My Thoughts on “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”

Foreword: 

This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on January 17, 2022, quite a long time ago. I thought I was a bit short on Ghost in the Shell content on here, so I’d thought I’d post this since I reviewed the sequel/spinoff series, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. You can go read the review and companion piece to that, here and here. I also haven’t been posting a lot of anime content on here lately, I’m a bit short, so here’s one more to add to the collection.

Sorry, I’m posting this two days after I posted my Fifth Element review, I didn’t for it to happen this way. I originally intended on posting that review last week, and then reposting this review this week, but I got so busy with stuff last week, and I procrastinated that I ended up posting the review Monday January 13, 2025. I was going to post it last Thursday or Friday, January 9, 2025 and January 10, 2025 respectively, and then I was aiming for Saturday January 11, 2025, and then maybe Sunday January 12, 2025.

But, it took so long to write that review, I had so much ground to cover, so many things I wanted to add that it ended up taking at least four or five days to write it. I didn’t make it past the finish line, I finished it and posted it on my blog just after midnight when it was now Monday instead of Sunday. So, I apologize for that. But, that review up now, and this one along with it. I want to get this out before Inauguration Day, which I don’t plan to watch. I’m not going to watch Trump’s inauguration. We’ve been through this song and dance before, I don’t need to see it again. I’m just trying to enjoy the remainder of the Biden administration. He gave his farewell address today, it was…moving. It was fun while it lasted, I will miss him 😔.

I will say this now, Biden will go down as one of the most unfairly maligned presidents in US history 🇺🇸. He didn’t deserve all the hate he got throughout his administration, and he didn’t deserve to have all his accomplishments scrubbed away by the media and by Trump, who will no doubt undo nearly all of his legislative achievements. No body, especially those who voted for Trump, knows how good we’ve had it for these past four years, and they won’t know until we all start dealing with the corruption and stupidity of a second Trump administration for the next four years. Biden was a good president and a good man ♂︎.

Also, I couldn’t find an Outlaw Star review anyway in my stash of old DeviantART journals and status updates. I checked multiple times to see if I had written one already that I could just repost on here, but no such luck. It seems that I never wrote a review for Outlaw Star at any point in the past since I’ve been on DeviantART. So, I’ll just have to write a completely new one. Which is fine, it’s been awhile since I’ve watched that show. So, this will give me the chance to revisit that show and rewatch after all these years, get a refresher on it in my mind.

You knows? I might feel differently about it this time around than I did the last time I saw. I don’t think that I’m going to dislike it or anything, I’ll still probably like it because it’s that much of a classic and it’s too good and too enjoyable to hate. But I might notice some things that I didn’t notice the last time, or I might be critical of certain things that I may excused or didn’t care about the last time. We’ll see when I get to it.

After I review Outlaw Star, I do plan on watching and reviewing Angel Links, the sequel/spinoff series to Outlaw Star. That show’s connection to Outlaw Star is somewhat loose and tenuous at best from what I understand because while it is technically set in the same universe and the same era (the “Toward Stars Era”), it changes some things and contradicts things that were in Outlaw Star. For instance the character Duuz, who was said to be a genetically engineered being created from dinosaur DNA 🧬 in Outlaw Star, whereas in Angel Links, he’s said to be a member of an actual alien species 👽, an actual alien race 👽. So, which is it? Is he a man made genetic experiment 🧬 created from dinosaur genes 🧬 or is he an alien 👽? Pick one please.

The same goes for Cowboy Bebop, which I’ve also never written a review for and will have to write a completely new one from scratch. After I rewatch and review Cowboy Bebop and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. I will review them as part of one piece since the movie does take place during the events of the show, it’s set in between the Teddy Bomber 🧸 episode and the Scratch episode 😵‍💫. I will watch and review Carole & Tuesday, which is the closest thing to a sequel or spinoff Cowboy Bebop has ever gotten and will probably ever get.

