Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex S1E13: Not Equal
- Location
- Patriarchova
At long last, we return to the dissonantly upbeat cyberpunk-ish world of Major Kusanagi and her colleagues in Section 9. This is the second of the two episodes commissioned by @toxinvictory. It's quite a jump from the pilot to episode 13, but from what I understand this show draws an X Files-like distinction between myth arc ("complex") and self contained ("stand alone") episodes, the latter of which can be watched in more or less any order. So, let's suffer through the terrible CGI intro and check episode 13 out!
The episode opens in Section 9 commander Aramaki's office, where he's showing Kusanagi and her team some surveillance photos. Hidden within the crowd is a woman they both recognize as Aka Tokura, the daughter of an electronics tycoon who was captured by terrorists sixteen years ago. She doesn't appear to have aged much since then, but that's because she was one of the world's first nearly-full-body-replacement cyborgs. Apparently, her father's company was a pioneer in human cybernetics technology, and she underwent the process mostly just to promote their products.
She doesn't look all that happy about it, does she? Dad is seeming like a really nice guy.
Aka's highly publicized transformation brought her to the attention of a terror organization called the New World Brigade, who are apparently the local branch of a global network called the Human Liberation Front. Those names don't tell me that much about their ideology, but the phrases "new world" and "human liberation" suggests some sort of anti-traditionalist left wing type deal. Or not; it could be like the National Socialist German Workers' Party putting a bunch of contradictory buzzwords in their name to confuse people (yes, the Nazis actually named themselves like that on purpose). At any rate, the NWB captured Aka shortly after her reconstruction. The authorities raided many of their safehouses, but couldn't find the girl. Years based, and the case remained unsolved. Now, this photo of Aka was taken aboard a ship not far off the coast of Japan, and she appears to be alive, intact, and just sort of blending in with the other passengers.
Well, all the pieces have been set up for Aka to have run away and joined the NWB willingly, while pretending it was a kidnapping in the hopes of getting ransom money or sending a scary message out or whatever. I doubt SAC is going to be quite that predictable, though.
Ah, okay now, Aramaki just added some more key information. This wasn't just a shipboard security camera that happened to catch her in a crowd. The ship is a decommissioned environmental cleanup vessel that's fallen into NWB hands. Those aren't passengers in the photo, they're terrorists. Another agency was investigating this cell, and managed to take these photos from aboard the floating base and also obtain DNA evidence confirming that it's Aka. Not sure how they could have gotten a DNA sample. Maybe there was a condom laying around.
That does raise the question of how much of her body is still flesh, of course. Maybe the parts of her that aren't synthetic just happen to have aged really, really well? I know I've met thirty-somethings who could pass for teenagers. Hell, I've been told I'm one of them.
Anyway, the reason Section 9 is getting involved now is because the other agency lost contact with its infiltration team just shortly after this data was transmitted. So far, Section 9's job seems to basically be playing troubleshooter for other government agencies, swooping in to recover operations that someone else has bungled. That definitely fits with the way we saw the other bigwigs regarding Aramaki back in the pilot, with that mixture of resentment and grudging respect. So, Kusanagi's team need to do their own infiltration now, and recover both the missing spies and Aka tokura herself if possible. Presumably, the NWB has a history of just blowing their own bases up or something instead of surrendering if raided overtly.
Also, I apparently misunderstood what was meant by "a radiation scrubber off the coast." It's a platform, not a ship.
Jump straight ahead to the infiltration. The team makes an aquatic entrance, coming up underneath the platform and climbing up through its seawater-cleaning machinery. Worth noting is that Kusanagi does apparently still need to breathe, as she's wearing a futuristic SCUBA mask just like the others. Dunno if that means that her lungs themselves are still organic, or if she just doesn't have any built in device that can respirate dissolved oxygen for the benefit of whatever fleshy bits she might still have.
Also, I really dig the platform interior. The artists did a great job capturing the look of a long unused geoengineering-scale machine. Got a real spooky industrial-gothic look to it.
