Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd Gig Episodes 14–26 Review
After bingeing through 52 episodes of this cerebral SF/police thriller over the past few weeks, I have to say my brain feels a little fried. Stand Alone Complex (SAC) isn’t a show one can watch in the background while doing other things — it demands full attention. In that respect, it’s similar to its source manga — alternating between scenes of spectacular violence and more cerebral, prolonged conversations.
2nd Gig, as the second season of SAC is titled, is overall perhaps less newbie-friendly than the first season. Its complex plot relies on the viewer’s knowledge of its world, its characters (even peripheral ones like seemingly random politicians), and the events of the preceding Laughing Man storyline. There is a recap movie of the previous season, should you need it (I’ve not watched it yet, but will do so for a future article), plus the Individual Eleven storyline from this second season also gets its own digest movie, for those unwilling to mainline the full twenty-six episode series.
In my last article, I reviewed the first half of 2nd Gig, which was mostly setup for the action and political intrigue-heavy second half. We’re familiar with the “Individual Eleven” virus and the political actors driven to martyrdom by infection with it, apart from Hideo Kuze, white-haired full-bodied cyborg and sole survivor. Kuze now seems to have switched sides and becomes something of a revolutionary leader for the Asian refugees settled on the island of Dejima just off the coast of Nagasaki.
Historically, Dejima was an artificial island built during Japan’s isolationist period in the seventeenth century, when Europeans (and other foreigners) were expelled from the country, and Japan continued to trade solely with the Dutch, and only under extremely controlled circumstances from Dejima. In our timeline, due to the reclamation of surrounding land from the sea, Dejima ceased existence as an island many years ago and was subsumed into Nagasaki city itself. In SAC, it remains an island off the coast of Nagasaki, connected to the mainland only with a single road bridge, and is used to house Asian refugees from the third and fourth world wars. Interestingly, in the Psycho-pass franchise, also from Production I.G., the Dejima district is also used for the processing of immigrants.
As before, we’ll go through each episode in turn, starting with POKER FACE, which gives us some background on how talented sniper Saito first met Major Kusanagi twelve years previously, in 2020 — when they were on opposing sides of a conflict. The story is told using a framing device, with Saito playing poker with new Section 9 recruits Yano and Azuma, recounting his memories to them. Manga readers will recognise Azuma from his regular appearances in every chapter of Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor, where he is essentially Togusa’s partner. Sharp-eyed readers of the first GitS manga volume may also recognise Yano’s name and have an inkling of his fate… Saito’s is an interesting tale, but is he really a reliable narrator? The episode leaves it up to the characters (and the viewer) to decide…
Afternoon of the Machines — PAT gives us another Tachikoma-focused episode, and these are always fun. We’re introduced to new character Proto (mistranslated in the DVD subs as “Plato” which is kind of hilarious considering the philosophical discourse between the Tachikomas in this episode), he appears to be technical support staff for Section 9 (and he also originates from GitS 1.5). With his long, flowing hair he reminds me of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings. This episode introduces us to the Tachikomas’ “father”, Asuda, who attempts to defect to North America as he was never able to patent his pioneering AI work for the Japanese government. He hopes to gain recognition for his work overseas. We also learn that the Tachikomas’ minds are no longer resident in their metal bodies — instead they operate their shells remotely from an orbiting satellite where their minds are stored. Despite being an otherwise stand-alone episode, the information revealed here will be pivotal later.
ANOTHER CHANCE gives us some background on the charismatic Hideo Kuze, who manages to win over everyone he meets despite having no facial expression and an inability to move his mouth while speaking. He’s a complex, interesting character who is being built up as this season’s equivalent to Aoi, the “original” Laughing Man. It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that he’s the grown-up version of the origami crane-folding boy from Motoko Kusanagi’s childhood.