I don’t expect Shinichirō Watanabe will ever make a true direct sequel to Cowboy Bebop centered around Jet and Faye being partners (sticking together even after the events of the series finale because they’re all they’ve got, all they have left after all that is each other), and perhaps even bringing back Spike, which would completely ruin the ending of the series which left Spike’s fate ambiguous, never outright showing or saying whether he was alive or dead.

Most people have concluded that Spike died at the end, but there is a chance that he is still alive and simply fell unconscious from being exhausted by all the fighting he was doing and the injuries he sustained. But the point is that his fate was left intentionally left ambiguous so the viewer could interpret for themselves whether they think Spike was alive or dead. It’s one of those questions that shouldn’t be answered definitively one way or the other or otherwise it would ruin that perfect ending and potentially piss off half the fanbase 🤬, although I don’t care about that last part. Piss off the fans 🤬 all you want, I really don’t care, fans can be some of the most childish and entitled people on the planet 🌎. You shouldn’t feel bad for getting them mad 😡, especially if it’s over a creative decision that you think is best for the story you’re trying to tell.

It’s kind of like the question of whether Deckard is a Replicant or not, it’s not a question that should be answered definitively otherwise you’ll ruin the mystery or the intrigue and deprive audiences of the ability to interpret the movie as they please. Even though Blade Runner 2049 brought Deckard back, it still didn’t really answer whether Deckard was a Replicant or not even though the entire plot has to do with the fact that he conceived a child with Rachel, who we do know for a fact without a shred of doubt is a Replicant. The filmmakers that it would be best not to answer that question and let people have their personal fan theories or headcanons.

So, if a direct sequel to Cowboy Bebop were to be made, it would have to just include Jet and Faye, and not even bring up Spike or definitively answer whether he was dead or alive after confronting Vicious for the last time. Just dance around the question or the issue. Jet and Faye can still be in mourning or grieving kind of, maybe depressed 😔, feeling as if something is missing in their lives now that Spike is gone and never came back. The two of them probably won’t even know what Spike’s fate was, probably just assuming he either died or rode off into the sunset 🌅, starting a new life entirely completely detached from the criminal or bounty hunter lifestyle he was living before.

They didn’t bother to check on him figuring it was better to leave well enough alone and move on with their lives. As much as the two of them liked Spike and miss him, they recognize he was a toxic element in their lives, and they won’t be able to change and grow if he’s still apart of their lives. The two would just carry on with each other the best they can, trying to survive in this unforgiving and indifferent Solar System that the show is set in. They could bring back Edward, maybe check up on her since they left her behind on Earth 🌎 with her dad, maybe even show her a bit older, as a teenager or even as a young adult in her early 20s. But not Spike, do not bring back Spike because that would just ruin that ending from the original series.

Carole & Tuesday is on Netflix, it’s a Netflix exclusive, and it focuses on two completely different characters that have nothing do with the main crew in Cowboy Bebop, the titular characters Carole and Tuesday, two girls ♀︎ who live on Mars and become best friends, bonding over music 🎶. A lot of Shinichirō Watanabe’s projects have to do with music 🎶 in some way, and Carole & Tuesday is just way more explicit about it than Cowboy Bebop was, making the music 🎶 a part of the story and an actual character trait, a common interest that the title characters share and bond over.

Also, the show features a character who was explicitly modeled after Donald Trump, like there’s a female politician character ♀︎ in the show who’s the main villain, the main antagonist, and she looks and acts a lot like Trump. She’s basically like if Donald Trump was a woman ♀︎ instead of a man ♂︎. Trump for some reason decided to start crossdressing and start dressing up as a woman ♀︎, even wearing a wig, he’d look like this woman ♀︎, this female politician ♀︎ from Carole & Tuesday.

