Character · Ghost in the Shell
Motoko Kusanagi
Her body was built in a factory, her memories sit on a network, and she is still the calmest person in the room.
In Otakana the clue reads: Cyborg major who leads Section 9
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Ghost in the Shell
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
The Major runs Public Security Section 9, a small Japanese unit handling the cybercrime the ordinary police cannot touch. Almost nothing of her is original equipment. Her shell is a government-owned prosthetic, which means her employer could in principle repossess her legs. She dives into other people's heads for a living and comes back with the same flat delivery every time.
What eats at her is the ghost, the term this setting uses for whatever makes a mind a person rather than a very good copy. She has no way to prove hers is real. Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film builds its entire runtime on that doubt, ends with her stepping into the network, and was handed to the Wachowskis as a reference four years before The Matrix.
Masamune Shirow serialised the manga from 1989, and the Major has been recast repeatedly since: wisecracking and cheerful on the page, glacial in Oshii's films, somewhere between the two across Stand Alone Complex. Kusanagi is the name of a sword out of Japanese myth, pulled from the tail of a slain serpent. Giving it to a woman assembled from parts is not subtle, and it works.
Spelling MOTOKO
The game wants the given name, MOTOKO, not KUSANAGI. Six letters, three beats, an O after every consonant, so one confirmed O usually hands you the other two. Written 素子, the same pair of characters reads soshi in electronics, where it means a component. A woman named after a device is a joke the series never stops to point at.