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THE MYTHOLOGY
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is also titled Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex, but is fondly referred to by its acronym, GitS:SAC. This anime TV series is set in the Ghost in the Shell universe created by Masamune Shirow, but also borrows some of its style and substance from Mamoru Oshii's cinematic masterpiece.
In order to talk about GitS:SAC, we have a lot to deal with first to set it up. One issue is the idea of the cyberpunk genre of Science Fiction. Cyberpunk is the portmanteau for cybernetics and punk, a genre that features computers or information technology, usually used, to great effect, in combination with the idea of failing societies, the loss of personal freedom, the promotion of economic and corporate growth over spiritual (not religious) and intellectual growth. It's rather like W.B. Yeat's Second Coming:
"Turning, turning in the widening gyre
The falacon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upin the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
There ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When the vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shaoe with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to night mare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"Set in 2029, the manga's plot is deep with a complex plot and numerous subplots. Every frame is filled as if there is no room left in the world. It's chaotic and loud and without the proper social graces. The main characters are about the same as the world the inhabit.
Shirow's manga focuses on philosophical and ethical questions concerning what happens to the human when the merging of humanity with technology becomes easily available and so widespread that to decide to remain mostly untouched is a rarity. What becomes of humanity when AI gains human emotional capacity and the omniscience of the universally accessible information on the Net hangs over all like a new god? What is human then? Is individuality still possible? Is access too easy so that we never bother to ask if we should?
What is human and what is machine can no longer be defined by the known precepts. Synthetic skin, mechanized muscle, and cybernetic enhancements make up the body for both human and humanoid. The body then is just a shell and the element that has long been representative of human distinctiveness is the essence of the mind, the spirit of the heart, the soul, or the ghost becomes that much more important.
The main story of Shirow's manga and Oshii's film is the hunt for the cyber-terrorist called "the Puppet Master", a.k.a. Project 2501. The Puppet Master has become infamous worldwide for the type of crime it perpetrates: "ghost hacking," which means breaking into the mind and taking control of it. In the film, Section 9 follows a lead that takes them to a man whose memory has been erased and replaced with false ones. Nastily enough, science hasn't yet advanced enough to reverse the procedure. The idea that the science and technology exists to change you -- even against your will -- but not to change you back should breed some caution.
They come to learn that the Puppet Master is an artificial life-form created by the government that escapes from its masters. It is a unique life-form. But in the film, the puppet master is revealed to be an American super-class A hacker, who was lured into a secret cyborg shell with a cyberbrain and then his real body was eliminated.
Mamoru Oshii's Ghost In The Shell, 1995
The Puppet Master: "There will be no corpse, because until now there was no body. I may have entered this cyborg body because I was unable to crack Section 6's attack barrier, but it was of my own free will that I came here. As an autonomous lifeform, I request political asylum... Life is a node that is born within the flow of information. As a species of life that carries DNA as its memory system man gains his individuality from the memories he carries. While memories may as well be the same as fantasy, it is by these memories that mankind exists. When computers made it possible to externalize memory, you should have considered all the implications that held. ...I am a life-form that was born in the sea of informaton."
Masamune Shirow, Ghost In the Shell, 1991
Kusanagi: "So you're just like a form of cancer, then, aren't you..? Maybe that's what all intelligence really is..."
The Puppet Master: "Your analogy is essentially wrong, but it's correct in that intelligence increases to resource limits and you can only make a copy of it. But at any rate, given what I've told you, I now have a small favor to ask. To gain diversity and slack in my system, I would like to fuses with you."
Kusanagi: "You what?! You're asking me if I'll become a multiple personality?! Are you nuts?! No thanks!"
The Puppet Master: "No, not multiple...I mean unity -- total fusion. You and I would change slightly in our totality, but we wouldn't lose anything. Rather than symbiosis, it involves unification. After fusing, it should be impossible for us to recongnize each other."
Kusanagi: "So what happens when I die, then? My genes obviously wouldn't survive, even as a copy!"
The Puppet Master: "If anything happened the new, post-fusion you would let losse my altered-species glider on the net...Just like humans leave behind genese...and this way I'd also be able to find mortality."
Kusanagi: "Hmph...Seems like you're the only one who'd benefit from this."
The Puppet Master: "Oh, come on -- you should have more respect for my net, for my data, for my functions..."
Kusanagi: "Any guarantee that I wouldn't be inadvertently assisting some wild robot plan to wipe out humans? Any guarantee I could continue to be me?"
The Puppet Master: "Concerning your first questionm there's no guarantee, but the probability that such a low-intelligence altered species would result from us is very remote, and even if it did occur, my many descendants external to us would certainly delete us. There's absolutely no guarantee of the latter either...Humans are always changing and I want to be able to change, too. So, no, I can't rule out the possibility of a localized rebellion of robots with low-level intelligence. But the 'unstable history created by slavery and discrimination,' and the image of robots created by anthropomorphization is hardly logical."
Kusanagi: "I've heard enough. Ican't believe anything you say anyway, so I'll accept your proposal. I had a premonition about this. Let's fuse!"
The Puppet Master: "I knew you'd eventually agree, but not in 1/25th the time I had estimated...I'll have to revise my opinion of you, Kusanagi."
Kusanagi: "I've got one more question before we fuse, though. Why did you chose me?"
