Episode 17:
Chief Aramaki and Major Kusanagi go to London to attend the International Counter-Terrorism Conference. While there, Aramaki visits an old female friend of his from his earlier days as Kusanagi gets some down time. Aramaki tells Kusanagi his friend is a wine fund broker. Kusanagi gets a bit confused and Aramaki explains how people will use wine as a means of investing their money since it's particular taste and aroma can't be duplicated effectively. Of course, the value can only go up as well. Kusanagi is instructed to pick him back up in two hours.
After going inside, he notices a ring on her finger, though he doesn't say anything. He expresses his surprise at how she suddenly went into politics in England 2 years ago, but she replies that she is more interested in business as of late. She then relates to him her fears that one of the managers of the bank is helping to launder money for the mafia. She noticed a file that is disguised quite well, but has such a powerful defense barrier that she can't get inside to see what's in it. She also claims that there has to be a third party, a mediator between the bank management and the mafia. Aramaki is clear that he can't help directly due to the fact that it's out of his jurisdiction.
When Aramaki asks if she has any proof, two men come into the closed store, knocking out the security guard, shutting the blinds, turning off all of the cameras, and hacking into the computer system. Held at gunpoint, the two are stuck watching the two criminals who have apparently just split from the mafia and are running away with the "secret ledger" stored on the computer there.
The audience then sees one of the bank officials calling the head of the police department and instructing him that his top priority is to retrieve the ledger. It isn't a problem if there are casualties during a raid.
Back at the scene, the cops arrive. Aramaki tells one of the criminals to step away from the window moments before he is shot at by sniper fire. Angry and confused, they accuse Aramaki of calling the cops, but Aramaki informs them of the true situation: for the cops to have arrived so quickly, without any official notice, means that someone high-up in the police force must be aware of their break off from the mafia and is intent on securing the ledger. Since that would imply that he and his friend's lives are in danger as well, Aramaki offers to help the men escape. He supplies the brains, and they supply the power. The criminals have few other options.
In the meantime, Kusanagi arrives, but finds the police line stopping her from getting closer. She asks if she can be informed of the situation since one of the Japanese government officials could be in the building, but she is denied access. Kusanagi then leaks the story to the media so that the police can't do anything dangerous that might risk the life of the Chief. As per his instructions, the group rigs a grenade trap at the front entrance which the cops notice. The police then try to come in through the side, but the extra time gives Aramaki and co. the time they need to plant the security officer by the sewer entrance within the building in a plan to trick the police as to their whereabouts.
Kusanagi makes her way inside after tricking one of the SWAT members, knocking him out, and occupying his uniform. She then observes the police going into the sewers in pursuit, but guesses that Aramaki wouldn't have been so obvious. She eventually finds him after all the soldiers have cleared the building and assumed they aren't inside. Opening a hidden vault full of valuable wine, the four of them are all huddled inside the chamber, waiting for her. During the event, Aramaki got a copy of the ledger from one of the criminals (though the criminal didn't realize he wasn't using it to flee the police), and he uses it to inform the proper authorities as to the activities of the corrupt bank manager and police chief. The criminals are offered a clean slate, so long as they don't get involved with the mafia any more.
Episode 18:
Aramaki and the team are asked by a Chinese official to watch over a Chinese politician as he visits a monument. The visit is getting lots of publicity. At the same time, Aramaki visits a grave where the sister of the deceased friend of his. She expresses concerns that her younger brother has been acting strange lately: talking to no one, getting interested in her father's studies, staying cooped up in his room and not seeming to sleep at all. Aramaki mentions how none of his compatriots ever knew when her father slept either. One time he responded to her saying, "You're still up honey? Saori, you should get some sleep." Aramaki, although acknowledging that it seemed odd, confessed that he couldn't use his resources to assist her in any way. He would be guilty of Abuse of Power.
When he returns to his team, they explain how they have been looking up on potential threats to the Chinese assemblyman and they find a red flag: parts of a sniper rifle that have just recently been smuggled into the country. All of them picked up by the same individual, Saori's younger brother. Involved in the case now, the team goes to their house to bring him in, but he's already left. The team realize that he'd been studying up on his dad's techniques intensely which is helping him to evade capture. His dad had been the top instructor for all manner of military activity and espionage at the academy.
Upon further analysis, it would appear that the password for the administrative barrier had been stored inside the man's personal computer and when Saori's younger brother Yuu inherited it at 16, he started spending more and more time with the device. It would take several hours for the team to be able to crack the code to get a peak at what's inside.
Ishikawa chimes in with his report, and according to his analysis of Yuu's recent behavior and the ease with which he is anticipating the moves of the police force, he believes that Yuu is literally sharing his head with someone trained by the special forces in advanced tactics.