I might also mention the two video games that have been made out of Cowboy Bebop, or at least the PS2 game Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence. A game that was never dubbed into English and was only ever available in Japan 🇯🇵. It was only with the advent of YouTube that people were able to translate and sub it in English, making it easily for English speaking fans from North America and elsewhere to understand.

That game is the only that is really worth mentioning since it has an actual story unlike the PS1 game which is simply called Cowboy Bebop (1998), playing out like an extended episode of the series. I don’t know if Serenade of Reminiscence is considered canon or not, but it still a story within the Cowboy Bebop universe, the Cowboy Bebop mythos, that is worth checking out. It did give us two original songs that were not featured in the series or the movie, “Diamonds” and “Pearls,” two songs that are a pair and act as companion pieces to each other, and are huge driver of the one of the main subplots of the game, specifically Spike’s subplot.

The two songs were included on a greatest hits album called Cowboy Bebop Tank! The! Best! which has all of the most popular songs from the show. I own the two songs on my iTunes account as well as a third original song from the game called “Einstein Groovin’” which was used in the end credits/staff roll of the game. I even own the entire album on CD 💿, although I bought it before it was made available digitally on iTunes. Whoops 🤷‍♂️, but I guess it’s good to own a physical copy too.

I don’t plan on reviewing the live action Cowboy Bebop series on Netflix, I don’t feel like subjecting myself to that and I don’t think anyone will particularly care if I review that series or not especially since it was canceled after one season and everyone pretty much forgot about it, never to speak of it again. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was taken off of Netflix since its cancellation.

But I do plan on posting this thing I wrote a while back in my Drafts app talking about how the live action version of Edward is supposedly nonbinary 🜬 despite the character in the anime not being nonbinary 🜬 or even being suggested to be nonbinary 🜬 despite her boy name ♂︎ and her boyish look ♂︎. The anime version of Edward is definitively a cisgendered girl ♀︎, every character in the show refers to her as a girl ♀︎, she just has short hair and dresses in a more masculine way ♂︎. Just because girls or women ♀︎ have short hair or wearing male clothing ♂︎ doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re nonbinary 🜬 or trans 🏳️‍⚧️. That’s what that thing is about. I might’ve also touched on the issue of Gren, a veteran of the Titan War and former acquaintance of Vicious (Vicious was his wartime buddy) from the two-part episode “Jupiter Jazz,” and how they changed his character from the anime to the live action series, but I’m not sure on that one. Don’t quote me on that.

I’m thinking of writing a review of Samurai Champloo as well since I’ve never written a review of Samurai Champloo before either. It’s kind of like a spiritual successor to Cowboy Bebop, or I guess a spiritual predecessor since it takes place in the past (an anachronistic past but still the past)!whereas Cowboy Bebop takes place in the future. But it was directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, it was an original project conceived by him, it was his vision, it was the series he made after Cowboy Bebop and his work on The Animatrix, and it is Cowboy Bebop’s direct counterpart in every way. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Cowboy Bebop is about cowboys (space bounty hunters who are referred to colloquially as “cowboys”), Samurai Champloo is about samurai (actually one ronin and one Ryukyuan swordsman but they’re looking for a samurai, a samurai who smells like sunflowers 🌻), Cowboy Bebop takes place in the distant future, Samurai Champloo takes place in the distant past, Cowboy Bebop mostly has jazz and blues music, Samurai Champloo mostly has hip-hop music. Even the titles are somewhat similar, they convey a similar theme, taking a common archetype and turning it on its head, doing something new with it or putting a new spin on a genre that hasn’t been done before, or mixing different elements together and creating something new with it. That’s what those two shows’ titles mean, and how they’re connected even if not directly.

I don’t even know if Samurai Champloo is in the same universe as Cowboy Bebop, it’s never been confirmed one way or the other. It would fit though, like if Shinichirō Watanabe said that Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo were in the same universe, I’d accept it. I’d say, “Yeah, that makes sense.” They did cast Steve Blum to do the English voice for Mugen in the English dub for Samurai Champloo, and Steve Blum is of course most famous for doing the English voice for Spike Spiegel in the well received English dub of Cowboy Bebop. So, that is another way that these two shows are connected.