The Puppet Master: "Because of EN."
Kusanagi: " 'Karmic connection'...? You've read a dictionary of Buddhism on the Net?"
Words one can find in cyberpunk lit or writings about the genre: hackers, AI, the Matrix, the Net, multinational corps, pessimism, dystopia, alienation. Words you can find in the Ghost in the Shell universe: ghosts, de-ghosting, memory box, brain drain, cyberbrainwash, cyberbrain hacking, human vs. cyborg vs. robot.
Batou: “These towers survive as a shadow of the city’s former glory. It’s dubious sovereignty has made it the ideal haven for multinationals and the criminal element that feed off their spoils. It’s a lawless zone, beyond the reach of the UN or the E-police. Reminds me of that line, ‘what the body creates is as much an expression of DNA as the body itself.”
Togusa: “How great is the sum of thy thoughts. If I could count them, they are more in number than the sand.”
Batou: “Psalms 139, Old Testament. The way you spout these spontaneous exotic references, I’d say your own external memory’s pretty twisted.”
Togusa: “Look who’s talking.”Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex differs radically from "traditional" cyberpunk literature in that much of its action takes place in the real world not within cyberspace. While Section 9 has hackers and as a team they are cowboy-like in their approach to fighting crime, they are not the ordinary or the disenfranchised, they are not without agency, acted upon or manipulated as opposed to decided on their fate. Kusanagi has the ultimate decision to make, but she doesn't back into her decision. She makes a choice. She is a hero in the very traditional Gilgamesh sense of it.
The film differs a great deal from the manga as much as the two men involved are different. The reclusive GitS creator gave his official okeydokey on allow Oshii to direct the film based on his own vision and style. "I had the freedom to put Ghost into my world, without having to further ask his approval." [1] To go into movie form, the manga had to be wittled down to its core story that of Kusanagi and the Puppet Master. Kusanagi is more thoughtful and introspective, ever contemplating her ghost. Oshii's GitS is the existenialist's exploration of individuality and meaning in this brave new world.
Oshii followed Kusanagi's tale with Batou's in GitS: Innocence, which picks up shortly after Kusanagi evolves. In the year 2032, Batou and his partner Togusa investigate a series of cases involving gynoids, robots illegally altered to function as passive sex slaves for the wealthy and usually affluent masters. The gynoids stage a kind of revolt, turning themselves into killer robots and taking out their masters and anyone within the vicinity. It turns out the gynoids were not what they appeared to be and the manufacturers weren't either. The truth behind the secrets withheld by the manufactures is the impetus for Kusanagi evolved's return.
The philosophical questions return as well and a lot of philosophy. The essential question of human and machine coexistence turns toward a frightening thread, humans de-evolving into machines.
Haraway: "Humans are different from robots. That's an article of faith, like black isn't white. It's no more helpful than the basic fact that humans aren't machines... Why are humans so obsessed with recreating themselves?" [To Togusa] "Do you have children?"
Togusa: "A daughter."
Haraway: "Children have been excluded from customary standards of human behavior, if you define humans as beings who possess a conventional identity and act out of free will. Then what are children who endure in the chaos proceeding maturity? They differ profoundly from 'human' but they obviously have human form. The dolls that little girls mother are not surrogates for real babies. Little girls aren't so much imitating child rearing as they are experiencing something deeply akin to child rearing."
Togusa: "What on earth are you talking about?"
Harawway: "Raising children is the simplest way to achieve the ancient dream of artificial life. At least, that's my hypothesis."
Togusa: "Children aren't dolls!"
Batou: "Descartes didn't differentiate man from machine, animate from inanimate. He lost his beloved five-year-old daughter and named a doll after her, Francine. He dotes on her. At least, that's what they say."The same meaning of life questions, however, are not the overarching focus of the television series. Set in 2030, GitS:Stand Alone Complex explores a larger world, a world that is still crowded, but cleaner, which means corruption and the evils of society hide behind a pleasing veil. Section 9 has learned some manners for this version of the Ghost universe; they obey the rules most of the time. Kusanagi never evolved. The extensive use of computer graphics that made Oshii's film stand out years ago is used to great effect in GitS:SAC. The CGI is seemless.
The TV series bears the stamp of Shirow, who supervised the TV project's development, and of Oshii who rough-sketched the 2nd GIG, lending the second season something of the quintessential "Oshii" quality.
Ghost in the Shell Glossary:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Tachikoma: "Oh boy! It's full of information!"Tachikoma’s words are similar to Dave Bowman's final words in the book Arthur C. Clarke’s masterpiece: "My God! It's full of stars!"
Ag20
Ag20 is the chemical forumla for oxidized (tarnished) silver.Basset Hound
Oshii's favorite sort of animal and his breed of choice. Appeared in the first film in a commercial advertising the dog food that Batou would use in the next film. A Basset also appears in a photograph of a brainhacked man and on a bridge wagging its tail, as Kusanagi passes under on a boat. In the second film, the basset is, of course, Batou’s family.Braincase
The storage compartment for the brain, which allows for easy physical access and swapping to other bodies.Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome
Togusa: "To prevent such accidents, it's necessary to quarantine them from the network. It's for their own protection, as much as it is for others. But do they all have the ability to blow away a dummy barrier like that boy did?"
