History Headscratchers / GhostInTheShell

**** In fact, if you watch the scene where they're singing and have rerouted their satellite to intercept the missile, one of the Tachikomas labels a large "file" with "TACHIKOMA'S ALL MEMORY": imgur.com/ZW1DJ.png

*** It would be impossible to kill a computer with an internet signal that way in real life, but obviously cyberbrains are different. With a real computer you might try to destroy it by sending the hard drive wild and damaging instructions that might cause it wear out a little early, but with a cyberbrain that can control a person's senses, all you have to do is transmit an experience so intense that blood-pressure causes death in moments. Even so, it still bugs me that your cyberbrain can only be fried that way when you are trying to pass a barrier and not any other time.

** I'd rather like to know where she gets all of the cash for the cars, penthouse apartments, weapons, and technological stuff - how much can a police officer, even one working for a super-secret branch of the Home Affairs Ministry, possibly make? Certainly not enough for three or four fully furnished safe houses in prime locations, not to mention the spare bodies and the well-stocked garage of the house that got trashed at the end of the first season of SAC. SSS implies that she ''rebuilt and restored her own fleet of tachikomas'', for goodness' sake. Bank heist? Payoff from a huge lawsuit? Or does she just do really, really high-profile consultant work on the side or something?

*** She's arranged safe houses and assets for herself for years before leaving Section 9 - she may not even have legally bought those properties. They might have just dissapeared from all the files, and the original owners "forgot" that they ever owned them in the first place. As for the Tachikomas, this troper is pretty sure that their physical forms were just taken from the Section 9 storage - they weren't destroyed at all in the previous season, after all. She just found and preserved their minds.

*** It would be impossible to kill a computer with an internet signal that way in real life, but obviously cyberbrains are different. With a real computer you might try to destroy it by sending the hard drive wild and damaging instructions that might cause it wear out a little early, but with a cyberbrain that can control a person's senses, all you have to do is transmit an experience so intense that blood-pressure causes death in moments. Even so, it still bugs me that your cyberbrain can only be fried that way when you are trying to pass a barrier and not any other time.

*** Except that brain-loading is highly questionable and risky activity in this universe, and has never been done succesfully. Ghost-Dubbing is as close as they can get, and that's known to create an inferior copy, and kill the original. The chances are that the Major knew that the decoy would be killed, as the Japanese government at the time couldn't allow the team's leader escape alive.

* That brings up another Bugs Me - [[spoiler: How long was the Major remote-controlling her robotic body? Since the end of “Scandal” when she talks to the Chief? Or did she not use it until that apartment scene in “Barrage” where her entire arm (and a lot else ;)) is exposed and you can see that it isn’t severed? If she wears her longsleeve overcoat from the end scene in “Scandal” onward – and it looks like she does – then she was probably covering up the seam and the remote-control swap was probably not made until the apartment scene. Looking back on the ending scene from “Scandal,” I noticed she hesitates significantly and smiles a little when Aramaki asks how her new body feels, which leads me to believe she hadn’t been swapped into it yet and that she was, in fact, using her original body.]]

* How deep [[spoiler: did that “fake out” go? How much was Aramaki in cahoots with the raid? Did everybody know? Or had the Chief simply given them the order, “Stay alive!” and everybody made stuff up as they went? (And even though their efforts to escape were all “real” and they all got legitimately arrested in the process, Aramaki’s influence kept them protected and got them out?) His surprise at the PM's decision to go through with the raid to save face really seemed to surprise Aramaki, but he also discussed it as though it was something he'd carefully planned.]]

** Did [[spoiler: Batou already know, and he was faking that agonized yelling? Or did he not learn he was being duped until later? (I want to believe the latter.) There is the theory that Batou was privy to the plan because he was able to see the sniper chopper in front of the sun, yet he didn’t call out immediately when he saw the laser dot on the Major. However, attacking out of the sun is a battle-tested tactic for blinding the enemy, and even Batou’s cyber-eyes could have been overwhelmed by the bright light. Thermal scanning could’ve been defeated by the sun’s heat, too. He realized… ''something'' was not quite right, and he could see ''something'', hence his “Hmmm…”, but he didn’t ''quite'' put two and two together until he saw the sniper dot, at which point it was too late.]]

** Because it's incredibly rare occurrence, like bank-account hacking in real life. Billions of people have brain implants, but only some thousands ever get hacked. The stories just happen to concentrate around the people who get hacked, since there wouldn't be exitement otherwise. It's a bit like asking why people drive car, even though they can die in a traffic accident.

*** They can - a firewall that will ''kill'' the offender who tries to dive into other people's brains without permission. That's why Ghosthackers are incredibly rare - throughout the series there's less than five individuals capable of of hacking people's Ghosts, the Major included, and only a few more who can just break into the artifical implants. That's not common in the show's world - it's only common for the protagonists, because their unit exists to counter such cyberterrorism.

