Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex (S1E4-6)

This review was comissioned by @Bernkastel and @The Narrator


At very long last, we return to the adventures of cyborg detective Major Kusanagi and the violent hijinks she gets up in the service of Future Japan's public security directorate section 9. The previous couple of episodes I saw (the pilot, and a later one) were both monster-of-the-week style investigations (or "Standalones" in this series' parlance), while episodes 4-6 are the first cluster of story-arc ("Complex") instalments of season one.

From the little I've absorbed through osmosis, the "complex" plotlines are more cynical and sceptical about the government Kusanagi serves and her role within its order. Which I think is a good thing. While I did quite enjoy the mostly-lighthearted heroics of those standalone episodes, they were fairly open copaganda, and the whole setting seemed like it was trying to be pessimistic but stumbling on naivete. That's not to say that I don't expect the story-arc episode to lack these issues altogether, but I suspect they'll be at least a little better about them. If they can do that while still keeping things fun and slightly goofy, even better.

Episode 4, "Interceptor," kicks this plotline off in traditional crime novel style with a decoy protagonist with a single-digit-pagecount life expectancy. A detective at a prefectural police HQ is pulling an all-nighter studying evidence for the "laughing man" case. When the chief walks into the room with a blank expression, claims to have been in his office all night even though there's literally rainwater dripping off of his coat, and offers to take him out for a drink in a zombie-like voice, well, you don't have to be a detective to figure out that Bad Shit is happening. Especially if you live in a cyberpunk world where brain-hacking is a known quantity.

The detective excuses himself, surreptitiously mails the evidence folder to himself as he leaves the building, and gives his friend in Section 9 a call telling him he'd like to speak in person about something. Said friend turns out to be one of Kusanagi's underlings, Lieutenant Togusa, which is how the case will end up being the protagonist team's business after the detective is murdered on the way to their meeting. Speaking of which:

Forensics indicate that he lost control of the vehicle and went over the edge of a skyway. However, we the audience get to hear him screaming about his eyes being hacked right before he loses control, so.

The first act of the episode proper is carried by Lieutenant Togusa, as he learns about his friend's sudden death and finds the timing highly suspicious. His suspicions grow when, after the memorial service, the late Detective Yamaguchi's wife approaches Togusa and gives him a folder full of photographs. Apparently, the files her husband mailed home on the night he died included this, along with instructions for her to hand it over to Togusa in the event that something happened to him. She's surprisingly uncurious about this all, considering, but maybe she just knows that it's not something he'll be able to tell her about and has resigned herself to not knowing at least for now. Togusa is baffled by the photos at first. They all seem to be random snapshots of city and family life with a few recurring faces in them. Eventually, he realizes that they're all taken from iris-camera perspective, and that they include some intimate situations in which iris-tapping is supposed to be strictly illegal without a special warrant. A little more poking around reveals that the POV eyeballs all belong to members of the late detective's police department.

In short, someone is hacking into the entire police department's eyes (using either their existing cybernetics that they'd normally switch off outside of work, or surreptitiously implanted hardware) and doing around-the-clock surveillance on everyone involved in the Laughing Man investigation. It also turns out that the Laughing Man case involved the corporation that provides cyborg surveillance technology to the Japanese police. And, as it turns out, the police commissioner who leads that department is in deep to that same corporation.

That's enough information for Togusa to make a presentation for the rest of the team and convince them that this might be something they ought to investigate.

What exactly this all has to do with the original Laughing Man incident - an event that involved a high profile kidnapping, a bunch of corporate terrorism, and an eponymous superhacker - they aren't yet sure. But there are just too many connections.

With bossman Aramaki's approval, Kusanagi pulls some strings in the independent media scene and gets some reporters to ambush the prefectural police chief Nibu (the guy who was all zombiemode in the teaser), with questions about why the cops on his force might have been bugged without their knowledge. His reactions to the unexpected candid questioning are...indicative, to say the least.

Which is what Section 9 was hoping for; shake the tree and see if anything falls loose.

Nibu's own boss, an unnamed Police Comissioner who we see having some sinister phone calls with some sinister corporate typec, calls a press conference the next day. It turns out that he has personal connections with the corp that produces the cyborg surveillance tech, and the press are all armed and ready to press him on that. and the question of whether or not it's ethical for the police to buy from a company one of its own higher-ups gets kickbacks from (not that that's even really a question lol). He insists that the devices and software themselves are perfectly normal police equipment authorized for use with a warrant in specific circumstances, and in this case it appears that Nibu went nuts and used them on his own underlings illegally. The guy was working on a really maddening, paranoia-inducing case with the Laughing Man investigation, so Nibu has some empathy, but nonetheless this man is clearly unfit for duty and will be discharged into psychiatric care. The unknowingly bugged officers will be financially compensated.

