Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 S2, Episode 6: N-POWER

Batou leads a team to recover Togusa in Old Tokyo. Motoko and Section 9 deal with a hijacked nuclear submarine.

Episode 18 – “N-POWER / How to Build an Independent Nation”

Hmm.

Ghost in the Shell fell into a bad habit from last season. The fully CGI environment fools the audience into thinking everything we see is happening. We already can’t trust what Togusa sees, but the art direction doesn’t add atmospheric effects. We need cues on when he is being fooled. Is it a directorial choice? That’s too subtle. I lean toward laziness.

That’s why I can’t believe Kanami’s appearance and Togusa’s entire chase sequence either. Togusa recognized Kanami from Takashi’s memories, but why would her character act like a post-human with parkour skills? And all the N members who chased Togusa instantly disappeared when a Tachikoma caught the falling Section 9 detective. The scene felt like Ghost in the Shell bolted it on as a narrative device for the sole purpose of reuniting Togusa with his Section 9 comrades.

We might have had a plot point that matters. If it turns out later that Takashi has independent subroutines running in his post-human brain or that Takashi manufactured the scene for Togusa to push him out of N safely. But Ghost in the Shell didn’t add cutaway reaction shots to Takashi or Kanami after Togusa’s chase scene ended. I would love to be proven wrong.

Heh.

That’s a submarine. Are we switching to the plot of The Hunt for Red October? That’s cool! Resupplying subs must have changed when they installed 3D printers. Whoops! Looks like the sailors need to put up a fight to eat dinner. The hacked printer even assembled Suzuka’s red glasses! Ghost in the Shell brought the Americans back into the story.

Meanwhile, back at Section 9, the crew needs to pick up Togusa. It’s been two months since he disappeared at the end of the first season. Motoko tells Batou that there are three million people at the Tokyo Reconstruction Project. How is Takashi feeding them? Do they have running water? Do the toilets work? How about electricity? Ghost in the Shell doesn’t sweat these infrastructure details. The Tachikomas wonder what a tobacco shop is.

Togusa didn’t like hanging out at the tobacco shop either. Bad idea. There’s no internet in the reconstruction zone. Ugh. Did Togusa have another vision? Suddenly the street has festival booths for cherry blossom viewing. The people here look like the ones he saw at the train station. All of them are carrying weapons. A schoolgirl has her hands on an AK-47! What does Togusa see here? Kanami, Takashi’s crush, committed suicide before he became a post-human. Ah. Ghost in the Shell takes elements of Takashi’s Think Poll program to make a mob and scare Togusa. Did Takashi turn Kanami into a software ghost as he did with his cousin Yuzu?

Kanami is in Togusa HUD, but she’s gone from the camera’s perspective. High school girls are scary! They have slang for everything, and they talk about Big Brother, Ministry of Love, and “N-Po.” The non-N members must be those N-Po. Whoa! Everyone armed up! Ghost-Kanami grabs Togusa and runs! N even has “Thought Police.” Takashi recreated 1984 inside the reconstruction zone. Eh? Togusa escaped Room 101 in the last Ghost in the Shell episode. I don’t know what’s going on here.

Uh oh. Prime Minister Tate told Section 9 about the submarine. The USS Arkansas is a “Boomer,” a nuclear ballistic missile launch platform. The post-humans raised the stakes on the world. Motoko realized that the full-prosthetic android on board resembles Suzuka, the post-human. That’s a hell of a quote, “A woman came out from the 3D printer!” Ah. This is how Ghost in the Shell confirms that Suzuka is working with Takashi. I’d like to see how that happened, but hijacking a nuclear submarine catches the attention. Messing with N gets a nuke dropped on you.

I hear rock and roll music. Time for an action scene. Man, I want to see Geo City in a Halo game map. Cool. We can see the internet signal drop to zero. Let’s go back to Togusa running with a ghost. See? Togusa should have stayed at the tobacco shop. The calendar there is stuck on March 2045. It looks like the family left in a hurry. Ghost in the Shell shows military personnel trucks entering N, but I don’t see grocery transports. Look at the Thought Police uniforms. Kanami is a parkour girl! Ouch. Togusa has a human body. Can his ankles handle that?

Batou and the Tachikomas remark that the N people look like the shanty town merchants in Los Angeles. But they don’t look like three million residents. The Tachikomas figure Japan will become like the Wild West Wasteland of America, where flash mobs became raiders. How do the N people communicate? If there’s no internet, do they do line-of-sight laser signaling? Do they have their own LAN? Uh, Kanami couldn’t flip like that in the past Ghost in the Shell episode! Why did she make Togusa try to leap across a bridge? I got vibes of the Matrix movie here. He can make it if he believes! Ah. A Tachikoma caught him! Did the Kanami ghost lead Togusa to his friends? And the raiders, Thought Police, and Kanami are gone. Takashi watched the whole thing happen. Did he make Togusa see those people?

Batou catches Togusa up with the 1A84 revelations. And Purin also fell victim to the post-human infection. Motoko’s crew noticed the signal interference as they went after the submarine. Aw. The Tachikomas are sad they don’t get to camp out. Wait. There’s an American cargo jet dropping commandoes! Whoa. Suzuka and Takashi are working together! And they know Section 9 is watching! Woof. Drone swarm warfare made short work of that plane. Thanks, Ghost in the Shell, for dressing Suzuka and Takashi in leather. Now we know they’re villains.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 streams on Netflix in multiple languages and subtitles.