Kusanagi and Co clear the machinery-filled lower level of the platform, and confirm that nobody's been down here in quite some time. Just as they hoped, the NWB seems to be content to inhabit the upper habitation and surface vessel docking levels. With Kusanagi's confirmation, a submarine captained by Aramaki himself pulls in and docks inside the platform's central intake cavity.
I didn't take Aramaki for the type to appear on the field in person. Then again, it's entirely possible that the terrorists can detect longranged communications (explaining how they caught the last team just after they sent that transmission), in which case Section 9 needs to bring its C&C hub with it on this op. Anyway, it's a pretty cool submarine. And, now that they're in, its sensors are detecting one of the first team member's transponders active near the top of the platform. Hopefully, that means that they're still alive. A small army of supplementary troops emerge from the sub, and Kusanagi and her squad begin leading the way upward. This force also includes some very large and heavily armed spider robots with the voices and personalities of young children.
Because...um...Aperture Science gave the Japanese government a discount offer or something, I guess?
Kawaiiderbot wants to blast through the bulkheads on their way up, and is childishly despondent when Kusanagi orders it to just lift itself and a few passengers up using its grappling hooks. Poor kawaiiderbot. As Kusanagi and the fully organic guy from the pilot whose name I can't remember ride the cutie upstairs, Meaty asks her if she thinks this might be an ambush. And yeah, this does seem kinda fishy, doesn't it? Only one transponder still active, but not responding to hails, at the very top of the station? An environment that forces Aramaki's forces to ascend more or less vertically, potentially leaving room for them to be cut off from their submarine (which would be very valuable for a terrorist organization to seize)? Yeah, this is either about to go really really well, or really really badly.
This topic leads to another question, about whether or not the person in that photo actually is Aka Tokura. It couldn't be a synthetic body designed to look like hers; as Kusanagi explains, the Human Liberation Front has zero tolerance for human cybernetics (guess they're not anti-traditionalist like I thought, then. More reactionary than anything else). Meaty suggests that they could have cloned her, which would explain both the identical appearance and the matching genetics. Kusanagi, understandably, has trouble parsing exactly why they would bother doing that, and he doesn't have a good answer. I kinda didn't think he would, honestly.
Cut to the platform's upper deck. The squatters seem to have set up an open air market of sorts for themselves, and two of the Section 9 members have changed into civvies and are somehow managing to blend in despite being followed by a shiny new government-standard kawaiiderbot. Which a stallkeeper offers to buy one of the arms of, in exchange for some collector's item turn-of-the-century electronics.
I guess this place isn't strictly a NWB base so much as an oceanic shantytown that they've just sort of insinuated themselves into. Sailors come here to do a bit of extralegal but not illegal trade in international waters, etc. So not everyone here is a member of the NWB, but many of them are likely sympathizers, and an unknown percentage are actual factual members.
Even so, these two are NOT doing a good job of not attracting attention. Even if cutesy murder robots really are something that just anyone could be walking around with, it isn't long before they start talking about the transponder signal they're chasing really loudly right in front of the not-remotely-suspicious-no-sirry electronics merchant. Le sigh. Somehow, miraculously, they manage to make it to the shack near the station's apex where the signal is coming from unimpeded.
I guess the rest of the forces are just waiting below deck for the signal, then? IDK. The cuts are getting kind of confusing, in terms of when things are happening in relation to each other. It SEEMED like Kusanagi, Meaty, and their kawaiiderbot were leading the ascent, but now these two are ahead of them doing recon I guess? IDK.
Inside the shack, they find what I assume is one of the original spy team members, sitting on the floor and trembling as he holds a pistol to his own head and repeats the words "erase them! get them out!" over and over again.
Has he been doing this for the entire two days or so since they lost contact, or only since Section 9 came within range? Spooky.
