Kugutsu Mawashi

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Kugutsu Mawashi using the remote body of Takaaki Koshiki

Kugutsu Mawashi(傀儡廻) is a fictional character in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Solid State Society anime, which is based upon the Ghost in the Shell manga by Masamune Shirow.

In the film, Kugutsu Mawashi is the name of an entity responsible for controlling the remote body of Civil Servant Takaaki Koshiki. According to dialogue in Solid State Society, Takaaki Koshiki died mysteriously at home from illness, but that his remote was subsequently involved in the conspiracy that was uncovered during the course of the film. The existence of a hidden Puppeteer was therefore theorised to have been responsible for Takaaki Koshiki's actions following his demise.

After distinguishing himself, Takaaki Koshiki got reassigned to the Health-Welfare joint project headed by Munei Ito. He secretly built his own infrastructure into the project sometime during its development. This infrastructure abducted children at risk from their families and sheltered them with Old-Age Kifu, who would bequeath them their wealth upon death, before the children were finally brought to Munei's secret education facilities at the Seishomin Welfare Center.

Kugutsu Mawashi's role was also in using his hub-cyberbrain to crystallize the rhizome of the Old-Age Kifu that utilized the Healthcare network to become the Solid State Society.

Alternatively, it is suggested by Batou that Kugutsu Mawashi may have been the personification of the collective consciousness of the Old-Age Kifu.

Finally, some fans think that Kugutsu Mawashi (傀儡廻) is Motoko Kusanagi's nemesis from before the stories depicted in Stand Alone Complex by Kenji Kamiyama.

True Identity

At the end of Solid State Society, the ultimate identity of Kugutsu Mawashi is never solved in the minds of the characters. It is ultimately left up to the viewer to decide who he is. This is a theory considers the idea that Major Motoko Kusanagi is herself Kugutsu Mawashi, albeit unknowingly at the beginning of the film.

After Motoko steals his car, Batou decides that she could be the hacker that Section 9 is looking for. The scene then moves to the Major's return to her penthouse safehouse. Here she meets a plain looking man, who she is surprised by, leaving her hall for the elevator. Inside her apartment we see her change bodies out of a rack of choices. Then the inside of the apartment is shown. Here the child Motoko is operating along with her combat body. The child collapses and when Motoko begins to use her combat body, and she makes a comment about only being able to concurrently control two remote bodies. (Presumably with practice she could control more.)

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The rack of remotes shown in the brain-dive including Takaaki Koshiki (far left).

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The rack of remote bodies inside Motoko Kusanagi's apartment.

During the end of the film, we see that Takaaki Koshiki has an identical body to that man leaving Motoko's hallway. In the final brain-dive sequence, it steps out of a rack of remote bodies identical to the one inside Motoko's apartment and walks through the door.

By comparing the placements of the bodies in this scene, with the spaces in the rack when Motoko returns to her apartment it is apparent that this remote body is one of those missing, and thus the one she passed outside her apartment with surprise.

In the final brain-dive into the Takaaki Koshiki shell when it is dying, Motoko hears the explanation and makes a comment about him being too arrogant for a civil servant. She queries his true identity. It hacks her perception, altering its face to finally look like hers as an answer. This is telling. The explanation is that Kugutsu Mawashi was the subconscious of several egos including Motoko herself, that began operating autonomously. It remained subconscious until this point when Motoko became aware of it, so it was no longer (her) subconscious but part of her consciousness.

An explanation for this is suggested by Motoko herself, in her final comments to Batou. After he outlines the official case, she reflects to him about why she left Section 9, to dwell in the net. What she says is revealing; "Perhaps I was only projecting my frustation at my helplessness onto the system."

The timing of the death of the real civil servant and Motoko going AWOL, fits the idea that her subconscious acted out against the system. Disillusioned because Kuze broke her heart, Motoko had just fled Section 9, her will was free to act for itself instead of Section 9. Since then, she slowly became involved with chasing her own tail through the net, as she tried to catch up with what her subconscious was doing. In a sense she was having the thought after she had already performed the action, as shown when she turned up to assassinate the general to discover it had already been done. This began her journey back to living in the physical world.

Certainly, Motoko consciously would never have become part of a criminal, unlawful conspiracy even to serve Good, but it seems feasible that she could have acted out through her dreams or subconscious. Maybe she had a subconscious dream about taking the law into her own hands. This is a woman who ordinarily dreams in the net, and who once claimed she could drive a car in her sleep to Batou (in the episode Chat! Chat! Chat!). At this point she had abandoned the physical world to live in the net. Why wouldn't her subconscious manifest itself in a dream where takes control of a dead civil servant and arranges child abductions for the benefit of society. Motoko's real world at this time being the net and her dream world being represented by the physical world.

In the final conversation, Batou also suggests that Good was served since both the problems had been brought to public attention by the conspiracy and would have to be solved. Hearing this, Kusanagi then sees that her vacation from physical reality has served its purpose and responds by talking about it. After leaving, she is drawn back into the physical world by the bizarre actions of her subconscious and it returns her to her family. The originally subconscious part of her that wanted to break the rules, leaves her while she is unconscious, and she wakes up with Batou and their surrogate Tachikoma children ready to work for Section 9 again.