Episode 1: Section 9This is the first exciting episode of one of the greatest shows ever made; the anime Ghost in the Shell Stand: Alone Complex. It starts with a philosophical message about networks, photons and coalescing consciousness of stand alone individuals. Yea pretty deep. I like the sound of it and we could try to figure out exactly what the hell that means, but I don't have all day. I got a lot of episodes to review so...moving on! It is the year 2030! Still seems kind of far away but not too far. I wonder if technology will advance as fast as the creators of this show think it will. It probably won't, but it's always fun to dream. I mean who would have imagined twenty years ago that 75% of homes in North America would have Internet access and that there'd be almost 2 billion online users worldwide. Not to mention how rapidly this has changed people's daily lives.
The opening "teaser" scene introduces Major Motoko Kusunagi, our heroine, engaged in the apprehension of a terrorist setting a bomb on a rooftop. If you have seen the film "Ghost in the Shell" I think you will notice that the Major is a little different in this series especially her personality. (Incidentally I love the movie and highly recommend you see it!) This scene was a great way to show that the Major is a cyborg with amazing abilities. She can leap around on the roofs and kick serious butt! It was also a great way to show what a good shot the Major is. She totally messes up a guy’s leg from a hundred yards away!
The Major is joined by Batou, her second in command, who is riding in a kewl looking helicopter. Then their leader, Chief Daisuke Aramaki, calls them to action via their Cybercoms. Something is going down at a geisha restaurant, basically a brothel that features robot geishas. (In the world of Ghost in the Shell you can have AI robot androids that look and act human but don't really have a living person's brain or "ghost" inside them. The geishas are an example of this kind of robot.) Apparently someone has hacked into these robots brains and is keeping the patrons of the restaurant hostage. The hostages include some high up officials like the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his personal secretary as well as an official from the NAIPA (North American Industrial Promotion Alliance). In other words some important politicians are being held up by hacked sex robots! Scandalous.
In an armored vehicle at the scene Kubota, a military advisor and friend of Chief Aramaki's, is trying to get the police to turn over control of the rescue to the military. Aramaki interrupts their whiny bitchfest. Aramaki only needs to enter the room to cause the others to stand in solute. Aramaki is the master and the commander! There's no doubt about it. This guy is respected by everyone as a brilliant leader.
Aramaki convinces them that the hostages are the main concern and declares that his Section 9 team will take over the rescue. There is no objection from the military or the police.
Aramaki then calls Kubota outside with him. Connecting with him through a wire (as a means to talk completely private). As mentioned Kubota and Aramaki are old friends so Aramaki is only getting involved in this whole mess just to help him. Aramaki asks Kubota what is really going on. He wants to know why Kubota and the military are involved in this hostage situation. Kubota reveals that one of his people is inside being held hostage, but he doesn't elaborate. Aramaki assures him he will take care of things. You know when Aramaki says this, that everything is gonna be A-Okay!
Then we see what is basically a role call of the whole Section 9 team. They are an elite band of mostly ex-military cyborgs that specialize in anti-terrorist special ops. The Major coordinates everyone as they get into position to raid the building where the hostages are. Ishikawa (Information and technology expert) and Togusa (fully organic ex-police detective and investigator) work on breaking into the restaurant's communications to find the hacker. Batou waits on a roof with a Tachikoma mini tank. Saito (the team's tactical sniper) perches on an adjacent rooftop with a huge sniper rifle aimed at the restaurant. Pazu (backup and support) and Boma (support and munitions expert) stand by to intercept the hacker. Batou makes a joke about the robot geishas demanding a pay raise. Oh Batou, we adore your fun-loving, sarcastic comic relief. He's always hiding his deep-seated emotions behind humor. With everyone on the team ready, the Chief gives the order to enter the building.
The Major, Togusa and Batou enter the building but first they engage their invisibility suits. It's interesting to note that in the movie "Ghost in the Shell" the characters were naked when they went invisible. I guess allowing them to be wearing normal clothing was a way to avoid pissing off the TV content sensors.
I guess the creators weren't as worried about including violence as they were about omitting nudity. The team raids the building and practically blow the heads off every robot geisha in the joint. Plus we get a really gory looking shot of the inside of one robots neck. (Or what's left of it after the Major blasted it to hell). It looks like they run on a milk colored fluid similar to the androids in the Alien series. The Major attaches a wire from her cyberbrain to the robot and sends a tracker virus onto the hacker who was controlling the geisha robots remotely. It fries his terminal and indicates his location. Computer viruses take on a whole new meaning in the world of Ghost in the Shell because they aren't just crashing your computer they are crashing your brain! Also hackers can take control of people's cyberbrains and make them do or say whatever they want. This becomes very important in later episodes, and is interesting food for thought. The raid was a success and most of the hostages weren't badly hurt. Still, the secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs is critically injured and it looks as though the official from the NAIPA was killed. After the hostages are secure the Chief orders Batou, Pazu and Boma to pursue the hacker from the roof. Batou runs after him on foot. The Hacker is a cyborg so he can really move fast. His sprinting looks a lot like the way the T-1000 character from Terminator 2 ran. "Have you seen this boy?" You can see in this close comparison that the animators may have even used T2 for a reference. Wow already another sci-fi pop culture reference. Hazzah!
