Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

I just read GITS2 Issue 08. What can I say? If I were to remove ALL the damn cyber-speak, we'd have NOTHING to talk about!!! It's just one long chapter of virii versus antidotes and supercomps being used as giant clubs to beat the sh** out of each other. I'm gonna have trouble with this one...

Posted
I just read GITS2 Issue 08. What can I say? If I were to remove ALL the damn cyber-speak, we'd have NOTHING to talk about!!! It's just one long chapter of virii versus antidotes and supercomps being used as giant clubs to beat the sh** out of each other. I'm gonna have trouble with this one...

Oh techno babble, never has there been such an empty and meaningless language :lol:;)

Posted (edited)

Here's my attempt to make sense of Issue 08's technobabble...

GITS2: MMI Issue 08

Chapter 05: Mold Of Life continued

Motoko finally breaks in and starts subverting the enemy’s anti-virus (turning them INTO virii). ‘Mother’ still doesn’t realise that one of her jacked-in subordinates, Unit 28, has been infiltrated by Motoko and continues demanding reports from him regarding Fracto. ‘Mother’ does, however, institute a Total Barrier, a physical fire-wall against hackers that has real switches that can only be turned on or off from inside the building. A side note from Shirow confirms the establishment is indeed Stabat Mater, a “famous entertainment (religious) organisation physically located in Singapore”.

Motoko digs thru the files accessible from Fracto and Unit 28, and discovers that ‘Mother’ is in fact Millennium, Stabat Mater’s resident Cyberdome Artist – not exactly what you’d classify as a dangerous e-thug. Still unaware of Unit 28’s compromise, Millennium accepts more reports from him that are supposedly ‘virus checked’. In a perhaps, overconfident move, Millennium throws down the Total Barrier and practically invites Motoko to enter for a showdown. Millennium seems intrigued by the high-level A.I. grade enemy she’s facing in Motoko.

Motoko enters the system and throws back the potent virus that Millennium had unleashed on Poseidon earlier… and is immediately surprised by an unexpected counter-attack! Apparently the virus has been combining itself with the information Motoko has been sifting thru and mutated beyond her control. But Millennium is in for a surprise too, for her own antibodies seem to be disintegrating under Motoko’s undetected meddling earlier.

Both parties take turns to be shocked at how capable the other is. But Millennium makes what seems to be a fatal mistake when she accepts yet another report from Unit 28. Motoko has been using those reports to slip in compound viruses which have now activated inside Millennium’s brain.

Just when things seem to be under control, Motoko is stunned yet again by another furious attack, the scale of which causes her to suspect the enemy is also using a Decatoncale-class supercomputer. She seems to be getting into serious trouble as her first protection maze is taken apart. Motoko notices that the time lag for the attack is shorter than when she faced off Millennium – which means this new super-AI enemy is VERY close by. Without using any relays, the enemy could be right here in Poseidon HQ, or perhaps a direct line from an overhead satellite.

Motoko accesses an attack satellite and discovers that the enemy already has control of it. She senses that the enemy is like a mirror – reflecting her own strategies and attacks. Motoko gets a little desperate as the satellite moves into attack position overhead, and attempts to shut it down with a master override. She experiences something like her own ‘Unit 28’ when 2 of her trusty drones are frozen by attacking forces. The downed drones are sealed off and Motoko attempts to have them analysed and repaired.

Meanwhile, using an astro observatory in Hawaii, the remaining drone has managed to detect what appears to be an enemy space station, which is the likely source of the attacks. Even as the enemy attempts to shut down the power supply to the observatory, Motoko has found out that the transmission dish on the space station is made by none other than Poseidon! The cyber defenses on the station are also deemed ‘impregnable’ by our highly capable Motoko. She wonders why she has never encountered this enemy before…

Still working thru Millennium’s hijacked brain, Motoko is warned by her drone that brain activity is reaching dangerous levels, and that Decatoncale is also 2% away from maximum load. To add to all this, a US nuclear sub has been detected as preparing to launch its missiles! Motoko stays cool and makes plans to intercept the sub as well as manoevering a disused reflector panel from the Hubble 3 telescope to cut off the enemy sat’s line-of-sight, and then use it to fry the enemy’s power generators.