Maruta: "Some cases of Cyberbrain Closed Shell Syndrome involve complications that lead to intellectual damage, but there are quite a few cases where the patient displays an astonishing knack for cyberspace. We make use of the peculiarities of their condition in their job training by having them program barrier mazes. It sometimes results in a barrier so remarkable that government agencies adopt it. Each and every one is constructed in a truly unique way. If we left them alone, I expect that these children would work all day, never getting bored, putting barrier mazes together, or trying to dismantle them."Rule at the Vocational Aid Center: You can only connect to external nets under staff supervision. When people envision Cyberbrain .., they immediately picture someone who is maladjusted to cyberbrain technology. But the real problem is that they are too compatible with it. When they feel like connecting to the net, they try exhaustively to stay connected. And when it's with a specific person, they'll even commit brain-diving in an attempt to share their consciousness, or even being fried and killed by that person's attack barrier. There are also ones who seal themselves off behind a barrier, refuse to connect with anyone, and they become unable to come back. These children have severe symptom like that. They spend their afternoons here in this ward.
Togusa: "You guys can read virtual visualization programming?"
Kurota: "What, can't you?"
Togusa: "No."
Kid: "In that case, patch into this guy's brain. You'll see some cool stuff. But be careful. There was a staffer once who dove into his head. Their consciousness got tangled up and her's been in there ever since. Well, how about it?"
Togusa focuses on a pair of the six jacks on the back of the guy's head and sees eyeballs.
Togusa: "No, I'd better not.
Kid: "Man, you're no fun. I thought you'd have more guts."Cyberbrain Hacking/Ghost Hacking
As skilled hacker can crack the nut and get to one's ghost. If a brain connects directly to the networks to exchange information, that brain can be hacked. Firewalls exist, but can be fried. Once a brain is infiltrated, the hacker can alter or erase memories or implant false ones. But all bodily control is relinquished when the brain is hacked, a person can be forced to say or do anything. In the manga and the film, the Puppet Master ghost hacked, but in the TV series, the Laughing Man only hacks the cyberbrain.Cyberbrain Sclerosis
In 2019, just when cyberization was starting to become common place, cuberbrain damage of unknown origin became a hot topic in the medical community. Regions of the brain, where cyberization had been performed, gradually hardened, ultimately resulting in brain death.Although the probability of manifesting symptoms is exceedingly low, anyone who has been cyberized is susceptible and because no basic treatment was known once the symptoms had manifested, it was called the incurable disease of the 21st century, following in the footsteps of tuberculosis, cancer, and AIDS.
Cybernetic Technology
[Toyoda] looked at the young man. "You don't seem to have any cybernetic parts."
"You're right. I'm impressed that you can tell."
"Cybernetic technology has come a long way, but it's still quite difficult to reproduce the minute nuances of natural human movements. If you know what you're looking for, you can tell the difference."
"I didn't know that."
"These eyes of mine have observed the cybernetics industry for more than twenty years now. The role of the technology has changed over the years. In the beginning, its purpose was purely to replace lost body parts needed to sustain people in their everyday lives."De-Ghosting
The removal of the portion of the brain that speaks to the soul. Done to criminals when their individual ghost is found culpable for the crime committed.
Flowers for Algernon
Charlie Gordon, a 35-year-old man who works in a bakery as a janitor, has an IQ of 69. He volunteers for an experiment to increase his intelligence through a surgical operation. After fits and starts, quickly his IQ reaches genius level and his intelligence surpasses the professors and doctors who are conducting the experiment. Despite this, he remains a test subject to everyone, not a human being. He also comes to realize the truth behind the so-called friendliness of his co-workers at the bakery. He runs away. His super intelligence becomes the same as his lack of brainpower, a place of being completely alone intellectually, only now he knows it and it hurts. Ignorance is indeed bliss. Charlie comes to understand that intelligence alone means nothing without feeling for others. But there is more pain to come as his intellectual capacity diminishes.Why would a Tachikoma find this apt? Because an AI system without emotional content can never be more than a machine.
Food
The 2nd Gig episode, Vegetarian Feast -- Fake Food has Batou and Togusa staking out a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant, because it has a connection with Goda, who was a Taiwanese national.Batou and Togusa are in the mobile unit, scanning a restaurant. Togusa stops the camera on a plate of food.
Togusa: “That looks delicious. I haven’t had time to go home lately.”
Batou: “Do you know what that is?”
Togusa: “Isn’t it smoked fish? I still know what it looks like.’
Batou: “It’s not that. It’s food made from a fish substitute.”
Togusa: “Eh?”
Batou: “It’s a type of food many people love to eat.”
Togusa: “Just like your cyborg foo?”
Batou: “Something like that. It’s a little different from Japanese cuisine. The materials used aren’t from fish, but plants that have a similar texture. It’s about the same as those sandwiches.”
Togusa [looks at the sandwiches he thinks are mazui, disgusting]: Is this for real? But why would people come up with something like this? If they don’t know what fish tastes like in the first place, why do they need to do this?”
Batou: “That’s true, but if you’re not familiar with it, you won’t eat it. Still, you can’t remember what the real thing tastes like anymore.”
Togusa: “I guess. You seem to know a lot about this. Don’t tell me you miss the taste of real food.”