They disarm the guy for his own safety, and sedate him when he's unable to calm down. While under partial sedation, he's able to answer a few questions (the other three members of his team are dead, the terrorists are being led by "the woman" who may or may not be Aka, and she did...something...to him resulting in his current state). They aren't able to get much more, but a bag in his possession contains some women's bedroom and bathroom items, which leads them to suspect that he may have gotten closer to the cell leader than he let on, intentionally or otherwise. Before we cut away, we see that their very, very bad infiltration job has finally caught up to them, and an armed man is now watching them and sneaking up behind.
Back down in the grimy underdeck, Kusanagi, Meaty, and their own bot finally run into a patrolling militiaman. Kusanagi quickly subdues him, and asks where Aka Tokura is. The militant refuses to answer, instead just laughing at her. Kusanagi threatens to torture him, which I think is just a bluff, but is distracted by the sound of gunfire from the tower where we just saw the other two. She and Meaty are forced to break cover and rush upward to support their team, leaving their kawaiiderbot (which Kusanagi calls "Tachikoma") to guard the captive.
The sound doesn't lead them to exactly the same place, though, fortunately. Instead, Kusanagi and Meaty find a control room where two people - one of whom looks like Aka, but it's hard to tell in this lighting - are struggling over some object.
The other team members radio in to tell Kusanagi about the situation with the rambling rescuee, and they don't sound like they're under fire, so yeah that gunshot didn't come from the shack they're in. For now, they suspect that the surviving spy's neural cybernetics are infected with some kind of insanity-causing malware. Reasonable enough suspicion, for now. He also warns Kusanagi that he suspects "Aka" may have been the source of the infection, so she should think twice before attempting any sort of direct interface with her. Also reasonable.
And...oh, I'm an idiot. The gunshot they heard was when the survivor fired off his handgun, while they were grappling it out of his hand. Nevermind, no one's shot at anyone else yet, though of course Kusanagi had no way of knowing that. I guess this control room was just on the way to the source of the noise, then, and they luckily happened into this other scene? The location cuts in this episode continue to be not good.
Anyway, that is indeed Aka who's wrestling a bag of something out of one of her minion's hands. After succeeding, she gives this egotistical speech about how dare she try to abandon her, yada yada, until Kusanagi and Meaty use their personal cloaks to sneak up and disarm her. Kusanagi grabs Aka and looks at her neck port as she considers mindlinking with her despite the warnings, but she sees something there that makes her gasp in shock. Meanwhile, the other person who Aka was just abusing - an old woman - looks up at Meaty and tells him that "they've got the wrong girl."
At that moment though, the New World Brotherhood catches up to the two in the shack, and simultaneously sweep the lower level where they find the tachikoma guarding their captured brother. Both positions are now under heavy fire, and the rest of the Section 9 troops from down below are going loud in a frenzied counter-assault.
A surprisingly brutal firefight ensues, with high powered rounds and explosives practically tearing the platform apart from inside. The NWB warriors are singlemindedly, suicidally brave and ruthless, using the bodies of their own fallen brethren as shields without hesitation, throwing themselves at the enemy in waves regardless of casualties. Something seems seriously not right here. On a brighter note, apparently Tachikomas have an insulated cavity inside of their bodies for search and rescue operations, so that's cool; the other two team members use theirs to stash the babbling spy away for the fight. Tachikomas also seem to have some seriously impressive armor, as they shrug off multiple hits from bullets that are seen doing significant damage to the platform environment. Then again, the platform is a decades-old rustbucket that was already falling apart, so that might not be saying quite as much now that I think about it. The bloodbath continues until reinforcements arrive by air, which combined with attrition finally puts the NWB force on the back foot. Finally, Kusanagi and the rest of her squad are extracted with the old woman who claims to be Aka, the young girl who looks like Aka, and the maleware'd spy in custody. The conventional forces can presumably finish seizing the platform on their own after this point.
Also, during the ride home, young!Aka refers to old!Aka as her mother, which confuses everybody.
