Motoko Kusanagi and Hideo Kuze

It was a plane crash. Those who survived died one after another, so that eventually only a boy and a girl, both aged 6, remained the only two who were still alive. The girl would later be known as Major Motoko Kusanagi, squad leader of Section 9, and the boy as Hideo Kuze, the only survivor among the Individual Eleven, full cyborg with motionless face, leader of a revolution. How they first met is told in episode 11 of the S. A. C. 2nd GIG (Kusanagi’s Labyrinth / Affection). Their true original names are veiled in obscurity. The girl had been in a coma since her arrival and the boy knew she would never recover. He learned to fold paper cranes with his left hand, his only functional body part. According to a Japanese belief, if a thousand origami cranes are folded, a wish will come true. One day the girl’s condition worsened dramatically, and she was moved to the operating room. Her ghost was transferred to a fully cyberized body. The boy did not know what happened; he thought the girl was dead. Doctors tried to convince him accepting full cyberization as a solution to his paralysis, but he declined.

When the girl came to him, he didn’t recognize her in her new shell. He asked if she would be able to fold a crane with her prosthetic fingers. She couldn’t and left, saying that she’d return when she’d learn to fold origami cranes. The boy underwent full cyberization. He guessed who was that girl and tried to find her. Years later he was able to find in a lab her child cybernetic body only.

That’s what we learn from episode 11. This story is a unique key to both Motoko’s and Hideo’s past. It explains the nature of their dramatic relationship full of frustration and tension. Before leaving the antique shop, Motoko Kusanagi says: “I’ll bet that even now that girl is still searching for the first boy she ever loved” and folds a crane with her left hand. In a later episode she does it again during a conversation with Batou in a helicopter transporting them to Dejima. In episode 5 of the S. A. C. 2nd GIG we see a paper crane in the cab of Hideo’s truck.

However, beside what is told directly, there are lots of things that can be perceived upon a consideration (like you realize why the license plate of Togusa’s Nissan in the Solid State Society is 3923, if you read it aloud: san-kyuu-ni-san). Do you remember the very first scene, which goes in the original Ghost in the Shell movie right after the introduction? Motoko Kusanagi wakes up in her flat. She gazes at her stretched hand, and then slightly bends her fingers. It is only in the S. A. C. 2nd GIG that we get the key to this. The same scene is repeated in the opening of each series, and then we have a revelation of what Motoko saw in her dream: a childish prosthetic hand that squeezes a doll so awkwardly that the doll actually breaks into pieces. There is no doubt that the period when Motoko Kusanagi was cyberized and learned how to live within a prosthetic body, left an open sore in her soul. Later she used her shell with amazing mastery, but she never forgot the time when she could not fold a paper crane for a paralyzed boy.

In the last episode of the S. A. C. 2nd GIG Motoko and Hideo are pictured as the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve. Motoko gives Hideo an apple, a fruit from the tree of knowledge. And he tastes it before he dies. There is a theme of death as atonement, since Batou literally saves Motoko and Hideo with a huge cross. We know that Hideo is alive in the net, even though his enemies thought they killed him. Yes, Motoko and Hideo are the first man and the first woman who are not human. It turns out that Hideo’s revolution is a way to lead people into the kingdom of the net heaven when there is a danger of atomic bombing.

Every man and woman in Japan see the story of Motoko and Hideo in the context of what happened to Sadako Sasaki. If you never heard about her, search for her name in the net. Truly, the net is vast and infinite...