All this happens as the drones report greater levels of damage and more barriers penetrated by the enemy. A significant intrusion into Decatoncale causes Motoko’s physical body, ‘asleep’ as she’s jacked into the supercomputer, to lose one of her arms. Motoko is forced to back off a little while trying to affect repairs. She postulates that for an enemy to be able to create their own Decatoncale AND procure black shuttle launches to built the station, they would have to have access to one of Poseidon’s top execs.

She knows the station’s system is in all probability a trap, but due to the nature of the enemy she simply cannot back down. She decides to replicate the enemy’s armor and plunge in with a “mirror shield tactic”. As her busted drones come back online, she instructs them to find a way around Decatoncale’s danger-avoidance systems (i.e. to ‘go beyond safety levels)… Motoko has decided to infiltrate the mysterious Poseidon President’s brain! As the issue comes to a close, the enemy is getting closer to taking over Decatoncale (and Motoko), as she prepares to make a physical link with the President’s body.

End of Issue 08

Phew! That was a lot of talking!!! I hope this really makes sense to anyone else trying to follow the story. The suspicion about the enemy being closer than ever may well indicate it's one of Motoko's previous personalities... I don't know. Just have to wait for Issue 09 ^_^

Edited by drifand
Posted

Ghost = soul, aura etc. Whatever truly defines you as a separate living entity from other people, and also separates people from machine-based A.Is.

Machines shouldn't have a soul... and in GITS, human-cyborgs like Motoko and Batou retain their ghosts inside their organic brains despite the rest of their bodies becoming totally artificial. Shirow would have us consider that the increasing complexity of neural-networked memory systems and biotechnology COULD give rise to a new form of sentience and life... Hence Motoko's fusion with the new lifeform spawned from Project 2501, and reincarnation as Motoko Aramaki in GITS2: MMI.

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Anyone else gotten MMI Issue 9 yet? I thought I was doing OK plot-wise but now I'm in serious limbo. Split personalities? Kusangi vs Aramaki vs Tamaki vs Antares??? Ouch. Perhaps the best part was the extra artwork after the readers' feedback. :-P

Posted
Anyone else gotten MMI Issue 9 yet? I thought I was doing OK plot-wise but now I'm in serious limbo. Split personalities? Kusangi vs Aramaki vs Tamaki vs Antares??? Ouch. Perhaps the best part was the extra artwork after the readers' feedback. :-P

I just read 8 and 9. Have to admit to being slightly confused about how Kusanagi fits in to all this.

Have to think about this now..........

Posted
Dagnammit, if Manga wasn't so expensive here.....

Save your money, Omni. Get the TPB if you really feel you need to, but based on the 9 of 11 issues I've read so far I can't recommend Man Machine Interface. Beautiful artwork, but it's utter crap in terms of storytelling.

There is supposed to be some kind of plot, right?

  • 1 month later...
Posted

So....I picked up GiTS #10 of 11 this weekend. I can't tell you what it was about, but I do know I read it. With one issue to go, there'd better be some kind of payoff or I'll be really pissed.

Posted (edited)
Dagnammit, if Manga wasn't so expensive here.....

Save your money, Omni. Get the TPB if you really feel you need to, but based on the 9 of 11 issues I've read so far I can't recommend Man Machine Interface. Beautiful artwork, but it's utter crap in terms of storytelling.

There is supposed to be some kind of plot, right?

I did save some money!

Now I have enough to get all 3 Intron Depot artbooks by Shirow.

Me + all 3 Intron Depot Artbooks = Me Happy :D :D :D :D :D

Edited by Omni Existence
Posted
http://www.the-magicbox.com/game122503e.shtml

Pictures of the upcoming GiTS:SAC game for the PS2. It looks pretty good, hopefully it'll be as good or better as the first GiTS game, although this one looks to be played in a third-person no-fuchikoma mode.

