otaku central
Major Motoko Kusanagi
Ishikawa: "This would be big news if it had happened at the Artificial Intelligence Research Agency, but the Major’s gonna rip you a new one if she finds out. Better pack your bags."
Batou’s Tachikoma: "Ohayo gozaimasu, Major."
Kusanagi: "Sucking up won’t help you. The use of natural oil is hereby banned. Understood, Batou? And Togusa, get that box over to the crime lab. Ishikawa, I want you there as an observer."
Ishikawa: "Looks like the jig is up. That lady’s always on top of things."
Batou: "I wonder how she found out."Major: "Huh? What did you say?"
Batou: "Don't tell me you've...been diving this whole time. Damn, you're nuts."
Kusanagi commands Section 9, an elite anticrime-antiterrorist agency that works underthe Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Kusanagi: “I’m taking myself off the case. Also, I need you to assign Paz and Saito to me to guard the Superintendent-General. “…I can’t shake the feeling that there’s one piece that doesn’t fit. My Ghost is telling me to tail the Superintendent-General to find out what it is. It’s whispering to me.
She a more than capable tactical commander and her hacker skills would probably rank her as super-class A, likely in the same class as the Laughing Man.
But who she is is a lot harder to define, because she does not show much of herself to anyone. In the film, Kusanagi comes to doubt her humanity -- if an android can have a ghost, then what is human? And the GitS:SAC Kusanagi fares little better. It seems her battle with the growing Emotional Quotient of the Tachikomas has much to do with her problems with her sense of self as a human being. It is easier to deny the Tachikoma the right to grow, when the realization that their questioning their own existence is parallel to your struggle with your raison d'etre.
Batou takes his usual Tachikoma out to the training grounds to monitor the new recruits. During that time, they engage in a discussion Batou could never have anticipated.
Tachikoma: "Well, it's just that the way the Major's been looking at us lately is kinda scary."
Batou: "Oh, is that all? The Major's always scary, remember?"
Tachikoma: "It just seems like the Major is angry about what we've acquired recently ...Individuality."
Batou: "Individuality?"
Tachikoma: And you know that 'existence of God' thing that I had trouble understanding before? I think I'm starting to understand it now. Maybe, just maybe, it's a concept that's similar to a zero in mathematics. In other words, it's a symbol that denies the abscence of meaning, the meaning that's necessitated by the delineation of one system from another. In analog, that's God. In digital, it's zero. ...So, for the time being, no matter how much data we accumulate, we'll never have a Ghost. But analog-based people like you, Batou-san, no matter how many digital components you add through cyberization or prosthetics, your Ghost will never be damaged. Plus, you can even die, cause you've got a Ghost. You're so lucky. Tell me how it feels to have a Ghost."
Batou: "How it feels? No, I take it back, what I said earlier. You're pretty screwed up all right."But then, so is the subject of Batou's crush, the major. It follows that her inclination is to feel less than human because for most of her life, she has physically been less than human in form. Her cyborg body is state of the art and highly customized, although she uses a common production model. She is the most skilled at using a cybernetic body, but then she spent her childhood learning to cope with being physically different and with the pain and awkwardness of learning to be her new self. In the 2nd Gig, young Motoko fumbles with learning to fold paper cranes. She can't peel an orange yet. But she promises the boy who occupied the hospital bed beside hers that she will learn. There's no one better at wielding a full-cyborg form than she.
In Missing Hearts, Kusanagi learns of a six-year-old girl who has just received a new heart, but the how of it arouses the suspicions of her friend, Kurutan, who is a nurse at the hospital.
Kurutan: “…I don’t know if this sort of thing is in your jurisdiction, Motoko, but it’s got me worried. It was an emergency surgery because of a sudden accident so her parents were prepared to go with a full-body prosthetic if an organ wasn’t found. At her age, the stress she’d go through from switching bodies as she grew up would be terrible and with all the future maintenance and expenses, I think she was really lucky.”
Nurse makes a face, realizing she’s said something potentially insulting and hurtful to Kusanagi.
Kusanagi: “The girl … how old is she?”
Kurutan: “She just turned six.”
Kusanagi stares at the girl through purple lenses of her shades.It quickly becomes clear that this case has real meaning to the major, but how does she express how the child's situation affects her? She becomes a bit colder, a bit more intense, that's how she expresses her emotions. In the film, she is colder still, which contrasts greatly with the manga in which she is almost all raw emotion until she merges with the Pupper Master.
Togusa and Batou’s Tachikoma are playing a game of Go, while the Tachikoma attached to Kusanagi is being fixed. Batou walks in with a work-out bench and his weights.
Togusa: “Hey, B-man. Don’t you think the major was acting kind of funny today?”
Batou: “Eh?”
Togusa: “… The major just didn’t seem like her usual self today.”
Batou: “The majot went full-cyborg at about the same age as that girl. This case probably dredged up a lot of memories.”
Togusa: “Hmmm.”
Batou [enthusiastically]: “Anything else on your mind?”
Togusa: “No, not really. It’s just that there’s a little girl out there who got dealt a rotten hand and was forced to have an organ transplant and there’s also a CEO who wanted to be a cyborg so badly he went so far as to get rid of his own organs.”
Batou: “And ‘twixt the two, the organ business makes its profit, natural organs go for a premium, and this country’s economy turns ‘round. It’s only those folks in an environment without religious precepts and economic limitations who can get their hands on high-performance prosthetics.” [Starts to work out] “Like Section 9, for instance. What, is your tender heart aching because you feel you’re working for the exploiters?”