** I'd like to add a little detail to the brain-hacking topic: in the first episode of SAC2 (for example, it happens in more situations), the Major hacks one of the terrorists who was in autist mode. How? Well, the ciber-brain was closed, true, but he still had ears and eyes. That means the only true "unhackable" would be... someone completely isolated inside his own mind, without any way of receiving data (or pain). For computers, it's quite easy to see: if you close all the ports, you cannot surf the net... but there are still the USB ports, the keyboard, the CD-reader and (for the really old or complete), the floppy disk. There is, after all, a reason because all that important info was stored in paper the first time we see the document with the Muray Vaccine receptors in the fist season.

*** In the SAC universe, literally everything is networked together, since society values convenience over security. It's not completely implausible for master hackers like the Major and the Laughing Man to manipulate a person's artificial senses. Also, attack barriers apprently work by sending a signal back that fries whatever is trying to hack it. Since most people use their own cyberbrains for hacking, they die when their cyberbrain gets fried by the barrier. Of course, there are ways to counter it, since the Major seems to have equipment that keeps her brain from getting fried when she hits an attack barrier.

* The way the Major's rank is left hanging in Stand Alone Complex. In Ep. 14 (POKER FACE: Beware the left eye.) she's on a UN peacekeeping expedition in Mexico. The apparent leader of the squad she's with is an AE Sergeant. Batou holds the rank of Sergeant too, and Ishikawa calls him a ''rookie''. He's a ztyping ''ranger''. He's ''Special Forces''. Question is, what's the Major doing there? If both Ishikawa and Kusanagi outrank Batou, they should logically outrank the AE NCO too. Now, Ishikawa says they just ''call'' her "The Major", but it's not made clear if that's because she's not actually a major, just really damn good, or because she ''is'' a major and a really damn good one, so they refer to her explicitly by title. (As they do chronologically later in the series, when she ''does'' hold the rank of major.) Now, looking at her uniform during that episode, she doesn't have the rank insignia that Batou has, and her collar flaps ''change pattern'' during the episode; At one point they look like two chevrons ('''>>''') but at another time they look like a chevron and a star. ('''> * ''') If she's a corporal, like the concept art for the episode says, that's two chevrons. The chevron + star insignia doesn't exist in the JGSDF. If she's a major, it should be line-line-star ('''||* ''') She could also be a Sergeant Major; line-line-triangle-star ('''|||>* ''') which looks a bit like '''> * ''' but not very much. There's also the issue that if she's a Major at that point, she joined the JGSDF in 2005-ish, but she's supposedly ''born'' around 2001. (Kuze was, according to the art book, 31 years old in 2032) I know I'm overthinking this and the writers probably just didn't think to actually make her MysteriousPast ''consistent'', but... IJBM!

*** In the SAC universe, literally everything is networked together, since society values convenience over security. It's not completely implausible for master hackers like the Major and the Laughing Man to manipulate a person's artificial senses. Also, attack barriers apprently work by sending a signal back that fries whatever is trying to hack it. Since most people use their own cyberbrains for hacking, they die when their cyberbrain gets fried by the barrier. Of course, there are ways to counter it, since the Major seems to have equipment that keeps her brian from getting fried when she hits an attack barrier.

**** Definately not. This troper knows examples of small towns nearly going bankrupt and forced to seek extra funding from the government when one of their residents gets a rare, life-threatening condition that is still treatable. Public healthcare is extremely caring, especially to the most serious conditions. It's those whose conditions aren't deemed serious enough for significant treatment who can suffer from public healthcare, not those who would die without treatment. This is a mixed case of DidNotDoTheResearch and pure propaganda to the Americans.

*** I don't think that's exactly right. The bad mooks were the narc squad, but in eps 24 and 25, the guys hunting are the Umibozu. Those guys are just military black ops -- basically the military equivalent of Section Nine and they are working for the Prime Minister, not the Big Bad, with Aramaki's consent. Worse yet, the Prime Minister sets the whole thing up as a PR stunt to help him in the next elections, and Aramaki goes along with it. It's really [[NotSoDifferent not that different]] from the scam at the heart of season one - at least two Umibozu guys and three Taichkomas die in a battle where both sides are fighting for a lie, and it's frankly just luck that more people didn't die - and all so the PM can try to get a few more votes in the next election.

* Just a small one: How in the world does Kuze get his knife out of that sheath?

** They aren't - ''Stand Alone Complex'' is a completely different story from the first two movies, with some notable changes made to the personalities of a few of the main characters, and ''Solid State Society'' isn't a third movie, but a movie continuation of ''Stand Alone Complex''. What they ''do'' have in common, however, is the general word timeline of the Shirow-verse (WWIII happened in 1996, WWIV happened in 2020, the same countries are allied/merged together, etc.)

** They aren't - ''Stand Alone Complex'' is in a totally different timeline from the first two movies, with some notable changes made to the personalities of a few of the main characters, and ''Solid State Society'' isn't a third movie, but a movie continuation of ''Stand Alone Complex''. What they ''do'' have in common, however, is the general word timeline of the Shirow-verse (WWIII happened in 1996, WWIV happened in 2020, the same countries are allied/merged together, etc.)