RED DATA follows Kusanagi on the trail of Kuze to Taiwan, where she inadvertently embroils herself in local gang warfare when she saves a young boy from being mutilated by thugs. While mostly irrelevant to the overarching plot, the boy has met Kuze, and the episode is notable for the Major jokingly (I hope) propositioning a minor for sex. It’s a fun story that showcases Kusanagi’s lighter, more human side. Despite her often aloof, no-nonsense attitude, the manga often featured panels of her making goofy expressions or bantering humorously with her colleagues. All of that was completely absent from Mamoru Oshii’s cold movie version of Kusanagi, and while SAC doesn’t quite go as far into silly humour as the manga, this version of the Major is recognisably similar to her illustrated counterpart.
The last of this season’s stand-alone “Dividual” episodes, TRANS PARENT continues the globetrotting theme with Batou and Kusanagi on a mission in snowy Berlin, tracking an international terrorist. Mostly it focuses on Batou as he investigates a wheelchair-bound young girl who may be the target’s disabled daughter. It’s a pretty tragic story, and the only link to the ongoing plot is a line or two of dialogue mentioning that shit is kicking off back home in Japan with the worsening refugee crisis.
Episode 19 (or episode 45 overall) CHAIN REACTION kicks off the heavily-serialised eight-part 2nd Gig finale that starts running and barely stops for breath. This is where the brakes come off and the narrative speeds up like a runaway train. It’s fairly pointless breaking this up into individual episode analyses now, as I watched them all in very quick succession and everything bled together. We start with Kusanagi’s team attempting to apprehend Kuze. She tries to hack his cyberbrain (which appears to be inordinately powerful, allowing connections from potentially millions of refugees simultaneously, and spreading his ideology and instructions to all of them instantaneously), but is instead herself damaged.
This leads to a catastrophic error on the Major’s part, which results in the death of new recruit Yano in a botched mission. Yeah, in the manga Yano appears only as a corpse with a huge chunk missing from his abdomen. Yano’s death traumatises Azuma who is sidelined for the rest of the show. It also leads to an interesting conversation between the Tachikomas about death — they were essentially resurrected by the Major, who kept a copy of their memories, but the same can’t be done with a human brain. Ghost dubbing destroys the original, doesn’t accurately replicate the ghost, and also can only be (imperfectly) achieved if the brain is still alive.
Following Kuze’s trail, Section 9 heads to Etorofu Island in the Kuril Archipelago. In our timeline, this island remains occupied by Russia, but sovereignty is disputed by Japan. The Russians annexed it following the conclusion of World War II. (The excellent anime movie Giovanni’s Island covers this period of history.) In SAC’s world, following WW3 and WW4, the Russians have ceded the Kuril islands to Japan. The episode FABRICATE FOG, and to a lesser degree the following episode EMBARRASSMENT, are an incredibly faithful adaptation of GitS manga chapter 7: Phantom Fund, that improves upon the original by 1) making it actually coherent and 2) tying it into SAC’s ongoing plot very neatly. The main addition is the presence of Kuze, who travels to Etorofu to source plutonium from the Russian mob.
We even get SAC versions of several of Shirow’s weirder character designs (like long metal-armed cyborg Koil Krasnov, and the Major’s odd-looking, un-named former informant), plus deceased cyber-hacker Krolden with his collection of lounging sex dolls. I never expected that SAC would put in the effort to adapt so many little details from the manga — Aramaki’s mysterious white-haired Russian lady friend even makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. I never picked up on any of this when I first watched the show almost 20 years ago.
Anyway this leads to the Batou vs Kuze scene we’ve all been waiting for (am I the only one who perceives this like a battle between ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend, despite the fact that the Major didn’t date either of them?). Despite his years of battle experience, poor Batou gets his ass handed to him, and a metal pole jammed through his shoulder. Ouch. Also it appears Kuze is charismatic enough to inspire people to suicide bomb for him. Kuze’s not so amazing that he can guarantee sourcing plutonium though — his prized case full of supposed nuclear fuel only contains lead, no doubt because Goda has manipulated everything. Now the world thinks the refugees have plutonium, even when they don’t. Also Section 9 is down one of their (presumably extremely expensive) tiltrotor aircraft after it exploded, injuring poor Ishikawa.
