Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd Gig Review

Continuing my look my look at the Ghost in the Shell franchise I have finished the second season of Stand Alone Complex. I actually finished a while before I made this review, but I got the DVDs and wanted to watch all the interviews with the show's director Kenji Kamiyama since they gave some interesting insight into their intent, for better and for worse.

In terms of overall story this season was much better structured than the first. That is not insult to the first season, it was good, but this one was better. Season 1 took some time for its main story to get going and had a number of episodes that while interesting, didn't add to the main story. In 2nd GIG, almost every episode adds something to the overarching story even if it's a stand alone episode. Even for the few episodes that aren't connect to the main arch, like the attempts to arrest the terrorist in Europe, we still get some interesting looks into our characters' pasts that fleshes them out much better than the last season. Like before, we got plenty of unexpected and clever twists that through me for a loop.

Naturally Motoko was the most interesting. We got to see her childhood which explains part of why in the first season she was so angry men whose crimes would forced people into relying on prosthetic bodies to survive. But Batou also had interesting moment with the episode in Europe when his usual stern demeanor is thrown off by a little girl unaware he father is a terrorist. Togusa showed more signs of his problems being the young and inexperienced one, but as some new recruits were brought in he started moving out of it.

I was glad to see the Tachikomas return. They were as hilarious as ever, which made their philosophical discussions all the more shocking. While the show looked like it could have gone without them, I don't feel it would have ever been the same without the little AI tanks.

There is an idiom that a story is only as good as its villains. That idiom is wrong and should be abandoned, just look at Inside Out, it didn't even need a villain. That said, it helped the story having actual antagonists to focus on with the introduction of Goda and Kuze. The first season had an interesting plot with the mystery behind the Laughing Man, but we didn't have a real antagonist for most of it when the conspiracy in the government was unveiled, the characters we got were forgettable evil bureaucrats who didn't even get much screen time.

In the interviews, Kamiyama said that Goda was meant to be the character everyone hated and Kuze was the one meant to be admired, despite being an antagonist. They definitely succeeded in that regard. Goda's smug attitude and design made him an obvious villain, and the more we saw of him, the more of bastard he showed himself to be. Yet he managed to more than the run of the mill evil mastermind with his interesting scheme of creating a conflict and a hero to change Japan. Well hero in his terms at least seeing as the "heroes" he created were a bunch of homicidal terrorists, but hero is a relative term, just look at politics today.

The part of Goda's character I don't get is that he's supposed to be all the worst traits of the audience and humanity to make him all the more despicable. I don't see any of myself in this guy so I don't get how that's supposed to work. I don't even think the most devoted Trump supporters would see any themselves in a character whose evil plan involves nuking refugees. Is this a Japanese cultural thing I'm just not getting?

Above all else, Goda succeeded in the main goal the show intended for him, being an obstacle that took the initiative from Section 9. The show's creators noted how Section 9 always had the initiative in the first season, and when they did there wasn't much that could stop them. Goda was so crafty that he managed to keep them on the defensive for most of the season.

Kuze lived up to the idea of being the hero the audience could admire. He's smart, leveled headed and selfless. In a more black and white story he could have easily been the hero, but Second GIG's world isn't that simple. Worse even though he breaks free from Goda's virus he still ends up playing right into his evil scheme.

Kuze's other goal, going beyond shells and existing in the net was a cool way to bring back the ending from the manga and the movie. For a while I was expecting the season to end that way, but the show still had another surprise left with the epic sacrifice of the Tachikomas. Instead they did something more interesting by leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Kuze succeeded.

Aside from Kuze, Kayabuki was for me the most sympathetic character for the season. She's set up as a figurehead for a new administration and has a cabinet that's plotting behind her back, and the show's director through the possibility that she was selected to take the fall for Goda's scheme before she even got into office. As such it was very satisfying to see Kayabuki grow more of a spine over the course of the season and get more active, even ordering the assassination of her tormentor Goda in one my favorite villain death scenes.

Kamiyama saw refugees as a universal issue across the globe and managed to handle it tactfully, showing how the minorities are also capable of terrible things when pushed hard enough, and that such problems don't have easy solutions. But, I can't talk about this show's politics without addressing something that bugged me throughout the season. This Japanese series commenting about American foreign policy, specifically during the Bush administration. I don't support the wars started under Bush, but in my personal opinion, it's hard for me to not feel insulted when Japanese show decides to complain about it when Japan's government has for decades downplayed or denied the atrocities it committed in World War II. The show doesn't paint that favorable a picture of Japan's government either, but what we see of America the prominently featured third of America paints it as little different from Imperialist Japan.

Now to be fair, the show doesn't paint the entirety of America this way. This leads into what I feel is only thing that consider a real flaw; relying on knowledge of other works by the original manga's creator Masamune Shirow. If you were confused by the mention of how three different countries with label of America on them in the show, it's because its in a world where the USA split into three nations, the American Empire that serves as antagonist being comprised of the red states. The show doesn't explain that and expects the audience to just know that. Likewise one of our supporting characters Proto, just out of nowhere turning to be some humanoid robot that was never mentioned, and not realizing it? That was also written under the assumption the audience read Shirow's other manga.

All that said, those were just personal problems for me. The season's story was gripping enough that I could enjoy despite the anti-Bush rants, and the details missed from Shirow's other manga were relatively minor points in the larger story. It's not like BlazBlue where the writers assumed you familiarized yourself with every piece of its spinoff media. SAC is not only my favorite incarnation of the Ghost in the Shell franchise, it is now my favorite anime behind Full Metal Alchemist, and despite it the franchise having origins rooted in Japanese culture, this adaption's political and social commentary still managed to resonate with me.