The Laughing Man and Glico-Morinaga Case

Now it’s time to talk about the first season of the TV series, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Each of the 26 episodes is marked as C or SA, which means that it is either Complex or Stand Alone episode. The SA episodes develop various storylines that are not connected to the main plot, while C episodes center on the Laughing Man story.

Like the Individual Eleven affair of the second season, the Laughing Man episodes were published as an OVA with minor alterations as for the plot timeline. Again, the voice cast is different in the United States and Canada release of 2007.

Told briefly, the essence of the Laughing Man case is as follows. Cyberbrain, which became a very ordinary thing in the reality of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, was soon affected by various malfunctions, including those caused by the so-called cyberbrain sclerosis. A genius hacker finds an internal memo stating that a tuberculosis vaccine is very effective in curing it. However, expensive therapy using micro-machines is lobbied by powerful corporations who want to profit from it. The hacker kidnaps the CEO of Serano Genomix and on line TV threatens him with a gun in order to force him to admit ineffectiveness of the micro-machines. All the electronic devices are simultaneously hacked so that the face of the Laughing Man is covered with a logo featuring Salinger quotation. Serano Genomix CEO refuses to tell the truth even at gunpoint and the Laughing Man has to retreat. Information about the tuberculosis vaccine remains secret.

Soon corporate terrorism and blackmail attacks follow, all of which use the Laughing Man logo. However, these are not carried by the same person. Quite on the contrary, they are part of a stock manipulation scheme, which aims at forcing the government to rescue the targeted micro-machine corporations. Investigation of the case led by Section 9 ends with the downfall of the Prime Minister.

The events of the Laughing Man saga within the Stand Alone Complex can be fully grasped and correctly interpreted only in the light of the so-called Glico-Morinaga case, which shocked Japan in the eighties. In March 1984 Katshuhisa Ezaki, the president of Glico, was kidnapped by armed men wearing caps. The criminals held Ezaki in a warehouse and issued a ransom demand for 1 billion yen and 100 kilograms in gold bullion. A few days later, Ezaki managed to escape. However, this event unchained a whole series of extortion attempts by the group calling itself “The Monster with 21 Faces”. Soon they attempted to rob the House Foods Corporation and blackmailed Morinaga, Marudai Ham and Fujiya. Police believed to follow the leader of the group on his heels. The chief suspect was nicknamed Fox-Eyed Man. The failure to capture him led the police superintendent of the Shiga prefecture Yamamoto to the suicide by self-immolation. Until now, the case remains unresolved.

To be sure, the Laughing Man storyline within the Stand Alone Complex plot is an attempt to make sense of the shocking Glico-Morinaga experience, which dispelled the image of crime-free Japan. However, it is also deeply impregnated with allusions to Salinger’s work. However, I’ll write about it in detail some time later.