They get back to base at around sundown. Apparently, the rest of Section 9's tachikomas are excited to ask the ones that they brought about the mission, and it's a schoolyard bragging session right then and there. Seriously what kind of sick fuck gives a war robot the personality of a cheery six year old kid, what the hell? Are the tachikomas actually sentient? Well, on a more plot critical note, Fleshy comments on the thing that I'd just been thinking as well. Old!Aka is too old. While her "daughter" looks to be around the same age she was when she was captured, she herself looks a hell of a lot more than sixteen years older than that. They also suspect that the spy got his infection not from linking with young!Aka, but from the real older one, and that whatever caused her premature aging might be in its early stages with him. Definitely spooky. We still don't know what Kusanagi saw on the back of the young replica's neck, but I'm starting to suspect that the answer is "nothing." No USB port, unlike nearly all other cyborgs.
She definitely IS a cyborg of some kind, though. We saw her demonstrate some superhuman strength when they were dragging her into the aircraft. So yeah, whatever's going on here, the young copy of Aka isn't just a fully organic clone or whatever.
And...huh. Apparently that's the end. The episode closes on one of the other team members wondering what the hell actually happened here, and Kusanagi saying that the only way to find out for sure is by linking, which isn't exactly safe. And, we never even see what Kusanagi saw on the daughter's neck, so while I have my suspicion I'm really not sure.
That episode didn't turn out to be anywhere near as "stand alone" as I thought. It ends with the mystery entirely unresolved, and with old!Aka who can probably tell them at least some version of the events in custody, but we never see the interview or hear a summary of it. Nor do we find out what else they ended up recovering from the platform, after they finished dealing with the bloodlusted terrorists (or ex-terrorists, perhaps, if they've now been taken over by something). The episode's opening made sure we didn't need any earlier context to understand what was going on, but the ending felt much more like a halfway or two-thirds point than an actual ending. Maybe this is a two-parter monster of the week? I dunno.
Well, aside from that major issue, this episode was pretty engaging all around. Great animation and artwork, especially on the oppressive environment of the half-flooded platform's underbelly, and it put the audience in the proper mood for some transgressive scifi horror like what followed. The tachikomas were a nice comic relief to lighten the mood at key moments, though that lightheartedness kinda gives way to even darker stuff if you apply even a little bit of scrutiny. Seriously, what is up with those things? The action was good, and the unexpected brutality and bloodiness of it made for a very effective "shit gets real" moment.
It did feel a little flat on the character side of things, compared to the pilot. While my failure to pick up on all the team members' names is on me, it didn't help that nobody besides Kusanagi herself got much of a character-establishing moment this time. It was much more plot driven than the pilot, with few real decision points given to the characters once they arrived at the platform. It also doesn't help that Chief Aramaki, who was one of the more interesting characters to follow in the pilot, only got about a minute of total screentime here. I like the detail of him accompanying his troops into the operation site, and the bravery and camaraderie with his underlings this suggests, but other than that he didn't get to do more than just give a generic mission briefing that any suit could have delivered. If this is the beginning of a two-parter, it's possible that the second half might be more character driven.
The other flaw is the confusing location cuts. When did those other two team members move ahead of Kusanagi and Meaty? How did they end up in the control room with the Akas in it while racing to the sound of gunfire coming from the shack? Because of these issues in the buildup, I had trouble figuring out who was where during the following shootout as well, as the platform's layout came across as sort of an indistinct blur.
So, fun episode, and possibly the prelude to some really creepy and disturbing cyberpunk horror stuff, while still more or less retaining the optimistic heroic-forces-of-democracy-prevail-over-techno-authoritarianism tone of the pilot. Well, maybe. Are the tachikomas actually sentient beings with the minds of children being sent into deadly combat? Was Kusanagi actually about to torture that dude with a knife if he didn't give in? Maybe this isn't as morally black and white of a show as I've thought. The setting of an impoverished shantytown built on the ruins of a high tech facility also comes a lot closer to engaging with the usual class conflict themes of traditional cyberpunk, though the story hasn't seemed to do all that much with those themes as of yet.