That's neat. Damn.. I keep trying to get rid of my PS2 and swear off games forever. Now I have to get rid of it and get a NEW ONE. Hey Sean, you feel like lugging a Japanese one for me during your trip to Japan??? :D:D:D

Posted

Has anybody else read GiTS:MMI #10 yet? I sense a big letdown for the last issue, I'm afraid. Not a Matrix: Revolutions sized letdown, but a disappointment all the same.

Posted
http://www.the-magicbox.com/game122503e.shtml

Pictures of the upcoming GiTS:SAC game for the PS2. It looks pretty good, hopefully it'll be as good or better as the first GiTS game, although this one looks to be played in a third-person no-fuchikoma mode.

That's neat. Damn.. I keep trying to get rid of my PS2 and swear off games forever. Now I have to get rid of it and get a NEW ONE. Hey Sean, you feel like lugging a Japanese one for me during your trip to Japan??? :D:D:D

I might be able to, we'll have to see where I am and how much room I have. I was planning on bringing myself one home too, so it wouldn't be too hard to grab another.

Do you still have a PS2? If you do, you can get a swap disc and slide card, which should allow you to play teh game and that'd be way cheaper than buying a whole Japanese system.

Posted
Has anybody else read GiTS:MMI #10 yet? I sense a big letdown for the last issue, I'm afraid. Not a Matrix: Revolutions sized letdown, but a disappointment all the same.

I finally picked it up but I realized that I haven't read he 4 books before it. Geez... I really need to sit down and check it out. From what I can tell there not a lot of SWAT action in this story... just a bunch of cyber diving....

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Now how in the hell did I miss THIS thread all this time?! :o

Anyways, here's my $.02 braindump to catch up...

I'm a big Shirow fan, been one ever since Appleseed. Incredible art, incredible girls, incredibly detailed worlds. Everything thought out to a T, no cheating of knowledge of technology here! Master, I humbly bow down before you...

I don't mind the hentai. If it's going to be done, who better than Shirow, right? In fact I remember seeing hentai stuff (outside of those pages in GITS and GITS:MMI) that he did even before the posterbooks, in some small japanese book that was mostly text. (Sorry to bring that topic up again, had to mention it though. By the way, the other link is broken so here's a proper one for the curious: http://rengoku9.free.fr/pbcollection.html ) We all know of his love for the female form, it's a natural progression in my opinion. If fact, I'm not opposed to him showing everything to be completely honest.

I'd love to see that page of his airsoft gun designs. I've seen seburos on ebay here and there. Wish i had the money for them. :(

Can't wait for the 4th Intron Depot book! Soon my preciousss...

The GITS:SAC game looks great! Wonder what the cutscenes will lokk like. It can't come soon enough.

Also, here's a question for all you Shirow/Appleseed fans that I've never figured out: I have hardcover/signed editions of Appleseed Books 1-3. Did they ever put out a hardcover edition of Appleseed Book 4?

I've been looking for it all this time, but maybe it's been in vain - kinda like the hardcover edition of Akira book 6. While all the other books for these series get released in hardcover form, the very last book collection doesn't? Weird...

Posted

Did Dark Horse publish the hard covers??? (Nice collection!) If they did I can ask one of their manga editors. he doesn't do the Shirow stuff but he could find out.

Posted

EXO, The Akira hardcovers were published by Graphitti Designs. I'll have to check this weekend who published the Appleseed hardcovers. But maybe your contact would know anyways?

The first 2 hardcovers had pictures on the covers. the 3rd book was a kind of faux dark maroon-ish leather with no image on the cover. Maybe it was one company who published the first 2 and another for the 3rd? They seem kinda like they don't go together.

Posted

Have you guys seen the new 20MB trailer for GITS: INNOCENCE?

The second trailer gives a couple of clues, from the video it seems that this takes place more than several years after the first movie.

Quoting from the trailer....

Is it the aesthetics of decay.....

Or the birth of a new philosophy.....

That permeates the modern age?

It seems that Motoko doesn't play a large part in this movie.

...and a release date has been set.

post-26-1073709592_thumb.jpg

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...