Like with Cowboy Bebop, I am thinking of mentioning the video game that was made out of Samurai Champloo called Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, which was released in 2006, a year after the series had officially wrapped up. Like with Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence, Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked is a very linear story driven game that plays out like an extended episode of the series, and like with Serenade of Reminiscence, Sidetracked’s canonical status is a bit up in the air. I don’t know if it is considered canon to the rest of the series or not, or where it would be placed on the show’s timeline. The difference between the two games is that Sidetracked was actually dubbed into English and made available in North America, whereas Serenade of Reminiscence was not. But I know a lot less about Sidetracked than I do Serenade of Reminiscence, so I’d be a lot less equipped to talk about it.

I know that this isn’t really anime related, but I do plan on reviewing Man of Steel in time for Superman (2025) or James Gunn’s Superman if you prefer. I started thinking about Man of Steel against after the first trailer for Superman (2025) dropped, and all of these critics who hated on Man of Steel, and all of Zack Snyder’s DC movies really, were gushing about it, calling it “bold,” saying that “this right direction they need to take,” and “James Gunn understands the character of Superman better than anyone,” and different variations of that kind of nonsense. In truth, I’m not looking forward to Superman (2025), because it just looks like a nostalgia trip. It just looks like James Gunn trying to recapture or recreate Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve’s version of Superman.

His version of Superman is much more in line with the Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve version of the character, everything involving Krypton is all crystallized just like it is in the Richard Donner movies. Krypton in the Donner films was pretty much just a crystal planet with no life except the Kryptonians themselves. Which makes you wonder, what did the Kryptonians in the Donner continuity even eat? He even included a variation of the theme John Williams composed for the Richard Donner movies. It’s a lot like Superman Returns in that respect, where it’s trying desperately to be like Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve. The only difference is that Superman Returns was supposed to be a direct sequel to the Richard Donner Superman movies, ignoring the events of both Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, basically retconning those two movies out of existence. Whereas this new Superman movie by James Gunn is a full on reboot meant to launch a cinematic universe. 

I thought we were past this, I thought we were finally getting past Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve, and doing truly unique takes on Superman that are not beholden to what came before. That’s why I appreciate Man of Steel a lot more now than I did when it originally came out in 2013. In fact I hated Man of Steel when it first came out. I believed all of the negative reviews, I went along with the popular opinion at the time and convinced myself to hate it. But then once I started rewatching clips from the movie, and when I rewatched the full movie by itself, I let go of my hatred for the movie and finally embraced it as possibly the best Superman film adaptation or at least my favorite. Now my favorite Superman movie is the one that doesn’t even have his name in the title. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s had a similar journey when it comes to Man of Steel.

Every Superman film adaptation before and since has been living in the shadow of Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve, and Zack Snyder so far is the only filmmaker who had the balls to try something different. And for that, he got hate over it 😡. Maybe that’s why James Gunn is just playing it safe and doing the nostalgia thing, doing what worked before and what all these Boomers and Xers seem to like the most. He doesn’t want to deal with the backlash that Snyder received when he took risks and did something that these older fans and critics weren’t expecting. He’s no longer just a filmmaker, he’s the head of a studio now, and he’s very clearly making a calculated business decision.

It mirrors a lot of what happened with Star Wars actually. The older fans hated on George Lucas and the prequels, and it all lead to Lucas relinquishing control of the franchise he created and handing it off to a big mega corporation. All of those fans who complained rejoicing, believing that this mega corporation could turn the ship around and give them what they wanted originally with the prequels with the sequels. Only to be ultimately be proven wrong, and for those sequels to be worse than what came before.