Batou: “Just because I’m a cyborg, doesn’t mean I don’t think about food. That’s why there’s food made for people like me.”Cyborgs don’t need to eat the same food as a normal or low-prosthesis human. But as human beings, the cyberized person does still think of food in the same way, not simply for the nutrients and the sustenance, but for the sensual pleasure and socialization of the eating process. But because of their discussion, Batou goes out and buys genuine food for him and Togusa. Cyborgs are also able to metabolize alcohol quickly.
Geisha Robots
Robots trained the the traditional skills of a hostess and soothing companion to a man for a short time. These skills include the art of conversation, a musical instrument, singing, and knowledge of art, traditional foods and alchol, how to sit, to walk, to listen.Batou: "But Major! What if the robot geishas demand a pay raise?"
Togusa: "Knock it off."Geist
German for mind, spirit, and ghost. A central concept in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Describes the aspects of a being that attempt to understand the world.Ghost Dubbing
In past animal experiments, scientists mass replicated inferior copies, but had to abandon the practice as it destroyed the original being. Locus Solus brainwashed girls supplied by the Kojinkai, a yakuza group, dubbing their ghosts onto gynoids. It was the ghost that made the Locus Solus gynoids so desirable.The lines between humans and machines have been blurred by the rush toward the technological future. The machines have gained ghosts and the humans have forgotten their humanity. Accelerated by AI, the human brain can link with the external memory shared over a vast universal Net. As a nearly full-bodied cyborg, Batou struggles to retain his humanity.
Batou feels sorry for the dolls who have been endowed with souls to share the lives of young human girls and how they were sacrificed to rescue the human girls enslaved to machines that suck away their lives.
Girl: "But ...but I didn't want to become a doll!"
Kusanagi in Ghosted into a gynoid body counters: "If the dolls had voices, no doubt they'd scream, 'I don't want to become human'."
Ghosts
In Ghost in the Shell, one's ghost or individual soul is what differentiates a human being from a biological robot. Oddly, a ghost has some kind of physical nature since it can be detected through a computer scan. A person can be 'ghost hacked' because ghosts can be "accessed through the electronic lines of data connectivity that serve to link everyone and everything..." [2]A Noted Sociologist on TV: "There are rumors that robots have begun to have Ghosts. Just as in old sci-fi comics." (a nod to Shirow)
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."
From the first film.
Batou: “There’s nothing sadder than a puppet without a ghost, especially the kind with red blood running through it.”Tachikoma: "Togusa's Ghost still isn't whispering to him enough."
Go
Togusa and Batou's Tachikoma are playing a game called Go, which is an ancient Chinese game that's popular in Japane and is similar to Chess.Tachikoma: “Checkmate!”
Togusa: “That’s a different game!”
Gouda, Kazundo
Gouda is the head of the Strategic Influence Investigatory Committee within Japan's Cabinet Intelligence Service, a position which gives him the power to carry out his dastardly plans. He is allied with Chief Cabinet Secretary Takakura and has deep connection with the army. He is Taiwanese, but does not openly claim that heritage. He came to Japan after the wars when Taiwan was annexed to China.While on a mission, Gouda was injured and had to be repaired with cybernetic implants. In spite of readily available cybernectic parts and full bodies, Gouda elected to remain disfigured—perhaps to always gain an edge over those who see him and think to pity or underestimated him. He is highly intelligent, motivated by revenge, and manipulate people and politics with no regard for the human casualties. In other words, Gouda is a great villain. He is the mastermind behind the Individual 11 plot and further foresees the creation of Hideo Kuze as the hero of the refugees, which plays into Gouda's plans to foment unrest to such an end that he is allowed to restructure the Japanese government to something closer to Imperial Japan.
Section 9 first comes in contact with Gouda after the helicopters in a JSDF training exercise go rogue.
Gynoids/Female Androids/Sexaroids
Kim [a ravaged cybernetically adapted body with a quick cyberbrain]: “The human is no match for a doll, in its form, its very being. The inadequacies of human awareness become the inadequacies of life’s realm.”
Kim: “The definition of a truly beautiful doll is a living breathing body devoid of a soul.”
Androids illegally altered for the sex trade or for an individual's sexual pleasure. The GA07_JL Jeri model is known to be a favorite model for inappropriate retrofits. Wealthy men openly collect these humanoid dolls. In Innocence, the favored models Hadaly Model # 2052 are manufactured by Locus Solus. These models are well-designed prototypes intended for a particular usage, in that they have been equipped with organs unnecessary in the typical service model. Androids and gynoids designed as "pet" are not created for practical uses. They are modeled on an idealized human image.
Saito: "Did you see that?"
Batou: "I see it. Isn't this some kind of new machine?"
Togusa: "This is the world of the wealthy, where they like to indulge themselves. How frightening."
Kusanagi: "How romantic, their last ride's a beach front trip. Still, for someone to buy a robot and try to turn it into his fantasy, ideal girlfriend. It's so...sexist. I don't like it."
Togusa: "Sexist? Look who's talking."
Batou [chuckles]: "Respect the opinion of our representative of the fairer sex."
Kusanagi: "They lock them in the house and force them to cook and do laundry, right?"
Togusa: "Well it's not like they can cook anything fancy. I don't think it's possible to build one with those capablilties for such a low price."
Kusanagi: "Then what do they make them do?"