Togusa: “No, it’s not that. I was just wondering which the Major was.”She feels more than camaraderie for her friends, but a sense of family that she has long done without. Aramaki is more like an uncle than a father figure, but her boys are definitely like having brothers, from the wise older brother in Ishikawa to the idealistic younger brother in Togusa.
Even when the situation seems absurd to her, she can generate a trace of compassion and the wisp of a smile.
Kusanagi: "So, was there any evidence that the 'Aoi' boy Togusa mentioned really existed?"
Ishikawa: "I couldn’t find anything. It’s possible that the center’s computer and the staff’s memories were altered, but I can’t go much farther since all we have to go on is Togusa’s testimony."
Kusanagi: "What about that portrait he said that the girl drew?"
Ishikawa: "We couldn’t find that either."
Batou: "Oh, so that’s why he wanted to submit a sketch as his report?"
Ishikawa: "Yeah, a handsome young man in a wheelchair with a lefty catcher’s mitt. He said he’d draw it from the memories in his own cyberbrain."
Batou: "A lefty catcher’s mitt, huh? In net lingo, that means something that seems to exist, but really doesn’t.”
Togusa: "You sure about that? Sorry I took so long, Major."
Batou: "Gimme! I wanna see if this is somebody who could let us write off this fiasco of yours."
Togusa: "Don’t be surprised when you see this. It’s my best work ever."
Hands Batou the sketchpad.
Batou: “What the hell is this?”
Togusa [blinks]: "Huh?"
Kusanagi [looking somewhat sympathetic]: "You went to a bizarre place and came back with a case of bizarre memories."
Laughing Man logo on the sketchpad.But sometimes she just can't muster the same compassion for the citizenry she helps to protect. There is a line that cannot be crossed, if one expects a modicum of civility from her or her men. This again is well represented in Missing Hearts, when a little girl is given a new heart, which means that she will not be cybernetically modified in her childhood. Yet, there is the boy whose family had money enough to buy him a new mechanical heart. But what if the boy were not so privileged? What happens when men only interested in money, not in the health of a child, have to decide who gets what, but based solely on the price tag.
The Major can be intimidating in the name of doing what's right.
When two of the organ peddlers are caught, Togusa takes the ID from one of them.
Togusa: “Med students, just as I thought.”
Batou: “The thought that guys like this might be poking around inside my head in the future really bums me out.”
Batou's Tachikoma [displays organs in jars.]: “Batou-san! Look what I found!"
Togusa: “From the look of things, I’d say they’ve been switching the labels of organs left over after cyborg operations and selling them without permission.”
Kusanagi: “Wasn’t there one more?”
Batou: “Man, that guy’s stubborn. I’ll secure him.”
Kusanagi: “No. Let me handle this. This is one sick way to make spending money. If we hand these guys over to the law, they’ll just end up getting a slap on the wrist. [Gets into Tachikoma] I’m going to teach him a lesson.”
Batou: “Whoa, scary. Something happen to her?”
Togusa: “Beats me.”Tachikoma chases Slick through a tight alley between tin warehouses, pushes sides of buildings in as it moves. Invisible to the naked eye. Slick freaked and tries to hide inside a warehouse. Major Kusanagi confronts him.
Kusanagi: "From what I can see, your body is all-natural. I could make some big bucks, selling you piecemeal on the black market."
Slick: "Hey, wait a minute! I know some great distribution routes! It's easy money! What say we join forces? I can get my dad to set you up with cars and storage. You wouldn't need to worry about funding. C'mon, that's not a bad deal, right?"
Kusanagi: "You think I'd make any deals with a novice like you? I'll take over your distribution routes and then shut you up. Splitting up your organs will eliminate all evidence and net me a tidy profit. Two birds with one stone."
Slick: "W-wait! I know! Y-you want money? O-okay? How much do you want?"
Kusanagi [pulls a big knife]: "Your little game has gone too far. You and your friends have poked your noses into a world that you can't back out of."
Slick: "I'm sorry! I won't do it again! Please, I'll never do it again! Please! Let me go!"
Kusanagi: "Too bad." [She stabs the knife into the pipe near Slick's head. Slick wets his trousers and faints.] (softly) "The real Mafia wouldn't be this nice."
A bit later, all three medical students are in a police car, still freaked. Kusanagi leans in toward the window.
Kusanagi: "There's all kinds of folks in the underworld who can't be reasoned with. Turn over a new life while you can. You've got money and an education. And whole bodies, too, right?"She is undoubtedly aware as of Batou's feelings for her as everyone else. But they both hide from that too, especially in the realm of insulting each other to keep from being too real about their feelings.
Kusanagi [gives the written report to Togusa]: “I’ll let you take it from here. Have fun.”
Togusa: “Where are you going?”
Kusanagi: “I’ve got an errand to run with the chief.”
Batou [smiling]: “A date?”
Kusanagi is off screen, but she likely made a hand gesture that made Batou frown and look to Togusa, who smiles slightly.This is the point where I am supposed to talk about Kusanagi in her other incarnations, but her GitS:SAC form is my favorite. I prefer this Kusanagi's personality, look, and way of relating to the men of Section 9. She is more human. She broods like the flim version, but not in such an obvious manner, which is the difference in how a character can be handled when you are not constrained by 120-page movie script and when you have a season or two to be spot on with character, character growth, and the interaction between characters.