All the while the older fans who complained and caused all this sit around all confused as to why Star Wars turned out this way, and angry at the Sequel Trilogy 🤬, while pretending that they weren’t cheering this on a few years prior when it initially announced and in the lead up to it. Refusing to take responsibility for the consequences of their own words and actions. While other fans looked back at the prequels and found things to appreciate about them after seeing what Star Wars without George Lucas actually looks like.

The same thing is happening with DC. In this analogy, Zack Snyder would be George Lucas, and James Gunn would be JJ Abrams, the cocky filmmaker believing he can do better than the guy who came before him and thinks he understands the franchise better before than him when he actually can’t and doesn’t. The only difference is that Snyder didn’t create Superman or any of the other DC properties, and him and Gunn are around the same age.

I can’t wait for it all to blow up in his face, and for his movies to piss off DC fans 🤬, or at least the ones who liked Snyder’s work and don’t think anyone else should be making DC movies. Whether Superman (2025) is good or not, one good thing that will come out of it is that it will make more people appreciate Man of Steel and Zack Snyder’s tenure at DC as a whole, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder’s Justice League included. Just as the Star Wars sequels made people appreciate the prequels a lot more.

Which is funny I mention because Zack Snyder mostly recently made his own Star Wars-type movie, his own space opera called Rebel Moon which seemingly no one liked, even people who usually like Snyder’s work. Neither of the two movies (yes I do count both parts of Rebel Moon as one movie, so it’s two movies he’s made with Netflix) he’s made at Netflix have been particularly well received by anyone. But I don’t hate them. I liked Army of the Dead 🎰🧟‍♂️ and Rebel Moon, I thought they were good movies.

It’s also hilarious to see Snyder fans and Gunn fans go to war with each other over which filmmaker did Superman better or will do Superman better (in the case of Gunn), which one understands the comics better, which one is more fun, and which fanbase is a cult while arguing that their side is not a cult. It’s one of the funniest and most idiotic things I’ve ever seen. Neither fanbase can see the irony and hypocrisy in what they’re saying about the other. What’s funny is that like I said, James Gunn and Zack Snyder are friends in real life, and seemingly still have respect for one another. I mean, Gunn asked  Snyder for advice on whether to include the red trunks on Superman’s suit in his movie, so if there really was beef with each other, they aren’t showing it. So, the only side going to war with each other are their cult-like rabid fanbases.

It’s kind of like when two fanbases of a music start going to war with each other and start calling each other, and claiming moral superiority over them, and saying their favorite artist has better music than their favorite artist, and yet the two artists themselves have no actual beef with each other and sometimes even actually friends or acquaintances in real life. So, it’s a pointless war of words just as this is between Snyder fans and Gunn fans, or I should say Snyder cultists and Gunn cultists because there are fans of Zack Snyder and James Gunn out there who aren’t crazy and are actual normal functioning adults. To me, Snyder cultists and Gunn cultists are just as bad as each other, and neither one of them can claim moral superiority or even intellectual superiority for that matter. They’re just man children yelling at each other 🤬.

It’s going to be even funnier when the movie actually comes out, and Gunn’s DC cinematic universe which they’re just calling the DC Universe, or DCU for short, starts actually taking shape. People are already upset about Robert Pattinson not being included as Batman and Matt Reeves’s Batman film or the Penguin show not being apart of this new DC universe. Like I said before, I’m just going to sit and enjoy the show when and if this falls apart and blows up in James Gunn and Warner Bros.’s faces 🍿.

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched Stand Alone Complex. I rewatched the second season, 2nd GiG, fairly recently like either last year or the year before, I don’t exactly remember which. But, it’s been a pretty long time since I’ve seen the first season, the one that has the “Laughing Man” arc. So, I apologize if my memory is a bit fuzzy on some of this stuff. Right of the bat, Stand Alone Complex is better than SAC_2045, let’s get that out of the way first. SAC_2045 was not a very good follow up, and if you read my review of it, you’ll know exactly why. But, it did lay the groundwork for SAC_2045 with one of the earliest uses of CGI animation (or 3D animation if you prefer) in the entire franchise, with the intro sequence for Season 1, which you can watch right here.