Shortly thereafter, Chief Aramaki receives a message, a message from his deceased friend, speaking through the body of Yuu. He is burning with revenge against the assemblyman for past crimes. He had overwritten his memories into his cyberbrain. He never expected the potential danger of it, that "it would turn him into an assassin." Within the data library hidden on his computer had been the truth behind his mother's death. He says that who he is right now is both father and son combined together, memories blending together and affecting his will. He states that his thoughts are driving his actions, "or maybe it's the other way around," and he admits that after it's all over, he may not be himself anymore. He believes that it is Yuu's youthfulness that, through the blending, has caused him to lose control of himself.
At the event in question, nobody can find him attempting to snipe. A group of adolescents carrying flowers move forward and Yuu pops out from them angling a knife toward the Chinese official, but he is stopped at the last moment by Kusanagi who was covering the official close by while cloaked. After Kusanagi eventually loosens her grip, Yuu activates a bomb hidden within his bouquet and the camera cuts to a hospital room in which Yuu is being hospitalized, the team is all safe, including the Chinese official who has already left for China, and the hospital is in the process of re-writing Yuu's memories to wipe away the attached persona. There is a small chance that he may retain some self-identity, but in all likelihood, he will wake up a completely different person. Saori doesn't mind though, because he would still be "Yuu" to her.
Episode 19:
A series of girls are being stolen right off the street without any indication of the method. They simply disappear. Any cameras watching them glitch for a moment and the next, they've vanished. The group of disappearances have been attributed to a theft technique called Blindfold Ivan. The mass abductions were denied by former Japanese prime minister Kanzaki. Kanzaki, taken out of the scene due to his actions in the past, suddenly finds his daughter missing, requests the help of the government, and is answered by Section 9.
When Aramaki informs him that they believe it is the work of the mass abductions he has previously denied though, he becomes angry. He finds it hard to believe that the abductions, likely committed by the Northern Territories Mafia, have accidentally included the capture of his daughter, especially when his actions protected them from retaliation by the government. He was essentially a backer for them, and Aramaki asserts that those who are somewhat lower on the tier would be unlikely to be aware of his efforts on their behalf.
Kusanagi tells the team to start checking out local areas where they could break down people quickly as shipping them overseas intact would be far too much trouble. Stumbling upon one facility in which a woman and a short man are arguing with a tall man over previous payments, Batou and Togusa spook the short man who thinks the taller one brought back up. The short guy then shoots him. Batou and Togusa pursue the pair into the facility. Togusa takes out the remaining guy, but Batou only manages to get a single shot off the woman as she flees further inside. Togusa spots a truck, opens the back of it, and finds the women who have been kidnapped, only to be ambushed from behind by the woman. During the hand-to-hand combat that ensued, Togusa pulls the woman's arm off and she darts into the truck and starts driving off. Batou, seeing the woman get away and recognizing her, yells at Togusa to throw the arm away. Togusa looks down, hears a beeping noise accelerating, and tosses the arm at the truck. It explodes, breaking a hole in the garage door and the truck makes it through, damaged, but functioning.
Batou updates Kusanagi and informs her that the kidnapper is a Russian spy (likely around 80 by this time - in a young body) who likely isn't aware that she is carrying cargo belonging to a financial backer of her superiors (as the Russians are linked to he Northern Territories Mafia). Taking advantage of this, Aramaki presents an idea to Kanzaki: spread the word about what has happened, who the culprit is, and what she is doing. It would mean admitting that reality of the Blindfold Ivan abductions, political suicide, but it would ensure the safety of his daughter as the kidnapper wouldn't want to risk causing bad relations for her home country.
As she tries to find a buyer for her stock, she keeps getting rejected and one of the men inform her that she's got hot property, filling her in on the details. She makes a break for the embassy, but gets cornered by Kusanagi and Batou. In the end, the women are saved, including Kanzaki's daughter, and Aramaki has indirectly ensured that Kanzaki pay for deceiving the public.
Episode 20:
Retracing steps in the Laughing Man case, Togusa finds a woman who processed several papers pertaining to the memory overwrites of the men who saw Nanao He (na-nao-eh), but who purportedly doesn't know what they were to be used for. Analyzing her memories and her testimony, all testimonies match, so they confirm that she is telling the truth.
Re-examining all the paperwork regarding the case, Togusa searches through the digital archives to find evidence of the Laughing Man's involvement with the woman's possession, but he gets no results. Suddenly, after thinking about the Laughing Man logo's slogan that circles around the smiling face. It reads, "I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." Realizing that this line was similar to a statement he read back at the government health facility where especially skilled children were being exploited. He had found the phrase at the only place where one could connect to the outside.
When he brings it up with the Major, he mentions how the line is from the Catcher in the Rye, but that the one back at the health center went on to say, "Or should I?". The fact that the message went on even further led him to believe that the original Laughing Man was the silent kid back at the facility. He also simultaneously comes to the conclusion that, because he is a criminal "whose outdated actions don't fit at all with his technical ability" (kidnapping a CEO on live television at gunpoint), the Laughing Man has a huge reliance on things that aren't digitized. Physical storage as opposed to digital storage is where he would pursue things. With that, he gets permission to continue searching for clues regarding the latest ghost-hack, but with a focus on determining if anything physical was taken as opposed to something digital that was copied.