Still, while it wasn't nearly as good as the pilot on a story level, "Not Equal's" production values and expert pacing make it a mostly enjoyable twenty-two minutes of animation.
The episode opens in Section 9 commander Aramaki's office, where he's showing Kusanagi and her team some surveillance photos. Hidden within the crowd is a woman they both recognize as Aka Tokura, the daughter of an electronics tycoon who was captured by terrorists sixteen years ago. She doesn't appear to have aged much since then, but that's because she was one of the world's first nearly-full-body-replacement cyborgs. Apparently, her father's company was a pioneer in human cybernetics technology, and she underwent the process mostly just to promote their products.
She doesn't look all that happy about it, does she? Dad is seeming like a really nice guy.
Aka's highly publicized transformation brought her to the attention of a terror organization called the New World Brigade, who are apparently the local branch of a global network called the Human Liberation Front. Those names don't tell me that much about their ideology, but the phrases "new world" and "human liberation" suggests some sort of anti-traditionalist left wing type deal. Or not; it could be like the National Socialist German Workers' Party putting a bunch of contradictory buzzwords in their name to confuse people (yes, the Nazis actually named themselves like that on purpose). At any rate, the NWB captured Aka shortly after her reconstruction. The authorities raided many of their safehouses, but couldn't find the girl. Years based, and the case remained unsolved. Now, this photo of Aka was taken aboard a ship not far off the coast of Japan, and she appears to be alive, intact, and just sort of blending in with the other passengers.
Well, all the pieces have been set up for Aka to have run away and joined the NWB willingly, while pretending it was a kidnapping in the hopes of getting ransom money or sending a scary message out or whatever. I doubt SAC is going to be quite that predictable, though.
Ah, okay now, Aramaki just added some more key information. This wasn't just a shipboard security camera that happened to catch her in a crowd. The ship is a decommissioned environmental cleanup vessel that's fallen into NWB hands. Those aren't passengers in the photo, they're terrorists. Another agency was investigating this cell, and managed to take these photos from aboard the floating base and also obtain DNA evidence confirming that it's Aka. Not sure how they could have gotten a DNA sample. Maybe there was a condom laying around.
That does raise the question of how much of her body is still flesh, of course. Maybe the parts of her that aren't synthetic just happen to have aged really, really well? I know I've met thirty-somethings who could pass for teenagers. Hell, I've been told I'm one of them.
Anyway, the reason Section 9 is getting involved now is because the other agency lost contact with its infiltration team just shortly after this data was transmitted. So far, Section 9's job seems to basically be playing troubleshooter for other government agencies, swooping in to recover operations that someone else has bungled. That definitely fits with the way we saw the other bigwigs regarding Aramaki back in the pilot, with that mixture of resentment and grudging respect. So, Kusanagi's team need to do their own infiltration now, and recover both the missing spies and Aka tokura herself if possible. Presumably, the NWB has a history of just blowing their own bases up or something instead of surrendering if raided overtly.
Also, I apparently misunderstood what was meant by "a radiation scrubber off the coast." It's a platform, not a ship.
Jump straight ahead to the infiltration. The team makes an aquatic entrance, coming up underneath the platform and climbing up through its seawater-cleaning machinery. Worth noting is that Kusanagi does apparently still need to breathe, as she's wearing a futuristic SCUBA mask just like the others. Dunno if that means that her lungs themselves are still organic, or if she just doesn't have any built in device that can respirate dissolved oxygen for the benefit of whatever fleshy bits she might still have.
Also, I really dig the platform interior. The artists did a great job capturing the look of a long unused geoengineering-scale machine. Got a real spooky industrial-gothic look to it.
Kusanagi and Co clear the machinery-filled lower level of the platform, and confirm that nobody's been down here in quite some time. Just as they hoped, the NWB seems to be content to inhabit the upper habitation and surface vessel docking levels. With Kusanagi's confirmation, a submarine captained by Aramaki himself pulls in and docks inside the platform's central intake cavity.