Togusa: "Hey, don't get mad at me. I don't know, dress them up and look at them in the morning and...at night?" [Closes link with the Major] She really isn't one to talk. I wonder why our film fanatic was so hung up on some outdated heap like her anyway. It's weird."
Batou: "You're always going to find somebody who's nostalgic over a piece of the past. For instance an aniquated contraption good money won't buy. You two have a lot in common."
Togusa: "Huh? Oh, bite me. You've sure got some balls saying that to me considering this prehistoric clunker you drive. "
Batou [chuckles]: "What I have is a pure love for machines."
In Innocence, the gynoids are killing their human masters and then committing suicide.
Togusa: "I'm Togusa, Public Safety Section 9. This scary-looking fellow--."
Haraway: "Blew her apart with double-0 buckshot. A .50 caliber hollow point wouldn've left her easier to reconstruct."
Batou: "She wasted three people, two of 'em were cops."
Haraway: "She was trying to commit suicide before you shot her. Isn't that right?" [Awkward silence]
Togusa: "Commit suicide ... meaning ... Miss, er...Miss Haraway, how exactly would a robot kill itself?"In this world, robots can commit suicide/ self destruct or kill by intentionally malfunctioning enabling them to self-authorize attacks against humans and thereby liberating them from Moral Code # 3. The current argument would be whether robots can commit suicide, which by its strict definition applies to humans, or if they self-destruct. The answer lies somewhere in the assumption of difference between humans and machines.
In recent years, there has been a surge in robot-related problems caused by e-brain contamination from microbes and viruses, human production errors, functional defects from wear and tear. But for those who believe that robots are committing suicide, that robots are closer to being human than they are to being machines, the growth in robot-related problems, especially among "pets", has to do with how humans discard robots once they'e become redundant. When owners trade up for the latest model, the old ones are quickly abandoned and become vagrants and degenerate. Those who contend that robots are as near to human as cyborgs are to machines, believe that robot-related problems are a protest against their own obsolescence.
Hackers
Laughing Man: “Basically, hackers have always existed to peek at things that others have hidden. But the depth of the darkness in the hotbed of corruption I had tried to confront defeated me and all I could do was become a deaf-mute and avert my eyes from it all.”Homage to Oshii's Ghost In The Shell
In the film, Togusa shoots at a car to no avail, so he empties the barrel and loads a GPS tracking bullet into the chamber. He smiles at the shot, no doubt relieved and a bit proud.Batou: "Did you do it?"
Togusa: "Helluva car. My .9mm didn't even scratch it."
Batou: "Finally found a use for that Mateba of yours." [Checks the readings on the car] "Okay, not bad for a rookie."
Togusa: "I got one right in the license plate. Pretty good, huh?"
Batou: "Next time get two in."In GitS:SAC, on the Missing Hearts caper, Togusa runs out of the hospital. The bad guys have taken off in their car. Togusa whips out his Mateba, opens the chamber and puts in GPS tracking bullet. With one shot, he hits the car. Smiles at the shot, no doubt relieved and a bit proud. Kusanagi rolls up in the car.
Togusa: “Major!”
Kusanagi: “Hurry up and get in.”
Togusa: “Sorry"
Kusanagi: “Save the excuses for later.”Individual 11
Gouda uses the idea of the stand alone complex, a social phenomenon of a kind of highly controlled and cohesive mass hysteria, as well as the refugee issue to create a group of self-proclaimed revolutionaries, the Individual Eleven.These twelve men were brought together by a fake essay titled The Individual Eleven, written by fictional philosopher Patrick Sylvester. The essay contains a cyberbrain virus, a meme which forces the reader to enact a terrorist agenda against the government and the refugees. These acts include the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki and the murder of refugee rap idol Densetsu. The final edict of the virus was ofr the Individual 11 to committ mutual suicide at the Selecon Tower.
“Illiterate people, wake up! Follow in our footsteps!”
Only Hideo Kuze, the PFK model cyborg who tried to kill Kayabuki but was stopped by Section 9, refuses to kill himself.
The idea of this cyberbrain virus is rather like the virus used in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
Innocence
The meaning of Innocence as the subtitle of the second Ghost in the Shell film. Innocence is found in the Bassett Hound and in the wronged dolls as both were created by humans. Dogs were captured and made to meet a human need for companionship. Humans recreated themselves in the dolls for companionship as well, endowing the most desired with the souls of young girls still innocent.Ishikawa: "A single man in this line of work keeping a dog is preposterous! And of all dogs, you choose a high-maintenance hound. It's not my problem. You guys figure it out!"
Batou allows his canine friend to live at Togusa's house, where the younger investigator's daughter delights in the visit while his wife fumes over soiled carpets.Interceptors
Audiovisual elements recently introduced as part of the revisions to the Sensory Perception Wiretapping Act. Polic HQ planned to implant the interceptors in the suspects of the Laughing Man case, but instead secretly implanted them in the Special Investigations Unit still on the case. These police detective would never know a moment of privacy and never know it. According to Togusa's informant, the department would be able to "measure the arc when he takes a piss." No paperwork was ever submitted on the Interceptors for the SIU on the case.J.D. Salinger and the Lauging Man
Like Holden Caulfield, the Laughing Man appears to be a nonconformist and, as represented by Holden's name, wants to stop the growth into "adulthood," which in the Laughing Man's case would be the loss of innocence and an ethical base. The Laughing Man sees the current direction of progress leading to the further degradation of society. He attacks the corrupt men in governmemt and in business. Salinger wrote a short story called The Laughing Man. Read. At the Vocational Aid Center, where patients are given job training in order to reenter society, Aoi is called the Chief.Catcher in the Rye
"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like anybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves."