Batou tackles the hacker but before he can cuff him the hacker fries his own cyberbrain with a device plugged into his neck ports. Thus removing evidence he stored in his memory. Batou just says, "I think he broke." The next morning Kubota visits Aramaki's office to let him in on what really went down preceding the hostage incident.
Honestly, I don't know how they can have such a serious meeting with the Major looking like this. I mean come on. That get-up she wears is a little distracting. They even frame the shot to zoom in on her hot bod. How's the audience supposed to pay attention to the story of political intrigue and espionage while the Major is wearing a thong and heaving her bosom like this?
Aramaki offers to look into the matter himself. The Chief is so serious and not given over to much sentimentality so the Major is amused by the fact that Aramaki would use Section 9 to help an old friend of his.
The Major goes out to assemble the team again this time for the investigation. There is a somewhat touching scene with her and Togusa who is busy using an old style revolver for target practice. This old fashioned gun becomes kind of his signature over the course of the series. Togusa is one of the only members of Section 9 who is still in a fully natural human body. So I feel this clinging to old technology is kind of a symbol of him clinging to his old organic body. The Major recommends that if he is so insecure with his performance that he should go ahead and get a full synthetic body. Togusa doesn't seem too eager for that, but jumps at the chance to join the investigation of the geisha restaurant. He loves his work.
Meanwhile Aramaki goes to a park and is joined by a funny little old man who asks him, "How are the grandchildren?" Since it is never discussed that Aramaki even has a family many think this is kind of a code phrase similar to something in a James Bond Cold War movie like "the ducks fly at midnight." Aramaki is all business and just asks about the Ichinose Report. The funny old man doesn't really offer much information. He just tells Aramaki that it isn't of any interest to the military and not to "poke at something if you don't know what it is." Annoyed that the old man used one of his own phrases against him, Aramaki leaves turning down an offer of sharing some superb shrimp. These quirky little character moments that are included really help give Ghost in the Shell a Film Noir feel.
The next scene is a great example of how the writers of the show can include the futuristic technology and demonstrate how Section 9 uses it to work on a case. Ishikawa and the Aramaki meet up with the Major who has retrieved surveillance video footage of the geisha house. Though it looks like the Major is holding a condom don't get too excited. It is actually a mini data diskette.
The Chief loads it in what looks like a cell phone and connects a pullout wire from it into one of the ports on his neck. Here's the first time on the show we see the trademark circular control screen. Visible only to the person’s own perception the image of a display screen appears over the person’s normal sight. In this example Chief Aramaki is watching the surveillance footage on it. Additional scrolling text, communication avatars and all sorts of other information is later displayed in these little circular overlay screens. (The DVD menu screens borrow this design element too). Seeing this kind of interface in action makes it very believable and that's a great thing about this show or any other science fiction shows that depicts future technology. Shows like Star Trek inspired people to invent laptops, flip phones and touch screens. I hope it won't be too long before we'll all have cyberbrains too!
This video footage shows that the Minister of Foreign Affairs entered the restaurant's bathrooms with one of the robot geishas. You can almost hear the Major blush a bit as she explains to the Chief that the Minister likes to get kinky by swapping bodies with the geishas sometimes after he's had a few drinks. Next the video shows the NAIPA official that was killed followed them in carrying a metal case. Finally a short time later the secretary enters the bathroom only to be attacked.
Simultaneously, Togusa looks for clues at the scene of the crime. He listens into the other's conversations via the cybercom. Proving himself as a top-notch gumshoe Togusa remembers something odd from the night of the incident. After Section 9 raided the restaurant it was the Minister who carried out the duralumin case, not the NAIPA official who held it originally. (An interesting side note is that duralumin is a heavy duty but lightweight aluminum alloy often used in aircraft or in cases that protect high-tech devises. I think they included this fact as a clue that the case was protecting something.) Togusa puts the clues together that if the Minister liked to swap bodies with the robot geishas then maybe his brain wasn't returned to his body. What if some one else put their cyber brain in his body in order to take on the appearance of the Minister so they could have the authority to get the Ichinose Report? Wow this is heavy Doc! But this is nothing compared to some of the other episodes plot lines. I have watched these episodes many times and each time I catch new details and new connections in the story. The writers are truly brilliant. Leaping into action the team finds out where the Minister (or at least his body and whoever is inside it) is located. Kubota tells Aramaki that he's too late. The Minister already got a copy of the Ichinose Report and is heading to the airport to catch a plane to America. Clearly this imposter was trying to tarnish the government by saying the Minister defected to America while simultaneously selling the military's secret report on emergency strategies.
