Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045 Season 1 Episode 10 Recap – Net People

Peep Hole

A faceless mob attacks an innocent man at the airport. He was supposed to go on vacation.

Purin discovers the case and tells PSS9 about it. The man at Fukuoka Airport had his brain fried. He was hacked simultaneously from so many sources and his mind’s barrier couldn’t handle it. Major thinks it must be a post-human attack. Suzuka Mizukane was recently found by an airport camera. She’s probably their suspect.

She mobilizes the team. Purin asks for a task, but the major tells her she isn’t an official member yet. She feels despondent, but the others tell her it’s major’s way of saying she’s free to do as she likes.

Purin tries to trace the many incidents of hacking attacks to try and correlate them. However, there’s no trace concerning the three million hackers.

She traces the victim’s steps during the final moments of his life. The man looks like he was physically attacked from different angles. From the victim’s point of view, she discovers a man laughing by the window. Purin links him to several other incidents of hacking and goes on pursuit.

Purin tracks the man named Koji Kogure. Koji resists arrest, saying she doesn’t have a warrant. Purin channels Batou and uses brute force. Koji tells her there’s an app called Peep-Hole that gives you a third-person view of what the victim is seeing.

The app author is called the Nameless King, and she’ll need an invitation to know the next crime scene. When pressed for more, the King possesses Koji’s brain. He leads her into an elegant-looking door. She opens it and finds a tall fish-headed figure wearing King’s garb.

The King

Purin asks him about the incident. He tells her about their Think Pol–a system capable of aggregating citizens’ judgment against anyone accused of wrongdoing. Not all victim’s brains are fried, but they still get punished in a way that the people deem appropriate. The King calls it supreme democracy, Purin calls it a witch-hunt.

The King reveals he’s onto Prime minister Tate for his pro-American stance and his rich backing. He thinks the country has gone down the wrong path.

The Major reveals she’s listening on the exchange and traces the King’s location to a local High School student named Shinya Uotori. PSS9 arrives at his home to question him.

He asks if he’ll be arrested, but the major doesn’t think he’s the author of the program. He wrote peep-whole but Think Pol was discovered in the school servers. Someone else used it to attack a math teacher. Shinya found the code and released it on the internet in order to gain recognition.

Attack from the Net People

An alert springs revealing the new target of Think Pol — its PM Tate. He can’t get his cyber brain to go offline as a faceless mob attacks him.

Kusanagi jumps in to fight them. She blasts the area with an EMP while Batou and Togusa duel against the mob. One by one the mob falls to PSS9.

The PM leaves unscathed. Shinya can’t believe that Tate received only 2,000 votes for corruption.

Back at the base, they confirm Think Pol’s termination. Its creator already lost hope in their country and left. They can’t arrest Shinya for simply writing Peep Hole either. Now it’s time for them to trace its real creator.

Batou praises Purin for her hard work but tells her she should be careful. She didn’t notice that all of them were eavesdropping on her. She says she doesn’t mind if Batou does it.

Our Thoughts

I like how the politics of the last episode led to the events in this one, although both cases are seemingly isolated. At times the visuals may seem clunky and outdated but at this point, it doesn’t bother me at all. SAC 2045 is turning out to be a decent anime and I’d like to see more. I rate it 3.5/5.