The Vocational Aid Center is rather like the final chapter of The Catcher in the Rye when Holden Caufield has been confined to a sanitarium so that he may "collect himself" and get ready to go back to school, to society.
JMSDA Type 303
A Marine Self-Defense Force very streamlined, very powerful armored suit or powered exoskeleton. Used in Re-View by Commander Gayle Yasuoka of the Narc Squad: “Damn things are works of art. Now if those guys [at Section 9] would only show up, we could get some live combat data.” In both the first film and in GitS:SAC, Kusanagi is nearly beaten when it is emplyed against her.Kayabuki, Yoko
In 2032, Kayabuki was elected as Japan''s first female Prime Minister. Her term starts out with the complication of unrest because of the refugee situation and later with the Individual 11. She was targeted for assassination. During the escalating refugee crisis, she is arrested under charge of treason for asking the United Nations to intervene.
She is still PM in 2034 during Solid State Society.
Batou: “Old man, since when did Section 9 become the Prime Minister’s personal squad?”
Laughing Man Incident
When a corporate terrorist kidnapped the president of a micromachine manufacturer and held him for ransom in GitS:SAC timeline in 2024. The suspect was a super-class A hacker. It was the largest act of corporate terrorism on record since the War. The Metropolitan PD's SIU is still investigating the Laughing Man six years later.Kusanagi in cyber-disguise: "I believe that those two incidents alone were caused by the same talented culprit. All the others, regardless of the scale, objective, and the rationale of their crimes, were copies that were called into being by the absence of their hero. Even so, it's still doubtful that the criminal behind those two incidents, who was the motivation for the rest, was himself the original."
Laughing Man -- Cool!
If coolness is determined by your hacker skills, they say the delayed-action was used in the assassination attempt was a work of art. It was so sophisticated that the police could only make a vaccine for it after the security detail’s cyberbrains started to manifest symptoms. The Drive Time Weather show’s fly-in title got tagged with the Laughing Man logo too as well as the local weather forecasts. Some rumors say those graphics were changed after the initial broadcast.Net masters and hardcore Laughing Man otaku enter the Laughing Man chat room on the Net to discuss whether the Laughing Man existed and why he decided to come back after six years of silence.
Laughing Man otaku: “The world is still full of crap and boring as hell – that’s why the Laughing Man is back.”
Fans on the Net wanted to believe that corporate blackmail was Laughing Man’s style, although they recognized that the initial kidnapping was an act of violence -- and if they were clued in, an act of desperation. Although he is believed to have class-A hacking skills, the Laughing Man otaku say that his recklessness made him loved, because he deliberately risked his own neck in the first incident. That's why the Laughing Man became a cult hero for trying to expose the deceptions of exploitative corporations.
On News Program All-Night Debate TV: “Personally, I believe that the culprit is a life form that was spontaneously generated in the shadows of the Net society. In other words, I believe that this is a complex incident caused by completely stand alone conspirators.”
Kusanagi : "Did the Laughing Man even exist in the first place?"
Megatech
In the first film, this company is the government-contracted manufacturer of cybernetic bodies and parts. The bodies created by Megatech are considered to be top secret. Kusangi’s body is Megatech made as are the cybernetic pieces for the other team members, but for Togusa. It is odd then that Kusanagi catches sight of a woman with shell model that looks exactly like her.In records room of Meditech.
Togusa: “Time may march on, but there’ll always be ‘folksy’ guys like him, huh?”
Kusanagi: “Merchants who would sell their own mother, you mean? Talk about your stereotypes. That lousy Kansai accent and everything else is probably just an act.”
Togusa: “Still, I can’t believe the CEO of the biggest player in the artificial organs industry is a cyborg using a Jameson-type body. Considering that guy’s enthusiasm, he might have sold off his own organs too.”
Kusanagi: "And now he’s in that box? I wouldn’t be surprised.”Micromachines
Nanotechnology that used in everything from medicine to cybernetics to detoxing the air.“Apparently, a micromachine dispersal will accompany this afternoon’s CO2 clean-up. Those of you with throat trouble might want to wear a mask.”
Mirrors
They reflect the form, showing what is human, but in itself is not human. So the mirror is much like an android built upon the image of a human being, but not human in itself. Mirrors and reflections are a leitmotif in the Ghost in the Shell films and TV series, all begging the question of what is human and if human is shown, is humanity reflected within the vessel?From Innocence:
Batou: "When you were a detective, you would've had a choice word or two for guys like us, swooping down to horn in on your case."
Togusa: "That's why it's so irritating. It's like watching my old self."
Batou [chuckling]: It's no use to blame the looking glass if your face is askew."
Togusa: "The mirror is not an instrument of enlightenment but of illusion."
