim to be the laughing man. The chief made it clear to the super intendent general that section 9 will conduct an independent review of the laughing man case.

So the chief speculates there wasn't ever an original laughing man and think that the current events came from a "seed" planted six years prior which the threat made happen and the copycats are all "stand-alone complex" stemming from that. But, Motoko is suspicious with someone having been watching them when she entered that security personnel's brain.

 

Episode 7 was good although I felt that it diverted strangely from the laughing man case. It follows the story of Marcelo Jarti, leader of the Jenoma Democratic Revolution and military adviser to the current administration. It was reported he was assassinated. After the revolution he stayed out of politics and remained a soldier seen as a hero. The SAS and Delta Force were behind five assassination plots against Jarti. Interesting, Motoko monitored what appeared to be Jarti landing in Japan before tailing him.

With the count of six assassination attempts, it's concluded that the targets were only ever lookalikes, which raises the question if Motoko is actually tailing the real one, which she claims is only up to probability.

Motoko by inhabiting the body of a waitress, gets a closer look at Jarti and the people he met with and their identities seem to be confirmed. A warehouse with large power consumption also drew suspicion after tracking some of Jarti's activities. Things got weirder when Motoko had a fight with and defeated Jarti, only to be choked by another Jarti which she also defeated. Togusa and Batou also had Jarti at their individual locations too.

Looking further, Motoko found that the original Jarti was dead and ghost-dubbed clones of him were being distributed to hide his death. They also have the original memories.

 

Episode 8 was good. This case touched close to home for Motoko , due to he start investigation being a little girl at aged 6 that received a heart transplant when she might have otherwise needed a cybernetic body, which comes with all sorts of issues, like pain with growing, and maintenance costs. The heart came from a little boy who got a cybernetics body/heart transplanted as part of his treatment. But, the parents claimed they didn't offer to donate the organs. The investigation was put on hold after the detective was hospitalized, which is fishy.

They started out with checking out Meditech, which specializes in growing human organs with pigs, which generates a lot of money. They did find when tracing the money flow - the organ fees from the Crime Victims Relief Fund were paid out to Meditech, but they don't align with the records.

Motoko and Togusa went to speak with the detective who was hospitalized. The examination showed evidence of a drug causing the collapse. When they arrived at the hospital, some people were hurrying out of the room and ran, and the detective was seemingly drugged again.

The culprits were a bunch of medical students that were trafficking organs, although they were selling them cheaper to people in need which was a good thing, but the whole thing hit real close to Motoko so she spooked the leader who tried to bribe her.

Turns out, Motoko herself went full cyborg around the age of that girl, which is why the case hit her. Wonder what the story is there.

 

Episode 9 was good. Bit of a recap of a group of laughing man fanatics that were going over what make them admire him to a degree, and debating on if the most recent incident was caused by the original person, or if there was more than one laughing man.

Motoko had infiltrated the meeting under cover in a disguise. That's when she learnt that one of the members had hacked into the crime scene when it happened. Motoko spoke with him privately and that's when he recognised her. He gave up the fragment of the barrier to her, and she warned him that he could die getting too involved.

 

Episode 10 was good. Really fucked up case here that tied into some backstory for Batou. This case involved an individual Marco that was a product of a CIA operation that had him skinning women/children alive while they witnessed it through his eyes, and then killed them and distributed recordings of it. It was originally project sunset where in the last world war, operatives would go deep into enemy territory, and once friends, they would kill the women and children in the same way. Marco is stuck in that war and carrying out those same acts now. Batou came across him back then and there was a confrontation but seems like it was swept under the rug.

There was concerns around Batou killing him, and Motoko even went off to stop Batou, but in the end, Batou indicated he was out of that war and subdued Marco without him dying.

 

Episode 11 was good, an interesting case. Togusa is sent in to conduct an undercover investigation on a facility that cares for kids with Closed Shell Syndrome. It seems the cause or issue is they are too well adjusted to cyber brain technology and so try to indefinitely stay online to their own detriment. The facility also had a heavy loadout cyborg, which is strange. The kids can also only connect to an external net while under supervision from staff, but that doesn't seem too strange given the reason for them being there.