With Goda’s plan to incite war between Japan and the Dejima refugees in full swing, Kusanagi plans to steal Goda’s own plutonium (from way back in episode 7), while her team also defuse a “dirty” radioactive bomb planted by Goda to implicate the refugees. There’s a great extended conversation in the episode REVERSAL PROCESS between Batou and Goda, during which Batou tries to bait Goda into revealing his plans (which sort of succeeds).
During this scene there’s some interesting imagery involving birds, with a flock of black birds including a single white bird that’s clearly meant to symbolise Kuze, the revolutionary “hero”, whom Goda is setting up to fail. The fact this scene occurs on the same rooftop as the multiple suicides in episode 12 pretty much confirms Goda’s involvement with the Individual Eleven virus — as Batou puts it, this whole plot has been a “fake stand alone complex” because Goda himself is the source. It’s kind of like the opposite of the Laughing Man case, because its origin remains a mystery, and the politicians who took advantage of it only jumped on the bandwagon. Goda reveals the thing that makes certain people susceptible to the Individual Eleven virus is that they were virgins before giving up their organic bodies for total prosthetic replacement. That’s sick, no?
2nd Gig’s endgame is truly in focus from MARTIAL LAW onwards, as the action mostly shifts to Dejima itself, apart from some scenes at the Japanese government between Aramaki and the prime minister. It’s clear that Japan’s first female prime minister was installed to be nothing but a figurehead, with other, more shadowy men holding the true reins of power. When she refuses to play by their rules, they attempt to remove her from office. I really like her, she seems like a principled person who won’t let herself be used, even when her powers are curtailed. We also meet Aramaki’s brother, and discover he’s been living with the refugees since his disappearance at the end of the last war. (He was mentioned as missing in the first season.) He discusses Marxism with Kuze, in the context of the increasing importance of the internet.
Goda’s communication jamming breaks Kuze’s line of communication/control with the refugees, which ends up triggering armed conflict when one refugee shoots a soldier, and Kuze’s hope for a peaceful resolution to the refugee crisis slip from his grasp. The Major and her team attempt to infiltrate Dejima but it doesn’t go well because Goda has deployed those AI-controlled helicopters from a previous episode again. The sequence where the Major is hanging by a rope from her team’s aircraft while it crashes into a skyscraper showcases some excellent action animation — overall this series has looked fantastic for a TV production.
Poor Proto gets his brain fried, and turns out he’s not exactly human — but he’s not an android either — he’s something in between, a prototype “bioroid”. What that is isn’t explained by the show, but once again Appleseed fans have the advantage here. I think it’s pretty cool that SAC includes little nods to Shirow’s other works. Bioroids are essentially biological androids, they’re replacements for humans — biologically similar, but their behaviour can be more easily conditioned and controlled, they’re emotionally more “stable”, and their reproductive functions are suppressed. They need regular maintenance, otherwise they die within a couple of years.
There’s a really effective and well-animated scene of destruction where the refugees blow up the only bridge connecting Dejima to the mainland, but of course the Japanese military have foreseen that. They bring this super cool temporary bridge-replacement vehicle that just extends a temporary metal bridge across the gap to allow the troops through. Unfortunately some of those troops are from Section 4 who are chasing Batou and the plutonium without knowing who their target is. Once Batou reveals himself, Section 4 (who are all made of ex Rangers, like Batou) recognise Batou as one of their own — they all have the same eye replacements — and it almost turns into a happy family gathering as they all switch sides to support Batou.
Unfortunately, there’s something sinister going on in the Pacific Ocean — an American Empire (or Imperial Americana, depending on your translation) nuclear submarine is poised to launch a small nuke towards Dejima. Its yield is calculated to destroy only the island, leaving the nearby Nagasaki mostly untouched. The Poseidon Corporation’s “Japanese Miracle” radiation-cleansing micromachines have already been seeded into the environment surrounding the island, so that the fallout can be quickly contained. Goda’s plan was to nuke the refugees from the beginning. A stray missile causes Major Kusanagi and her recently captured target Kuze to become trapped beneath the rubble as the minutes tick away until their nuclear annihilation.