Batou: "Well, neither of us has looks worth staring at in the mirror."Moral Code # 3
Stipulates that robots shall maintain their existence without injuring humans.Murai Vaccine
An effective tumor suppressor developed by a medical doctor named Chitose Murai as a specific medicine for cyberbrain sclerosis. At the time it was announced, micromachine therapy had not been implemented yet, so it became a hot topic. But in the end, it wasn’t approved for medical use. It “appeared” that the vaccine had a definite effect, but the mechanism was not clearly understood. It just worked for some reason. But if the effect was not clearly paired up with a cause, it could not be approved as a medicine.However, the medical association back then was dominated by micromachine therapy proponents and there were many who voiced the opinion that the vaccine therapy developed by Dr. Murai was a step backwards and if the research were approved, it might even set back the development of a micromachine treatment.
The Murai Vaccine was shelved and in February 2021, Dr. Murai died without receiving a decision from the drug evaluation council. In April of the same year, the vaccine, which had been turned down for approval, was hastily approved as a free-based clinical trial drug candidate for use in specially designated patients. This approval was never made known to the general public and the official position was that the were no patients who were using the vaccine.
Operation: I, Robot
After finding out that a prototype AI sniper system is about to be scrapped, the Tachikomas get together to spy on a conversation between the major and Batou in order to find out if they too will be scrapped. The major communicated with Batou through their cyber-link and says something else, knowing that a Tachikoma is watching and reading their lips. In the end, the Tachikomas are sent back to the lab, but they return in grand fashion to save Batou's neck.
Optical camoflague
Or thermo-optical camouflage, which allows the wearer to blend with the environment to near invisibility -- near because there is a translucent distortion that allow the careful observer to see the person with the naked eye, but only up close. This near invisibility works on radar and infrared. The use of this technology is largely restricted to certain government agencies.Oshii Style
One episode of the 2nd Gig seems particularly Oshii to me (and oishii too!) when we are allowed another glimpse into the major’s past. An bouncing orange ball introduces her to a dream-like world set in a shop that holds relics of the other people’s pasts. The shop harkens back to another age, even the musical score manages to be both melancholy and wistful.Kusanagi: “The past, which others protect, will always bring bad memories for me.”
Over tea, the shopkeeper tells her the story of two juvenile cybernetic bodies that have been place in an old convertible. The female cybernetic body has a chain of origami cranes around its
neck. The shopkeeper tells her that she has been waiting a long time for someone to come about those particular relics, which a young man set up years ago to remember a time when he was young. The boy was in a plane crash. He only had the use of one arm. The girl in the bed beside him was on life support. He made paper cranes for her everyday. One day the girl went critical and then she was gone. The boy mourned her by making more paper cranes and refusing any medical help. One day the doctors brought in a young girl with a prosthetic body. She hung out with him and tried to talk him in to taking a new body. But he refused because he believed if he could not make paper cranes then what’s the use, because the prosthetic bodies back then was not capable of detailed work. Eventually the girl goes away and the boy gets a cybernetic body.
Kusanagi knows the story; she was that little girl. She folds a paper crane and says she liked the boy and leaves the crane with the young male cybernetic body.
Public Security Section 1
This section plays a large role in the manga and the GitS:SAC; it is the one agency that Section 9 seems to come into conflict with the most. In the 2nd Gig, Section 1 is being used much as Section 9 is. In the manga, Section 1 is the agency for which Kusanagi’s boyfriend works. Chief Aramaki calls the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Section 1. In Ghost in the Shell the MOFA was Section 6. The Ministry of Home Affairs is supposed to be Section 1.Public Security Section 6
In the film, this section is in charge of investigating and gathering info on international crime and terrorism. In charge of keeping Project 2501 a secret.Refugee Issue and the Refugee Residential Zones
During the last world war, people from various parts of Asia were driven out of their countries because of the fighting, and ended up unable to return to their homelands. At the time, Japan was the only nation that had opened its doors to these unwilling exiles. Because Japan had been ravaged by the war, it needed the influx of low-wage laborers to help rebuild. The government provided the refugees with an exclusive residential district called the Refugee Residential Zone and had initiated various measures to facilitate the refugees’ employment, issuing permits to allow them to work under special conditions and granting tax incentives to companies that hired them.The system was simple: the refugees would provide manpower to Japan, and Japan would provide them with wages. All sorts of people flocked to the Zone, including those who weren’t Special Immigrants with work permits. The number of Refugee Zones grew from one to six, and the total number of refugees ballooned to more than two million. This was fine until the war ended.
"Morning in the Refugee Residential Zone began with the smell of the food service wrafting through the park. A long line of refugees was waiting to be served, each with a plastic or aluminum bowl in hand." -- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Revenge of the Cold Machines by Junichi Fujisaku
A portion of every citizen’s tax dollars subsidized the livelihood of refugees, but the refugees were taking their jobs; the refugees were seen a threat to the lives of Japanese nationals. The government reacted by drafting legislation to gradually rescind the protective policies, which limited the reissue of work permits and restricting the jobs available to refugees. Even the ceiling on aid programs were lowered, driving the refugees to destitution and desperation.
Dejima Island is the biggest of the Refugee Residential Zones.
Serano Genomics
Headed by CEO Ernest Serano, Serano Genomics is well known for two things: the micromachine therapy used in treating cyberbrain sclerosis and the kidnapping of Ernest Serano from his home by the young man who would be called the Laughing Man. Serano was kidnapped on 1 February 2024. He turned up with a man in a blue jacket holding a gun to his head on NHTV Drive Time Weather on 3 February 2024 at 7:20 AM.Kusanagi: “The theatrical crime commonly known as the Laughing Man Incident.”
