Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Novel Vol. 2: Revenge Of The Cold Machines Review
Revenge of the Cold Machines is the second in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV scriptwriter Junichi Fujisaku’s trilogy of spinoff novels set in the Stand Alone Complex (SAC) season one continuity. Yesterday, I reviewed the first volume, The Lost Memory, and tomorrow I hope to review the third, White Maze. These volumes are all out of print, but aren’t hard to find secondhand for reasonable prices online.
This second volume is different to the first in that it’s structured as a collection of three seemingly unrelated shorter stories. It’s only towards the conclusion of the final story that disparate plot threads are woven together to link them all as part of a single narrative. It’s a fun structure that allows for some completely different viewpoint characters and varied tones. It’s very easy to imagine these as three distinct episodes.
The first story is Double Targets, and is a seemingly simple tale with two main threads — the first follows Tanaka and Sasajima, a couple of residents of one of 2030 Japan’s Refugee Residential Zones. Long-term SAC viewers will be aware of the importance of these locations to the second season’s plot. Fujisaku makes an effort to tie this story’s plot into a later season two episode that he wrote, EXCAVATION, though it’s not essential to this novel, and is mainly for fun. Through a case of mistaken identity, Tanaka and Sasajima are hired by a small-time crime syndicate to perform an assassination. They’re so short on cash, because of Japan’s punitive rules on unregistered workers, that they feel little choice but to accept the job. Fujisaku’s description of the corrupt, bureaucratic hell in which unwanted citizens languish is both deeply horrifying, and sadly convincing.
Our second story thread concerns Major Kusanagi and Section 9 who scramble to prevent an apparent assassination attempt on their boss Daisuke Aramaki. Ishikawa gets his chance to shine as information warfare specialist, leading the would-be-assassins on a merry dance. There’s a humorous twist in the tail that upends the readers’ expectations very nicely. We also learn about somewhat suspicious government minister Shuzo Kinoshita, whose clandestine dealings will become important later.
The next section is titled First Love, Last Love, and focuses on the naive and funny AI-driven Tachikoma mobile tanks. In this story, one of the Tachikomas is chosen to spend a week with Nana Kirishima, Traffic Division Officer of the Niihama Prefectural Police Ports Precinct. Tachikoma gets a nice new stripy paint job, their frontal grenade launcher is replaced with a megaphone, and a flashing light is placed on their carapace. We read everything from Tachikoma’s perspective as they relate their exciting adventures to their comrades.
Just like in the TV show, the Tachikomas are used to explore the boundaries of machine sentience, of experience and personality, the importance and ephemerality of memories, and the development of artificial emotions and attachments. It’s mostly very light-hearted, and I could hear their tinny high-pitched voices in my head when reading the Tachikomas’ dialogue. Fujisaku apparently added this story because fan feedback on the first volume was that he’s not featured the Tachikomas enough!
Finally, the third story is Revenge of the Cold Machines, and it covers a lot of material very familiar to loyal SAC viewers. We’ve got corporate skullduggery, heavily overpowered cyborg-bodied bad guys, a great deal of physical action mixed with digital warfare, and a twisty-turny plot filled with secrets, betrayals and violent reckoning. Some of the bodily mutilations meted out on the secondary characters are particularly stomach-churning, at times even approaching existential horror. I think if cyberbrains ever become real, you can count me the hell out.
Despite being the most eventful of the stories, Revenge of the Cold Machines was probably my least favourite, probably because of the extended action scenes that I don’t think translate as well to print as they can be effectively depicted in animation. The sweet coda where everything is contextualised is a nice touch, and does make the whole thing very worthwhile reading.
Much like the first book, this is a fairly slim volume at only just over 200 pages, so only took at most a couple of hours for me to read. It’s biggest attraction is that it gives us three more SAC stories that fit very well with the tone and content of the first season, with the bonus of it also complementing season two’s themes of refugee discontent. If you love SAC, especially the loveable blue Tachikomas, definitely seek this one out. Roll on volume three!
Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Revenge Of The Cold Machines
Author: Junichi Fujisaku
Translator: Carmellia Nieh
Based on: Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
JP publisher: Tokuma Shoten
JP publication date: 2004
US publisher: Dark Horse
US publication date: 26th September 2006
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN 13: 978–1595820730
