This week, Motoko and her men are headed to the Far North, a megacity that is much more reminiscent of cyberpunk settings depicted in other media. Feels like something straight out of Blade Runner, actually. Aramaki even refers to it as “an old-school cyber city.” Very cold, very gloomy, somehow grimier. There are straight-up sexbots or sexborgs wandering the streets. Would prostitution even be illegal with robots? But I digress. So what’s the current mission? Well, this is where it gets a bit murky.
It can be hard to get a grasp of the show’s “politics.” Some corporation is expanding into the north, where an old and foreign military base sits vacant. A foreign agent has also entered the country. Okay…? What does this mean? Is the corporation militarizing? Is that the concern? Clearly, you don’t want foreign agents having a free run within your borders. Still, I would’ve preferred to see a more… immediate threat than some corporation perhaps growing too big for its britches.
Looks like the bad guys already know that Motoko’s team is coming. In fact, Yano, the operative they sent in ahead of them, has already been found and brutally murdered. Batou is not happy with Aramaki, because the chief sent him in solo. Ishikawa counters, however, that Batou shouldn’t have picked Yano in the first place. It looks like there’s plenty of blame to go around. Aramaki just stews in silence. We really don’t know much of the guy beyond his professionalism, but I think the chief might genuinely care about the people working beneath him.
Before you know it, Batou tracks down Koil, the foreign agent, in a nearby geofront. I wish I could take a decent screenshot, but the action is pretty fast and furious. None of the frames I got looked any good, and we all know how unfair it is to judge a show’s animation like this. I’m also too lazy to make gifs. In the aftermath, the foreign agent is killed and the crew finds bars upon bars of gold stashed away beneath the surface. This confuses Batou, but they’re obviously for embezzlement.
Meanwhile, Motoko directly infiltrates Sagawa’s corporate office. As she freely runs through its hallways, she can’t help but deride the company’s complete reliance on automation. After all, there are literally bums camping out within the compound, because the automation doesn’t notice them. They can only deal with what they’ve been programmed to handle. Still, the adaptation limits this to just a rickety shack atop a bunch of scaffolding. In the manga, you get to see an actual bum looking confused as the Major runs by. Yeah, it’s a little on the nose, but it’s also more amusing and entertaining. Anyway, the bots are at least programmed to handle Motoko, though.
Ultimately, Motoko finds what she’s looking for: poorly hidden records of individuals exploiting a loophole to steal public funds from their respective nations. If I understand this correctly, Kusagani, a former Public Security agent, was supposed to infiltrate the Sagawa Corporation in order to get closer to the foreign military base. He instead took bribes and embezzled enough money to turn Sagawa into a credible threat. Recently, he has been trading land back and forth with Marlov for… well, just money, I suppose.
I guess my disappointment lies in the fact that I kept waiting for the story to turn into something more… substantial. After all, two weeks ago, we dealt with a man who was hacked into believing he had a family in order to convince him to aid in a terrorist attack. Last week, we saw children being trafficked in order to crush and process their Ghosts — souls, essentially — because we need better sexbots for VIPs. So y’know, a former public servant going rogue and being corrupted by money is a huge de-escalation by comparison. In fact, Motoko doesn’t even get to pop off in a flashy action scene. Sure, her target gets the jump on her, then tries his damndest to pop her head like a zit. But as soon as the Major turns on her camo, Kusanagi is dead to rights. He quickly tries to escape via his “premier” body, but Motoko is already two steps ahead of him.
So what’s even the moral of the story? That public servants like Motoko or the recently killed Yano don’t get paid enough for the job that they do? I guess that’s really it. In this cyberpunk hellscape, both governments and corporations will work you until you die, then they’ll work you even further. Motoko tries to cheer Batou up by pointing out how Yano at least gets a grave. Meanwhile, when she dies, they’ll just keep experimenting on her body.
Oh yeah, remember those gold bars they found? The squad swipes one for Yano’s surviving family, who are none too happy to see Batou. No amount of money can make up for losing a loved one — assuming, of course, that you’re not a heartless monster — but I suppose a fat gold bar is better than nothing. Aramaki shows that he cares by overlooking the thievery. Even so, I find myself somewhat dissatisfied by this week’s story. Unless I’m missing something, it wasn’t very thought-provoking.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Fuchikoma meets a better version of itself? But apparently, only the “brain” is activated. When the Fuchikoma links up with its buddy, they seem to undergo some sort of mind meld before Motoko interrupts the fun. I wonder what that’s about.
— I guess even machines have a taste for the finer things in life. Apparently, Batou has been spoiling his personal one. I wonder why the Fuchikoma would care, though. Motoko counters that natural oil suffers from ants or mold, which are reasonable concerns.
— I’m not really sure what the exchange between Aramaki and the tall lady was really about. Something about building a new city? Something about her replacement having shady connections with General Marlov? Have we met a General Marlov? Every episode is dense, so it’s easy to forget a face we might have only briefly met.
— In between missions, I guess Batou doubles as an instructor.
— This megacity is apparently 4500m high. I think the tallest skyscraper we have is only about 800m tall, right? We have to obey the laws of physics, after all. Of course, The Ghost in the Shell boasts a highly futuristic setting. Maybe they know how to get around things like material strength and elevator logistics.
— Or maybe the show just means that the city is 4500m above sea level, but that is slightly less exciting. I also don’t think Japan has any location like that. But I could be wrong. I’m no geography expert.
— Why would you give the Fuchikoma the ability to cry?
— Our robot buddy really wants… whatever this thing is — a Yamaton, apparently — so much that it is willing to endanger the mission. The name tells me nothing about what the device is useful for.
— It’s odd to me that the Fuchikoma can have such advanced AI, but they don’t seem to understand what it means for a living, biological person to die.
— Midway through the episode, Motoko straight-up murders a man. Again, she might be the protagonist, but she’s certainly no hero. Granted, he had buried an axe in her back. Also, the anime is much more brutal about his death than what you see in the manga.
— We constantly see men surrounded by these “women.” I put the word in quotes, because Motoko refers to them as simply dolls. They certainly don’t react to her presence, suggesting that maybe they’re not very human. Even worse, maybe they’ve been fitted with limiters that prevent them from being too human. Just gotta look pretty for your owner, y’know? The former colonel in last week’s episode also indulged in his fancy robots. This hacker has a pair just staring at him all day as he hammers away on his computer. It makes you wonder if people in this universe even still bother with interpersonal relationships. Maybe it’s easier just to get yourself a robot pet and call it a day. After all, chuds these days keep yelling about how it’ll be “over” for women once AI girlfriends become a thing. The Ghost in the Shell, despite being based on a late 80s/early 90s manga, might just be extremely prescient. On the other hand, we know Motoko has her girlfriends. She might be the exception that proves the rule, though.
— This dude is yapping a mile a minute, and it’s all about… politics in a cyberpunk setting that I can’t relate to nor have any context of. I have no clue what he’s talking about.
— How can anyone type with these nails? Ugh. When my nails are just a millimeter too long, I find it incredibly annoying to type.
— It sounds like Togusa has been heeding the Major’s lessons.
— Even a guy barking orders from behind a console is still just a robot. It’s fitting though, isn’t it? Of all the white collar roles that can be replaced by AI, it would certainly be middle and upper management. All the execs, really.
— I know we can’t blame all layoffs on AI. I know some companies are just using it as an excuse to mask corporate greed, i.e. they would have had layoffs with or without AI. Even so, this is the future awaiting us.
— Boy, the compression certainly did not like this scene!
— Your eyecatch of the week.