I didn't take Aramaki for the type to appear on the field in person. Then again, it's entirely possible that the terrorists can detect longranged communications (explaining how they caught the last team just after they sent that transmission), in which case Section 9 needs to bring its C&C hub with it on this op. Anyway, it's a pretty cool submarine. And, now that they're in, its sensors are detecting one of the first team member's transponders active near the top of the platform. Hopefully, that means that they're still alive. A small army of supplementary troops emerge from the sub, and Kusanagi and her squad begin leading the way upward. This force also includes some very large and heavily armed spider robots with the voices and personalities of young children.
Because...um...Aperture Science gave the Japanese government a discount offer or something, I guess?
Kawaiiderbot wants to blast through the bulkheads on their way up, and is childishly despondent when Kusanagi orders it to just lift itself and a few passengers up using its grappling hooks. Poor kawaiiderbot. As Kusanagi and the fully organic guy from the pilot whose name I can't remember ride the cutie upstairs, Meaty asks her if she thinks this might be an ambush. And yeah, this does seem kinda fishy, doesn't it? Only one transponder still active, but not responding to hails, at the very top of the station? An environment that forces Aramaki's forces to ascend more or less vertically, potentially leaving room for them to be cut off from their submarine (which would be very valuable for a terrorist organization to seize)? Yeah, this is either about to go really really well, or really really badly.
This topic leads to another question, about whether or not the person in that photo actually is Aka Tokura. It couldn't be a synthetic body designed to look like hers; as Kusanagi explains, the Human Liberation Front has zero tolerance for human cybernetics (guess they're not anti-traditionalist like I thought, then. More reactionary than anything else). Meaty suggests that they could have cloned her, which would explain both the identical appearance and the matching genetics. Kusanagi, understandably, has trouble parsing exactly why they would bother doing that, and he doesn't have a good answer. I kinda didn't think he would, honestly.
Cut to the platform's upper deck. The squatters seem to have set up an open air market of sorts for themselves, and two of the Section 9 members have changed into civvies and are somehow managing to blend in despite being followed by a shiny new government-standard kawaiiderbot. Which a stallkeeper offers to buy one of the arms of, in exchange for some collector's item turn-of-the-century electronics.
I guess this place isn't strictly a NWB base so much as an oceanic shantytown that they've just sort of insinuated themselves into. Sailors come here to do a bit of extralegal but not illegal trade in international waters, etc. So not everyone here is a member of the NWB, but many of them are likely sympathizers, and an unknown percentage are actual factual members.
Even so, these two are NOT doing a good job of not attracting attention. Even if cutesy murder robots really are something that just anyone could be walking around with, it isn't long before they start talking about the transponder signal they're chasing really loudly right in front of the not-remotely-suspicious-no-sirry electronics merchant. Le sigh. Somehow, miraculously, they manage to make it to the shack near the station's apex where the signal is coming from unimpeded.
I guess the rest of the forces are just waiting below deck for the signal, then? IDK. The cuts are getting kind of confusing, in terms of when things are happening in relation to each other. It SEEMED like Kusanagi, Meaty, and their kawaiiderbot were leading the ascent, but now these two are ahead of them doing recon I guess? IDK.
Inside the shack, they find what I assume is one of the original spy team members, sitting on the floor and trembling as he holds a pistol to his own head and repeats the words "erase them! get them out!" over and over again.
Has he been doing this for the entire two days or so since they lost contact, or only since Section 9 came within range? Spooky.
They disarm the guy for his own safety, and sedate him when he's unable to calm down. While under partial sedation, he's able to answer a few questions (the other three members of his team are dead, the terrorists are being led by "the woman" who may or may not be Aka, and she did...something...to him resulting in his current state). They aren't able to get much more, but a bag in his possession contains some women's bedroom and bathroom items, which leads them to suspect that he may have gotten closer to the cell leader than he let on, intentionally or otherwise. Before we cut away, we see that their very, very bad infiltration job has finally caught up to them, and an armed man is now watching them and sneaking up behind.