I also like it way better than the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie by Mamoru Oshii, the one that inspired The Matrix. And of course, it is better than the 2017 live action Ghost in the Shell movie, even I don’t think that movie is anywhere near as bad as it’s often made out to be. It’s just okay. The jury’s still out on Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (or just Innocence as it’s known in Japan 🇯🇵), but given that movie was also directed by Mamoru Oshii, and it’s a loose sequel to the 95 movie, I suspect I probably wouldn’t like it that much. 

I also haven’t seen Ghost in the Shell: Arise, which is its own thing that isn’t tied at all to this series or SAC_2045. I thought it was, but apparently, it’s not. It’s comprised of an OVA, a anime TV series called Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Alternative Architecture, which isn’t really a television series, it’s just OVA presented in a TV format, although it has two original episodes that were created specifically for the series rather than just parts of the OVA like every other episode is, and a movie called Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (a bit of a redundant and nonspecific title I must say) which acts as a sequel to the OVA and by extension, the TV series (since the TV series is just the OVA stretched out to TV length). But it is something to look into. 

I guess I liked it more than that movie because of the geopolitical intrigue. This series delves a lot more into the politics of the world, and relationships between the major powers and how they affect the characters in the show, rather just focusing on the philosophy surrounding robot and cyborg personhood and self-identity like the Mamoru Oshii did. This show does get into some philosophy, but it doesn’t get completely bogged down by it like the Oshii films did.

I also think the characters are a lot better here and a lot more fleshed out, and aren’t just mouthpieces meant to convey whatever philosophical idea Oshii is trying to convey in that particular scene. Motoko herself is much more likable and interesting here than she was in the 95 movie, in fact I’ll go as far to say that this probably my favorite incarnation of the character. Same goes for Batou, Togusa, and everyone else in Section 9. This show made Chief Aramaki a true badass and one of the best characters in the franchise. I also like the dub voices, Elizabeth McGlynn is my favorite English voice for Motoko, Richard Epcar is my favorite English voice for Batou, Crispin Freeman is my favorite English voice for Togusa, and William Frederick Knight is my favorite English voice for Aramaki, and so on and so forth. Every voice actor in the English dub was perfectly cast in the roles that they were given.

Also, the Tachikomas are pretty endearing. I really like those short segments with them at the end of each episode, they’re pretty cute and funny and nice little lighthearted breaks in-between the darkness of the episodes themselves. Most of the show’s philosophy is reserved for them because they’re robots (spider tanks specifically) and there’s all these conversations about AI and whether or not they’re truly sentient or not.

The show kind of gives us the answer to that question at the end of Season 2 when they willingly sacrifice themselves to save the breakaway island of Dejima (an artificial island built by Japan 🇯🇵 to house the millions of refugees coming in from across Asia after the Fourth World War that vied for independence under the leadership of JSDF veteran 🇯🇵 turned revolutionary Kuze, who was being manipulated by Gōda who wanted to use the secession of Dejima to start a civil war in Japan 🇯🇵 and provoke a nuclear strike ☢️ against the island by the American Empire 🇺🇸) without being ordered or programmed to do so by any human or cyborg. They did return in SAC_2045 despite being “dying” at the end of Season 2 of this show, and they were one of the best parts of that show even if they weren’t given much to do on their own. They kind of just serve their roles as tanks for Section 9 for most of SAC_2045.

Obviously, the two biggest conflicts in this show’s lore are World War III and World War IV, which occurred at the beginning of the 21st century and during the 2020s respectively, and one involved nuclear weapons ☢️ and the other didn’t. These two conflicts are responsible for the state of the world that we see in the Stand Alone Complex continuity, and they loom large over the events of the series. The second season deals a lot more with the consequences of the two world wars, particularly World War IV (or “non-nuclear World War IV” or “The Second Vietnam War 🇻🇳” as its also known as), but the first seasons delves into them a little bit too.