The fake Minister is seen in the airport terminal trying to read the Ichinose Report. It isn't text however. It is information in the form of barcode-like digital pattern. The Minister's cyborg eyes can read this kind of barcode language. Unfortunately in this case the information was encoded so he couldn't understand it. This was Kubota's doing as a way to give them some extra time. Also an airport attendant tells the Minister that his plane is delayed due to bad weather.
The Major and Batou arrive at the airport in their kick-ass helicopter. Togusa and Chief Aramaki approach the fake Minister who seems happy to see them and thanks them for saving his life. Aramaki hands him a paper that tells him he is relieved from office for "medical reasons." Now the fake Minister is way pissed off. But before he can't rant and rave he notices that there are multiple laser sights aimed at his chest. We can see a hazy outline of Batou and the others up on a walkway wearing invisibility suits. They retrieve the duralumin case that contains the real Minister's brain and stop the report from falling into the foreign government's hands. The injured secretary/spy got some cybernetic implants that would help her recover. Also, Kubota was amazed at how his ol' pal Aramaki was able in such a short time to get the papers needed to relieve the minister from office and delay the plane from leaving by faking a bad weather condition. That's because Section 9 kick serious butt! This episode was a great way to introduce the main characters and show how they work together as a team to solve a case. It demonstrated how they are an elite operation–the best physically and mentally. They can do it all. It also served as a way to introduce and demonstrate a lot of the great technology like cyberbrains, cybercoms and of course their amazing synthetic bodies. AfterthoughtsOne thing kind of boggled me about this episode. You know how at the end there was an impostor cyberbrain that was inside the Minister's body. And the Minister's cyberbrain was in the case. I wonder where did the imposter's cyberbrain come from at the restaurant? Here are the possibilities I have.
-Or the imposter's brain was inside the box at the beginning of that night and carried in by the NAIPA official. He was the one who inserted the imposter's cyberbrain (one of his fellow conspirators) into the Minister's body. But if that’s the case then why was the NAIPA official killed? And by who, the impostor in the Minister's body? And why would the NAIPA guy's body have the wrong brand of cyberbrain? -Or the imposter's brain was in the robot geisha. In this option the minister and the geisha swap brains before the NAIPA official enters the bathroom. Then the imposter, now in the Minister's body, kills the NAIPA official and puts the real Minister's brain into the metal case. The secretary enters and is shot. This scenario doesn't account for the clue about the NAIPA official not having the right model cyberbrain in his corpse. Also I don't know how the robot geisha and the Minister could swap brains without a third person's help. This also doesn't explain if the NAIPA official was in on the swap or was just a bystander. I think it's clear that they were the ones behind the whole affair so that they could get their hands on the report. Then again if the Minister had a habit of swapping brains with geishas and he went into the bathroom alone with one then that suggests that maybe the cyborg bodies had automated functions that perform things like brain swapping with out an actually cyberbrain connected to it. Don't you just love a show that can make you think! Well let me know what you think by leaving me a comment. I'd love to hear your theories too. Continue on to Episode 2: Testation
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Nevertheless we learn that the woman who suffered a brain injury during the incident at the geisha house wasn't just personal secretary to the Minister or Foreign Affairs but was actually one of Kubota's military agents. She had been spying on the Minister because the military suspected he was interested in something called the Ichinose Report. This report included "diplomatic and military strategic scenarios during a state of emergency," Aramaki explains. Which basically means it is a report containing military secrets that could be useful to foreign governments.
-The impostor was the NAIPA official who was presumed dead after the raid of the geisha house. Before the incident his real brain was inside his body and the case he carried contained a decoy brain. After putting his brain into the minister's body he put the decoy brain in his own discarded body to make it look like he was killed. The Major mentioned that the NAIPA guy's body had a cyberbrain that didn't match what records said he should have had. If his real brain were inserted into the Minister's body then this would explain that discrepancy. Then the question is how was the swap-out procedure done in the bathroom? Seems like a third person would have to be involved. One possibility is that the NAIPA guy took the Minister's cyberbrain from his body and put it into the case. Then if the robot geisha in the bathroom was also being hacked like the other geishas it could have put the NAIPA guys brain into the minister's body. Especially if she was being controlled remotely by the hacker on the roof. (I tend to believe it happened this way).