Back down in the grimy underdeck, Kusanagi, Meaty, and their own bot finally run into a patrolling militiaman. Kusanagi quickly subdues him, and asks where Aka Tokura is. The militant refuses to answer, instead just laughing at her. Kusanagi threatens to torture him, which I think is just a bluff, but is distracted by the sound of gunfire from the tower where we just saw the other two. She and Meaty are forced to break cover and rush upward to support their team, leaving their kawaiiderbot (which Kusanagi calls "Tachikoma") to guard the captive.
The sound doesn't lead them to exactly the same place, though, fortunately. Instead, Kusanagi and Meaty find a control room where two people - one of whom looks like Aka, but it's hard to tell in this lighting - are struggling over some object.
The other team members radio in to tell Kusanagi about the situation with the rambling rescuee, and they don't sound like they're under fire, so yeah that gunshot didn't come from the shack they're in. For now, they suspect that the surviving spy's neural cybernetics are infected with some kind of insanity-causing malware. Reasonable enough suspicion, for now. He also warns Kusanagi that he suspects "Aka" may have been the source of the infection, so she should think twice before attempting any sort of direct interface with her. Also reasonable.
And...oh, I'm an idiot. The gunshot they heard was when the survivor fired off his handgun, while they were grappling it out of his hand. Nevermind, no one's shot at anyone else yet, though of course Kusanagi had no way of knowing that. I guess this control room was just on the way to the source of the noise, then, and they luckily happened into this other scene? The location cuts in this episode continue to be not good.
Anyway, that is indeed Aka who's wrestling a bag of something out of one of her minion's hands. After succeeding, she gives this egotistical speech about how dare she try to abandon her, yada yada, until Kusanagi and Meaty use their personal cloaks to sneak up and disarm her. Kusanagi grabs Aka and looks at her neck port as she considers mindlinking with her despite the warnings, but she sees something there that makes her gasp in shock. Meanwhile, the other person who Aka was just abusing - an old woman - looks up at Meaty and tells him that "they've got the wrong girl."
At that moment though, the New World Brotherhood catches up to the two in the shack, and simultaneously sweep the lower level where they find the tachikoma guarding their captured brother. Both positions are now under heavy fire, and the rest of the Section 9 troops from down below are going loud in a frenzied counter-assault.
A surprisingly brutal firefight ensues, with high powered rounds and explosives practically tearing the platform apart from inside. The NWB warriors are singlemindedly, suicidally brave and ruthless, using the bodies of their own fallen brethren as shields without hesitation, throwing themselves at the enemy in waves regardless of casualties. Something seems seriously not right here. On a brighter note, apparently Tachikomas have an insulated cavity inside of their bodies for search and rescue operations, so that's cool; the other two team members use theirs to stash the babbling spy away for the fight. Tachikomas also seem to have some seriously impressive armor, as they shrug off multiple hits from bullets that are seen doing significant damage to the platform environment. Then again, the platform is a decades-old rustbucket that was already falling apart, so that might not be saying quite as much now that I think about it. The bloodbath continues until reinforcements arrive by air, which combined with attrition finally puts the NWB force on the back foot. Finally, Kusanagi and the rest of her squad are extracted with the old woman who claims to be Aka, the young girl who looks like Aka, and the maleware'd spy in custody. The conventional forces can presumably finish seizing the platform on their own after this point.
Also, during the ride home, young!Aka refers to old!Aka as her mother, which confuses everybody.
They get back to base at around sundown. Apparently, the rest of Section 9's tachikomas are excited to ask the ones that they brought about the mission, and it's a schoolyard bragging session right then and there. Seriously what kind of sick fuck gives a war robot the personality of a cheery six year old kid, what the hell? Are the tachikomas actually sentient? Well, on a more plot critical note, Fleshy comments on the thing that I'd just been thinking as well. Old!Aka is too old. While her "daughter" looks to be around the same age she was when she was captured, she herself looks a hell of a lot more than sixteen years older than that. They also suspect that the spy got his infection not from linking with young!Aka, but from the real older one, and that whatever caused her premature aging might be in its early stages with him. Definitely spooky. We still don't know what Kusanagi saw on the back of the young replica's neck, but I'm starting to suspect that the answer is "nothing." No USB port, unlike nearly all other cyborgs.