The kids seem to possibly be mistreated, they are treated a little roughly, and are worked hard. The job they do is to program and disable barrier mazes, which in some cases are so great, that governmental organizations may use them.

During his snooping, Togusa found out about some mystery person called The Chief who the kids all seem to look up to. This ends up being Aoi.

When Marta goes to go out, Togusa snooped in her office, but she came back and he's caught. He's almost taken out by the cyborg, but manages to shoot it several times, taking it out first. On the flip side, he doesn't react quick enough to Marta "Vanishing" from the room, so he gets knocked out by her and Aoi vanishes, and seems to erase all memory of his existence from the kids.

At the end, the sketch of the Aoi that Togusa draws is just the symbol of The Laughing Man.

 

Episode 12 was good, although a bit out of the ordinary. This episode mostly focused on the robot pal Tachikoma. Tachikoma had wondered off alone and ended up stumbling upon a girl Miki looking for her dog Locky, so offered to help out. Slowly, as they go along, the Miki reveals a bit more is going on. She tells a story of a little girl not wanting to show her family and friends her gold fish, which she bought with her own money. They thought she was acting strange, and the twist of the story was that the gold fish was already dead, and she didn't want the adults trying to console her, as she had said goodbye and "already cried enough".

I suspected that this mirrored Miki's circumstances, and it did mostly. Locky was ill it seems, and the parents presumably either put Locky down, or it just ended up passing away while she was at school. They basically said that it ran away to try and spare her, but she figured out the dog had died. Miki wasn't taking Tachikoma to find Locky, but to the grave, which was sad, but sweet. Along the way, Tachikoma seems to think that the dead can just be fixed to be alive again, and also the inability to understand emotions like sadness, which makes sense.

While out on the adventure, Tachikoma found some cyberbrain contraption without a barrier, when returning it was found by Togusa. Batou was chewed out about using natural oil on Tachikoma and Togusa took the box to the crime lab. One of their men dove into it but seemed to get stuck. Motoko went in too, and their was some movie inside, which had people forming a cult following and some even refused to leave and chose to die to not leave the movie. Seems like it was touching as it made even Motoko cry. It was the original box with a ghost Tachikoma found.

 

Episode 13 was good. This was a bit of a strange case again. A young girl Eka Tokura was kidnapped 16 years ago by the New World Brigade and recently two days ago a sighting of her with virtually the same DNA has came to light, but she somehow looks identical. Eka was cyberized solely as advertisement for her father's products, which is sad.

Batou came across a guy involved that had broken down. He had mind connected with Eka and seemingly wanted the memories erased, so she must've gone through some truly awful experience.

After infiltrating the location, Motoko was the one to hone in on the girl, and captured her and the old woman that she seemed to be berating over "leaving her side" and "abandoning her". It's revealed that the old woman is actually Eka somehow she aged a whole lot in a short time, which is weird. The girl is actually her own daughter, so the implication is obvious given she was 10 when she was kidnapped. It's strange that her daughter was leading the terrorists though. Batou declined linking.

 

Episode 14 was good. Starts out with them moving in on a group of small time thugs, which goes without a hitch. Although, they intel about it they were fed left out about an Pioneer model cyborg, which punched Motoko into garbage. She was pretty pissed off, but Batou had a laugh. Seems that plot was to do with a gangster seeking revenge on the Interstar Company when they sold their own stock, causing losses.

The group despite targeting a financial institution they did have data on an individual investor, Kanemoto Yokosei, a former mathematician turned multi-millionaire who has gone big on investing. For some reason he was really interested in collecting gold, but was also a recluse rarely showing up in public. They struggled to pin down any location of him aside from just his home, so headed there as they honed in on an assassination plot.

Motoko basically soloed the thing, with Batou and Togusa coming in late. Motoko also chewed Tachikoma for not defending her and getting side tracked, which had her attacked. She caught the would-be assassin in time, although it turns out that Kanemoto Yokosei was already dead and had been for about four months. He had arrangements in place for his death, so his money making program just kept running.

Togusa's wife made some money day trading, and then their pc had some weird operation after they both left it, where it purchased something before shutting itself off.