According to the Metropolitan Police Department Directive A.P.B. 081, Ernest Serano had received warnings prior to the incident via the mouths of people around him whose cyberbrains had been hacked. Immediately after Mr. Serano himself was hacked and kidnapped from his residence. Eventually, an enormous ransom of 10 billion yen and 100 kilos of gold bullion was demanded.
When interviewed, witnesses claimed to have seen the Laughing Man’s real face and described the logo to police artists who were working on a composite sketch.
Allegedly, the Laughing Man blackmailed Serano Genomics Corporation by planting the virus program “Unto Death” into their micromachine product line, which slowed sales of their main product, medical micromachines. Serano Genomics stock also took a nosedive. And the blackmail stopped, as if that were the goal all along.
Reportedly, the Laughing Man blackmailed other micromachine manufacturers, using the same M.O. within 3 months time of blackmailing Serano Genomics.
The blackmail stopped just when government decided to allocate public funds to the victim companies.
Kusanagi: “The Laughing Man suddenly vanished into the shadows of the Net.”
Shell
The cyborg body, which can be customized to have enhanced sensory perception, improved reflexes and muscle capacity, vastly increased data processing speed and capacity. For those who like to drink on the job, cyborgs generally have metabolic control, which means they can metabolize the alcohol and not drunk unless they really want to.The ramifications of having a body issued by the government is addressed in the first film. Because they have these advanced shells, they feel as though they have sold their souls to Section 9, because getting out of the organization would mean giving back the equipment.
Snow Crash
While the Masamune Shirow's manga and Mamoru Oshii's first film owed some of its Cyberpunk feel to William Gibson's Neuromancer and the Cyberpunk writers of the time, the Stand Alone Complex episodes seem beholden to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for some of its ideas, including the use of avatars and the physical feel of the Metaverse.GitS: SAC's relation to Snow Crashplaces the TV series and GitS: SSS in the realm of the Post Cyberpunk.
Stand Alone Complex
Stand Alone Complex means making the human psyche one with all on a social level through the networks of the cyberbrain, which allows for what happens in The Copycat Dances – Meme episode when people spontaneously try to kill Superintendent-General Daido, although the virus only worked on one person. All the people were acting on their own, allowing themselves to be influenced because of the parallelization of the psyche.Batou: “Geez, what is it with all these people?”
Kusanagi: “Beats me. They aren’t your typical fans, though.”
Togusa: “This has clouded the issue, that’s for sure.”
Batou: “The cops say that other than that security detail guy who was first hit by Nanao’s virus, everybody’s saying that they each were set off by that threat on TV.”
Kusanagi: “And some of them say that they’re the Laughing Man himself.”
Batou: “All things considered, they’re all pretty much the same.”
Togusa: “True.”
Findings from the police – no traces of brainwashing or possible viral cyberbrain contamination. They doubt they’ll find any sort of external cause.Gouda uses the social phenomenon to create the Individual 11 and to further his personal goals of restructuring the Japanese government.
The idea of the Stand Alone Complex also has ties to social theory related to the work of Frederic Jameson and Masachi Osawa.
Tachikoma/Fuchikoma
Tachikoma for the Stand Alone Complex and Fuchikoma for the Manga. Flexible light tanks with adaptable AIs, a penchant for philosophical discussion, and the capacity for human sentiment. Evolving. Can be used as a vehicle for one individual or they can function independantly of rider or commands. Highly unpredictable for AI robots. In a way, they occupy the same function as Togusa (who is only slightly altered) on the team, adding a dimension of individuality to Section 9 as a whole.
Kusanagi of the Tachikomas: "They're asking for souvenirs now?"
Togusa tells Batou that he shouldn’t have babied his personal tachikoma so much.
Togusa: “They’re just machines.”
Tachikomas become upset.
"That’s discriminatory speech!
“We demand a retraction.
“Togusa’s a bigot!”
“Machines need love too.”Time bomb Virus
Viruses implanted in database at company to cause androids to respond to a specific command. Users log in to the company's database for product information and end up transmitting the virus unwittingly to their android. These commands can re-program the android and force it to kill its owner or to self-terminate.“The static in the regular check-ins was a modular, delayed-action virus…. It probably won’t be possible to specify its type until it manifests.”
“There’s bi remote signal. It’s probably an autonomous program.”
“Radio signal in Violation of Cyberbrain Code of Ethics detected! There is a possibility of cyberbrain contamination.”¥ € $
A super currency created for the combined monetary systems of the Japan, the European Union, and the American Empire, i.e. the Japanese Yen (¥), the Euro (€) and US Dollar ($).The GitS Canon
Throughout these pages dedicated to Ghost in the Shell, dialogue, ideas, and descriptions have been taken primarily from GitS: SAC and GitS: SAC 2 Gig, but other sources also have to be acknowledged, including the original manga that started it all, Oshii's GitS films, and the media-tie novelizations of Junichi Fujisaku, scriptwriter of nearly a dozen episodes of GitS:SAC and a graduate of the Oshii Academy, an in-studio think-tank created by Mamoru Oshii at Production I.G.
1 - Ruh, Brian, Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 120.
2- ibid, p. 123.