This is the long-awaited reunion between Kusanagi and Kuze — both of whom use aliases (Kusanagi says she can’t even remember her original name after the trauma of moving to a cybernetic body damaged her memory). Both have different appearances from their previous meetings, and bespoke artificial bodies. In a way, they are mirror images of one another, and it’s clear that they both work out who the other is. Kuze wants to save the refugees from imminent nuclear death by using his cyberbrain to upload their memories to the net — but as the earlier Tachikoma conversation suggested, this isn’t the same as preserving their ghosts.
Kuze himself doesn’t even know if it’ll work. It’s clear he wishes to leave his physical body behind and exist solely online (surely a terminal 4chan-user’s wet dream?), and he wants Kusanagi to join him. If you remember, Kusanagi herself did something similar between the end of the first and second season, but eventually returned her consciousness to her body. She almost takes him up on his offer (via the symbolism of sharing a “forbidden fruit” — in this case an apple that Kuze bites but the Major does not), but is interrupted by Batou’s rescue.
During the conversation between Kuze and Kusanagi, it keeps cutting between them and Batou desperately trying to dig the Major up using a massive cross-shaped steel beam. Kusanagi admits that she does have someone she can confide in, and there’s no ambiguity that she means Batou. Although their relationship may not be exactly romantic or sexual, Batou is the Major’s best friend, and I get the feeling Batou loves her even more than that. There’s not a single canonical story where that relationship progresses or becomes anything more than subtext tough.
For the second time at the end of a season, the Tachikomas sacrifice themselves for the sake of Batou and friends, by crashing their satellite onto the launched American nuke. I have to admit to my eyes moistening a little as they united in song as they plunged through the atmosphere, trails of fire in their wake, as they prevented a genocide. It’s one of the most impactful scenes in the entire anime medium. Looks like they managed to upload their memories to the net for safekeeping beforehand, however… The Tachikoma’s sacrifice derails the Cabinet Secretary’s plans, and though Goda tries to defect, the Major has other ideas…
The final few minutes of SAC are an almost panel-to-frame remake of the prologue and first few pages of the first chapter of the original GitS manga. I supose that means you could perceive SAC as a prequel, and then go on to read the manga as a follow-up, though the wonky timeline, use of later manga material, and existence of the Solid State Society movie does complicate that somewhat. It’s a really nice touch though, as it casts Goda as the defecting politician from the prologue whom the Major messily assassinates (with exploding brains everywhere!)
We’re left with a reconstituted Section 9 sitting amongst the falling cherry blossoms, accompanied by their “new” think tanks, the green-hued Fuchikomas, who are modelled after their manga originals. I guess someone must have sorted out the rights to use them, then? These little guys sound more robotic than their Tachikoma precursors, which is a little sad. Understandably, the Major’s mind is elsewhere, because she was unable to save Kuze from assassination by the CIA. But in saying “I’ll go on ahead…” as his last words, did he manage to upload his mind like he planned…?
So 2nd Gig ends with some catharsis, but also sadness and ambiguity. Kusanagi and Section 9 really struggled to rack up wins this season, and even their ultimate success was hard won by sacrifice. The Major regained and then lost her sole remaining link to her childhood, Batou has lost his beloved Tachikomas (again), the refugee situation remains unresolved… But that’s like life, isn’t it? Nothing ever truly resolves, life keeps grumbling on with new complications, relationships evolve and change, new technologies arise, and people find old ways in which to misuse them. Stand Alone Complex understands that, and is far and above my absolute favourite incarnation of the entire Ghost in the Shell franchise. Sure, it’s overly complex and difficult to follow at times, but its story is so well-constructed, fascinating and entertaining. Its central characters are compelling, the technology disturbingly convincing, and the political discourse startlingly prescient. This season is far more of a political/espionage thriller than the first, more overtly SF/cyberpunk-heavy season which gives it a much darker tone. I’m very glad to have had this opportunity to revisit this excellent show once more.
Next, we’re on to 2006’s Solid State Society, a sequel movie to 2nd Gig that’s set in 2034, two years following the end of the TV show. I watched it once before about 15 or more years ago, but I barely remember anything about it because I think I was tired and fell asleep partway through. I might as well be watching it for the first time. I’ll be back to write about it soon, so see you then!