It is the season after all that has an agent of Russia 🇷🇺’s foreign security service, the SVR RF 🇷🇺 (Foreign Intelligence of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺) who’s over a hundred years old or something but has a cybernetic body that makes her look young (like in her 20s or 30s). That is why I like the second season and the “Individual Eleven” arc more than the Laughing Man because it is more geopolitical and has more to do with all the political intrigue and tensions between Japan 🇯🇵 and the American Empire 🇺🇸, the main successor state of the United States 🇺🇸. Rather than just being about Section 9 going after a hacker who has a grievance against a corporation like the “Laughing Man” arc is.

The US 🇺🇸 broke apart and descended into civil war after its defeat in World War III, and the American Empire 🇺🇸 was one of its successor states, being formed out of the southern states (the same ones that made up the Confederacy BTW), and as the name implies, it has a monarchy 👑 (being a constitutional monarchy 👑 given that has a prime minister or president as well as a king 👑 or emperor 👑), something that of course runs contrary to the intent of the founding fathers of the United States of America 🇺🇸.

It essentially took its place on the world stage, serving nearly the same role that the US 🇺🇸 once served before the Third World War occurred. The US 🇺🇸 still technically exists in this world, but it’s been reduced to a small rump state with very little power and influence. The American Empire 🇺🇸 is portrayed as being more aggressive and more openly imperialistic than the United States 🇺🇸, lacking any of the good qualities the US 🇺🇸 may have had. They’re often shown to be at odds with the Japanese government 🇯🇵, despite Japan 🇯🇵 still being somewhat dependent on them for defense, and are often the root cause of whatever conflict Section 9 and Japan 🇯🇵 is facing at any particular moment.

They also invaded Mexico 🇲🇽 during the Fourth World War, which had UN involvement 🇺🇳, and Motoko, Batou, Ishikawa, and Saito personally took part in. Though Saito was fighting on the opposite side than Motoko, Batou, and Ishikawa were on. They fought on the UN side 🇺🇳 while Saito fought for some mercenary group. But, Motoko was so impressed by Saito’s talents as a sniper that she spared his life and eventually recruited him to Public Security Section 9. 

The American Empire 🇺🇸 is also implicated in some fighting that took place in Central and South America during one of if not both world wars (World War III and World War IV) that is alluded to in Season 1, fighting that Batou himself participated in. Given how much they participated in these wars in one way shape or form, nearly all the members of Section 9 are military veterans, they all have military training of some kind. The only one who doesn’t is Togusa, he was just a regular police officer before joining Section 9. He’s also the one member with either no or very few cybernetic enhancements, and mostly a regular human.

To answer my own question in the review, the Ameri-Soviet Union 🇺🇸☭ has nothing to do with Russia 🇷🇺. It is a breakaway American state 🇺🇸 that formed out of the fall of the United States 🇺🇸. It’s also known as the Russo-American Alliance 🇷🇺🇺🇸, and it’s mostly comprised of the Northern and Pacific Northwestern states of the former United States 🇺🇸 (the former USA 🇺🇸), though it also includes Alaska and Hawaii. So, I was kind of right, but not really. Canada 🇨🇦 might also be apart of the alliance, but it’s not 100% certain. The Ghost in the Shell wiki doesn’t say for sure, just it’s assumed. Despite both of its names, it’s not really clear what the Russo-American Alliance 🇷🇺🇺🇸’s relationship is to Russia 🇷🇺 proper. The wiki does a poor explaining it, and does a poor job of explaining what the Russo-American Alliance 🇷🇺🇺🇸 even is. Is it a country or is it just an alliance?