Overall, he does a pretty good spin-job (the way Nibu acted during the candid interview does definitely help him with the story he's chosen to weave). The questions from the press are hard ones, though, so it seems that not everyone is buying it (or, if they are, then they at least still want to know more about this revolving door scheme with the police and the cybernetics company). Good on those reporters. Then, all of a sudden, a cyborg police official onstage beside the Comissioner thrashes and rolls his eyes, and the Laughing Man assumes direct control.

It seems that in addition to being able to effectively mind-control any cyborg with an internet connection, the Laughing Man can hack into all the cameras and cyber-eyes nearby and do an augmented reality thing to superimpose his logo over the victim's face.

I mean, I assume he can superimpose his AR logo (or any other premade image) over anything. The choice to do so over the faces of cyborgs he's puppeting is just that.

...

Granted, knowing what I do about Ghost In the Shell and the media that influenced it, I suspect that the mind behind the Laughing Man symbol isn't a "he" so much as an "it."

Or possibly a "them" if it's one or more humans and/or artificial intelligences working in concert.

...

The Laughing Man hijacks the press conference and uses the platform to taunt the police and government, including tantalizing hints about how they know that he knows their dark secrets. He hadn't been planning to rush things like this, but the Commissioner's dogged insistence on keeping this cover-up going has irritated him into showing his hand again. The Commissioner has three days to come clean to the public about what he's done, or else the Laughing Man will have him killed.

The possessed man collapses to the ground as the Laughing Man relinquishes control and takes his creepy logo off the AR spaces. Watching all this on the news from Section 9 headquarters, Kusanagi, Togusa, Aramaki, and Co decide that yeah, this *definitely* is something they need to do their own full investigation of.

The next episode, "Decoy," starts out strong enough. Section 9 chief Aramaki has a meeting with the Japanese Internal Affairs Minister, who tells him that his agency is free to assist in the Laughing Man investigation, but that they are to work in close cooperation with the police and do everything they can to allay public concerns about illegal surveillance and police conspiracies. Even though those concerns seem like they're at the very heart of the case, and the police commissioners and chiefs are all suspects. That's...pretty much how establishment politicians tend to approach police scandals, yeah. Naturally, Aramaki's takeaway from this meeting is that he should have his people do a secret unauthorized investigation of the police and not get caught.

...

I tend to look side-eyed at the "democratically elected politician who puts politics ahead of reality needs the Men Of Action to steamroll over him and the will of the people he represents in order to do what needs to be done" trope.

In this case though, the politician is acting to cover for other state enforcers doing other shady shit behind the people's backs. So, it balances out.

...

In the next section meeting, Aramaki floats a suspicion he's starting to have.

The incredibly public, dramatic, and untraceable nature of this new Laughing Man incident was awfully convenient for the police. Suddenly, there's a nebulous outside threat (that they were already working toward hunting) that can be blamed for all the illegal surveillance, cronyism, and bioethics violations that they were on the hot seat for. That detective who was murdered using the same cyberware that his department is already known to be misusing against each other? Oh, the wildcard hacker supervillain must have done that to stop him from finding something! The "possessed" cyborg was himself a high-ranking police officer of that prefecture, and the AR devices that the Laughing Man appeared on would have all been ones they had access to.

Yeah, when you put it that way I have trouble disagreeing, heh. It's not a slam dunk, at least yet, but it seems more likely than anything else at this juncture.

That said, Aramaki's minions aren't as sure. After all, the original Laughing Man incident really is unsolved, and the way this new performance involved the commissioner being put on a time limit before he confesses to something, well...that doesn't move suspicion away from the police nearly as efficiently as a ploy designed to do that probably would. Also a good point.

In any case, Aramaki's plan for now is to assume the police are going to use the lead suspect in the Laughing Man case as a scapegoat. So, he'll have Section 9 monitor that suspect, and monitor the police who are monitoring that suspect, until the (real or fake) Laughing Man's three day ultimatum is up. I feel like tossing their lead suspect under the bus this quickly could reeeeeaaally backfire on the police if it turns out that he's innocent and the real Laughing Man decides to inform the public of this, but okay. Anyway, the suspect in question is Nanao Ei. Former IT dude for an ecoterrorist group with mob ties for extra flavor, who eventually tried (or at least pretended to try) to turn a new leaf, betray his lifelong ideals, and work for an evil megacorporation like a law abiding citizen.

The corp in question - Serano Genomics - happens to be the same company that sells those eye-taps to the police. In fact, Nanao was the lead software engineer on that very project, to the point that you could essentially call it his own invention under the company's patronage. Serano Genomics juuuuuust so happened to unearth his criminal past right after they'd patented his invention and before any royalties for him had been agreed to, resulting in his immediate termination with his work securely in their IP.