He eventually stumbles upon a missing folder, and his wife who works with the archives department the only people who might be interested in document stored in that particular chest would be the Sunflower Society, a group of lawyers who offer to help people fight against the big corporations who abuse them.
Togusa monologues about how in 2019, as cyberization became commonplace, people occasionally began having their brain cells harden and cause brain death, eventually known as Cyberbrain sclerosis. Chitose Murai develops a tumor suppressant called the Murai vaccine, but at the time, the medical professionals of the day were heavily invested in the development of micro-machine therapy and so didn't want the vaccine to come into play as it was a "step backwards." The approval for the Murai Vaccine got shelved and in 2021, Murai died, never seeing his work go to the people. Later the same year, the vaccine was sanctioned as a "fee-based clinical trial drug," though no one was made aware of it at the time. The only people even still interested in this mystery is the Sunflower Society.
The Sunflower Society's logo has a big smiling sunflower with petals swirling around its face. Noticing the similarity to the Laughing Man's logo, Togusa pays them a visit, posing as a journalist who lost his father to Cyberbrain sclerosis. It was the disease's cure that became the focal point of the Laughing Man terrorist operations. Convincing the man in charge with his sorrowful story, the man tells Togusa all about how the vaccine actually does work, but it wasn't approved because people couldn't explain HOW it worked. It was more of a medical miracle-accident. Despite this, special individuals still take the drug under the table.
The lawyer shows him a file that had just come in the other day that has a list of all individuals who ever received the vaccine. The list had high-level researchers, doctors, politicians, etc. Togusa recognized it as the file that had gone missing from the box he had examined before. The lawyer claims that the file arrived from the chairman of the board of the central drug evaluation council Imakurusu. The lawyer explains how things are looking up because the chairman said he would testify as to why he wouldn't approve the vaccine.
Then, suddenly, the lights go out. The narcotic squad comes in, blazing fire and killing people in the hallways. Togusa pushes the lawyer out the door with the record and knocks out two of the shooters. The leader gets a shot off Togusa and Togusa shoots at the window and jumps out of it to escape. He systematically latches onto things and falls until he gets to the ground. There is an image of the lawyer getting captured by the narcotic squad, but the leader reports that the record there is a copy (so the original is still out there) and that they are in pursuit of a survivor. The camera then cuts to Togusa who stumbles into the street using his cybercom to send the Chief and the Major a distress signal.
Analysis:
The general theme of these episode appears to be the attempts by individuals to extend the life and value of things. London Mafia laundering money and extending its value by investing it in wine. A soldier who saw to it that he would be reborn through the life of his son, a mind fused with another in order to keep his life beyond the meager limits of a natural human vitality. A Russian Spy 80+ years in age moving with the agility of 30-year-old field agent, abound with combat skills, ingenuity, and experience. And finally people using micro-machines as a means of correcting diseases that flare up.
Foregoing the obvious ethical issues involved in extending one's life by taking over another person's life, is it right or wrong for people to live for a particular length of time? People generally think that it is a good thing for someone to be able to live longer. Firstly, if people live longer there will be fewer people saddened by the loss of a loved one so frequently in their lifetime (presumably, without war and similar factors).
There is an obvious problem of population growth, but that would always be an issue and doesn't make it necessarily ethical for a person to do so. If a person's youthfulness can be preserved as well (or re-established via going full-cyborg), then the number of jobs and lives that will need satisfying will increase dramatically. Pension plans would most certainly need to be re-evaluated. Again, however, these are merely side-effects of it that may or may not be desirable, but don't necessarily make it a right or wrong thing naturally.
It is natural for human beings to want to live longer and stay young longer, but there are two points at which human beings reach a peak. One is the time at which the human simply becomes tired of existing. A human's mind can most definitely become tired of life in general and simply be ready for everything to stop. Would it be moral for those people to merely end their lives or for a family to end it for their sake? That falls outside the scope of this discussion; however, one can be sure that God will want people to be making their decisions for His sake and with Him in mind.
The other case is where people live so long and maintain their youth for so long that they begin to feel like that are able to approach God's realm or status. Getting ever closer to immortality. The idea is much like the Tower of Babel, so in this case, we can determine that if people are getting older and living longer merely to be able to do it, to be able to prove something to someone about it, then that can be said to be an improper motivation according to the Bible. If instead though a person becomes older but maintains their youth because they wish to do more good in the world, or because they want to live to see their grandchildren, or for some other reasonably relational or benevolent cause, then that can be said to be a Biblical reasoning. The Bible as a whole is an advocate of family and living for the sake of others; therefore, any motivations for the sake of those goals that ultimately work to fulfill those ideas are valid and precious.
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