Ghost in the Shell Origami Crane

GIG 10

At it's core Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a story about it's characters. Because of this every major plot the show has to offer at one point has revolved around one individual or the whole main cast themselves. The stand alone episodes and the disbandment of Section 9 in season one are cases in point.

The staff behind this series did all this because they wanted to add humanization into a world set in a future dominated by cyborgs and sometimes remote ways of life. It serves to relay to a audience of the present that even though we don't live in a world similar to theirs we can still connect to it. To summarize what I'm saying here… Threw the empathy they instill by focusing on characters we can understand the world the story inhabits.

To further this in a interview with the Director, Kenji Maiyama, he admitted to working a lot on convincing the other members of the staff that the show should have a art setting more similar to something we have today. He wanted the show to feel like something that was right next door to us in the present. You can tell in the other interviews on the DVDs that the other staff members put a lot of effort into sticking with this idea too. Even the Japanese voice actor for Motoko Kusanagi commented and picked up on the humanization efforts they put into the series.

For a prime example of this humanization effort lets take a closer look at one of the episodes primary focused on characterization. Episode eleven of season two starts out with new recruits to season 9 training by trying to tail Kusanagi. We learned in earlier episodes section 9 is made up of the best of the best special ops people. So it's of no surprise that Kusanagi is easily able to shake off the tails. The episode starts to get interesting though when she stumbles across a alleyway and a ball bounces down into her hand. From here she starts to notice that something is wrong; she assumes it's a hack done on her.

After wondering around a bit she comes across a mysterious colorful doorway that opens up into a antique storage building of some sort. There she finds two prosthetic bodies with one of them oddly looking like a younger version of her's. Then a older woman notices her and explains that she's the one that watches over the items left in her possession by others. Furthermore she revels that the items themselves are mostly important external memories to their owners.

Noticing the late hour the older woman excuses herself and closes up the place. Kusanagi remarks as she exits the shop that the odd feeling she got was a sense of nostalgia. The question left for us the audience is, nostalgia of what? Up to this point in the series we've learned only a little bit about Kusanagi's past threw others and their run ins with her. We know so far she's amazingly smart, great on the battle field, and genuinely cares for the other Section 9 members. Besides that we know next to nothing about the past or back story of the woman known simply as, "Motoko Kusanagi." So again I ask, what is such a mysterious person reminiscing about?

The episode begins to answer the question when Kusanagi returns to the mysterious woman's building and asks her about the two prosthetic bodies. The woman begins the tale of a six year old boy who was in a terrible plane accident. No one ended up surviving the crash besides the boy and a young girl who was in the seat next to him. The girl was in a coma though and the boy was paralyzed except for this left arm. This left the boy to come to terms with the crash and think of the girl beside him as his only friend in the world. Over time the boy started to fold paper cranes for the girl in hopes that she'll one day wake up.

Kusanagi interrupts the story and says that something bad happens to the girl then. The older woman nods as she continues the tale and explains how the girls condition took a turn for the worst. The boy was told then after the girl was pulled from the room that the girl was somewhere far away now. Two years passed and the boy spoke to no one while he continued to fold paper cranes. One day a doctor visits the boy and tells him that he can offer the boy a prosthetic body that can give him back the ability to live normally. The boy didn't reply. The older woman explains that he felt his only duty in life then was to fold origami cranes for the little girl that left.

Soon enough though the doctor returns with another little girl who successfully undergone the prosthetic procedure. They hope the little girl can convince the boy to undergo the transition as well. She visited the boy everyday then on and one day the boy asks the girl if she can fold origami cranes and if she could he wouldn't mind getting a prosthetic body too.

The girl couldn't fold the cranes properly due to not having the best fine motor control over her body. After promising that one day she'll fold cranes for him she leaves and never returns again. The older woman remarks that the girl was indeed the one that supposedly died in the hospital room and she wonders why she never told that to the boy.

The boy makes up his mind that day though and goes threw the hard rehabilitation process while reminding himself about the little girl's strength to get threw it. At the end of the tale the older woman replies to Kusanagi while she tries to fold a origami crane with a wrapper that the boy never found the girl even though he found her prosthetic body. Then she says that the boy, who by this point has grown into a man, put the body in her care before he was shipped out over seas in the war. He never returned after that and the older woman assumes he's dead. Kusanagi looks saddened over the assumption.

While taking her leave she drops the crane she folded with the prosthetic bodies and remarks that the girl must still be searching for the first boy she ever loved. From this I can only conclude that Kusanagi was the little girl in the tale. This marks the first full insight we get into her personal life and it's honestly amazing. The tale of the two plane crash survivors is one of perseverance and the will to keep working at something.

Kusanagi grew into her prosthetic body and she became one of the best users in the world. She also leaned how to finally fold cranes properly too. This tells us that Kusanagi is a stubborn woman who above all has unshakable determination. This pillar stone of her character comes into question though when its reveled later in the season that the main villain, Kuze, is that boy she knew so long ago. That's a topic to further discuss another time though.

From this episode alone you can see that the series holds characterization and humanization in high regard. They showed how the bad ass and untouchable at times Kusanagi they portrayed up until now could also still just be a human who feels sadness while reminiscing about a first love. In other more simpler words, they made Kusanagi a relatable person with relatable feelings.

Episodes and tales like this one can be found all threw out the show and that's what makes it so great. This series proves that you can have cool bad ass cyborg characters from the future and still give them relatability to us in the present day… This is also why I think the story has persisted threw the years as a anime legend.

-Kurisu Rox

Ghost in the Shell Origami Crane

Source: https://kurisurox.wordpress.com/2017/09/06/ghost-in-the-shell-humanization/