Incidentally, the original Laughing Man incident involved the abduction and holding hostage of the Serano tycoon. And subsequent ransomware attacks against the company that damaged its stock in a way that it might never recover from, to the point that it seems like the devaluation itself might have been the actual objective. Granted, he did the same thing to several other tech companies afterward, which could mean that Serano being the first target was just coincidence. But it could also be that Nanao just got greedy after doing his original revenge attack and started doing the same thing to other companies for profit (after all, he did go from ideological terrorist to mob cyber-enforcer once before, so causes giving way to profiteering is in-character for Nanao). Additionally, it might well be that Nanao and/or accomplices of his were behind the initial Laughing Man event, but that their techniques have since been copied by other actors who all use the Laughing Man iconography and persona to keep the law guessing.

Still. Watching Nanao and watching the people watching Nanao is the best they've got for now.


Splitting it here.

I'm a little surprised at how little focus Kusanagi has had up to this point. In the episodes and movie I'd seen previously, she was clearly the protagonist. In the Laughing Man episodes so far, she's had less screentime than Togusa, and made fewer decisions than Aramaki. Not a problem, at least not yet, but a little surprising (especially with the intro sequence being so completely Kusanagi-focused, to the point where watching it in isolation would make you think she was a lone wolf operator without any team at all). I suspect this will change over the course of the next thirty-some minutes of screentime.

Most of my comments and analysis will come at the end of the review, but there are a couple of things I'd like to touch on at this midpoint:

1. The entire aesthetic and mystery behind the Laughing Man is either incredibly prescient, or a remarkable case of life imitating art.

As far as Google can tell me, the Laughing Man is an anime-original who didn't exist in the 1989-91 manga (though he recycles some concepts from it). Still, the first season of GitS:SAC was produced early enough in 2002. The unmoving grin of the Guy Fawkes mask wouldn't become the icon of hacktivism until at least 5 years later, after the "V for Vendetta" movie adaptation came out and 4chan etc latched onto it. The Laughing Man's resemblance to the "awesomeface" meme used in a lot of the same spaces also predates the actual meme by several years.

Going back to the Guy Fawkes parallels though, it isn't just the physical resemblance that jumps out at me. The question of who is actually hiding behind the symbol, and therefore of what that symbol actually represents, takes me right back to the 2008-2014 era. What the hell was "Anonymous," at the end of the day? The question mark and the Guy Fawkes mask were simultaneously left wing social justice symbols, proto-altright fascist symbols, dipshit 14 year old prankster symbols, and for-profit cybercriminal symbols. Any individual or group could claim to be Anonymous with equal legitimacy, and everything any of them did would get attributed to a distinct entity named Anonymous that did not actually exist. It fell out of use largely because everyone realized that a symbol of everything was really just a symbol of nothing.

The questions the Section 9 people are asking about the Laughing Man point at pretty much this exact same concept in miniature. To the point where I wonder if the 4channers who first started using Guy Fawkes as a hacktivism face were thinking just as much of this series as they were V for Vendetta when they did so. GitS:SAC was extremely popular around 4chan and its relatives at that time. If so, then I wonder; if the V for Vendetta movie hadn't come out when it did, would the literal Laughing Man logo from Ghost In The Shell have ended up taking the place of the Guy Fawkes mask for the next decade and change of internet culture? It seems possible.

2. This is something I'll definitely come back to later, but for now it just occurred to me that Chief Aramaki is an inscrutable wise old man with a plan for everything who serves as our female protagonist's mentor and supervisor...and yet, never once have I thought of him as "Sensei." I think the reasons WHY I don't think of him as Sensei (and consequently despise him) merit some consideration.

One part of it is that while the show thinks highly of this character and wants the audience to do the same, it isn't overinvested in him. Sometimes he makes mistakes (usually because of incomplete information), and when he does Kusanagi and the others are allowed to correct him and he takes it in stride.

Another, I think, is that despite being the head of her department, Aramaki's skillset has only limited overlap with Kusanagi's. To simplify it, he's the strategy guy and she's the tactics girl. He gives his underlings fairly broad remit in how to put his plans into motion, and one gets the sense that he knows they might be better than him at making those small-scope decisions. There's an atmosphere of mutual respect even within this formal hierarchy.

Finally, getting back into the gendered aspects of Sensei and why I hate him, the fact that Kusanagi is the team's second-in-command with male underlings as well as male supervisors - and that she has more or less the same dynamic with her own subordinates - helps. Sensei is at his worst when the story's focus is entirely on his relationship with one or more female underlings, and this story isn't like that. Ironically, the fact that Kusanagi can occasionally go for an episode or two with only a minor onscreen presence helps with this; she's one Section 9 team member out of many, and there's nothing weird or overemphasized about her place in the hierarchy. It would be nice if there was at least one more woman among the main cast to be another reference point, but I don't feel like the story desperately needs that.

All that said: after this point, the Laughing Man story arc does start to show its warts, so the next post won't be as positive as this one. Still positive, but less so.