She definitely IS a cyborg of some kind, though. We saw her demonstrate some superhuman strength when they were dragging her into the aircraft. So yeah, whatever's going on here, the young copy of Aka isn't just a fully organic clone or whatever.
And...huh. Apparently that's the end. The episode closes on one of the other team members wondering what the hell actually happened here, and Kusanagi saying that the only way to find out for sure is by linking, which isn't exactly safe. And, we never even see what Kusanagi saw on the daughter's neck, so while I have my suspicion I'm really not sure.
That episode didn't turn out to be anywhere near as "stand alone" as I thought. It ends with the mystery entirely unresolved, and with old!Aka who can probably tell them at least some version of the events in custody, but we never see the interview or hear a summary of it. Nor do we find out what else they ended up recovering from the platform, after they finished dealing with the bloodlusted terrorists (or ex-terrorists, perhaps, if they've now been taken over by something). The episode's opening made sure we didn't need any earlier context to understand what was going on, but the ending felt much more like a halfway or two-thirds point than an actual ending. Maybe this is a two-parter monster of the week? I dunno.
Well, aside from that major issue, this episode was pretty engaging all around. Great animation and artwork, especially on the oppressive environment of the half-flooded platform's underbelly, and it put the audience in the proper mood for some transgressive scifi horror like what followed. The tachikomas were a nice comic relief to lighten the mood at key moments, though that lightheartedness kinda gives way to even darker stuff if you apply even a little bit of scrutiny. Seriously, what is up with those things? The action was good, and the unexpected brutality and bloodiness of it made for a very effective "shit gets real" moment.
It did feel a little flat on the character side of things, compared to the pilot. While my failure to pick up on all the team members' names is on me, it didn't help that nobody besides Kusanagi herself got much of a character-establishing moment this time. It was much more plot driven than the pilot, with few real decision points given to the characters once they arrived at the platform. It also doesn't help that Chief Aramaki, who was one of the more interesting characters to follow in the pilot, only got about a minute of total screentime here. I like the detail of him accompanying his troops into the operation site, and the bravery and camaraderie with his underlings this suggests, but other than that he didn't get to do more than just give a generic mission briefing that any suit could have delivered. If this is the beginning of a two-parter, it's possible that the second half might be more character driven.
The other flaw is the confusing location cuts. When did those other two team members move ahead of Kusanagi and Meaty? How did they end up in the control room with the Akas in it while racing to the sound of gunfire coming from the shack? Because of these issues in the buildup, I had trouble figuring out who was where during the following shootout as well, as the platform's layout came across as sort of an indistinct blur.
So, fun episode, and possibly the prelude to some really creepy and disturbing cyberpunk horror stuff, while still more or less retaining the optimistic heroic-forces-of-democracy-prevail-over-techno-authoritarianism tone of the pilot. Well, maybe. Are the tachikomas actually sentient beings with the minds of children being sent into deadly combat? Was Kusanagi actually about to torture that dude with a knife if he didn't give in? Maybe this isn't as morally black and white of a show as I've thought. The setting of an impoverished shantytown built on the ruins of a high tech facility also comes a lot closer to engaging with the usual class conflict themes of traditional cyberpunk, though the story hasn't seemed to do all that much with those themes as of yet.
Still, while it wasn't nearly as good as the pilot on a story level, "Not Equal's" production values and expert pacing make it a mostly enjoyable twenty-two minutes of animation.
written
) in case they'd have to kill stowaways to protect the fuel supply. Basically, the intended tragedy becomes a sick farce, and the intended message about the ruthless uncaringness of the laws of nature instead comes across as a satire of institutional callousness and malfeasance.