Given the way it’s talked about in the show, and the way the wiki talks about it, it seems like it’s a country, but I’m not so sure. But, whatever it is, it seems like it has a left-wing or liberal democratic government under the leadership of the Democratic Party of America 🇺🇸, one of the two leading political parties in the former United States 🇺🇸. And it has an adversarial relationship with the American Empire 🇺🇸 which of course has a right-wing authoritarian government. It probably wants to conquer the Russo-American Alliance 🇷🇺🇺🇸 so that can reconstitute and claim all of the territories of the former United States 🇺🇸. Just like how the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 in our world wants to reconstitute and claim all of the territories of the former Soviet Union ☭. That’s part of what the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 is about.

I hope that someday, I’ll get the chance to watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society, the TV movie that acted as a sequel to the series, continuing the story from where it leaves off at the end of 2nd GiG, someday. Even if the Blu-Ray 💿 is like crazy expensive now 😱 due to being out of print. This might be one that I’ll to watch online like on YouTube or something since it’s available to purchase on YouTube. It’s a shame because the plot sounds interesting. 

It takes place two years after 2nd GiG, Togusa is the new leader of Section 9, and it all has to do with them investigating the mysterious assassination of Ka Rum, the former dictator of a fictional country called the Siak Republic. The assassination, as well as other strange events that all culminate in a terrorist plot using children as a vectors for a cybernetic virus. These strange goings on are traced back to a hacker known simply as “the Puppeteer” (no relation to the “Puppet Master” from the 1995 movie) who has some kind of motive that only Section 9 can uncover.

Given that she’s on the cover of the DVD 📀 and Blu-Ray 💿, I’m guessing Motoko returns at some point and is ultimately the only one who can solve the case due to her unconventional methods (such as her willingness to talk to the suspect and actually entertain their ideas and humor them a bit), her own cybernetic identity crisis, and her natural skepticism towards authority (especially government or corporate authority), and due to Togusa’s inability to lead Section 9 and handle the case and solve it. I’m assuming, these shows and movies always do Togusa dirty and always make him out to be the weakest link of the team, while also making Motoko the end-all-be-all and the only reason why this section is even able to succeed. They make it always seem like Section 9 would be hopeless without her, only for her to leave Section 9 and go on some journey of self-discovery at the end of every continuity…without fail. That is one thing that annoys me about the Ghost in the Shell franchise as a whole if you couldn’t tell.

Normally, I’m not one of these people who likes to say that a piece of fiction predicted the future, but if Trump does invade Mexico 🇲🇽 like he says he’s going to do, then it’ll be one thing that Stand Alone Complex accurately predicted. Trump and his transition team talked about it being a “soft invasion,” whatever that means, as if that makes much of a difference. A soft invasion is still an invasion, you’re still invading a sovereign country’s territory. The only difference is the size of the force being used, soft invasion implies a small number of troops being sent in. By that logic, the invasion of Grenada 🇬🇩 was a soft invasion, or the invasion of Panama 🇵🇦 was a soft invasion, or the invasion of Iraq 🇮🇶 was a soft invasion.

And who’s to say that this “soft invasion” wouldn’t just lead to a full-scale invasion, a “hard invasion” as Trump and his team would probably call it? Who’s to say one little incursion to take out a cartel leader here or a few airstrikes against a cartel headquarters there, wouldn’t eventually lead to you having to go all out and invading the entire country with over a hundred thousand troops or more? Increasing troop deployment in Mexico 🇲🇽 ten fold. Don’t forget, America 🇺🇸’s direct involvement in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 didn’t happen all at once, it happened incrementally, and it grew over time until better anyone knew it you had over half a million US combat forces 🇺🇸 fighting in South Vietnam. We could very well fall into the same trap with Mexico 🇲🇽 if Trump attempts his “soft invasion,” whatever that would entail.

Speaking of cartels, Trump’s invasion would even be for the same excuse, the same casus belli used the American Empire 🇺🇸 used to justify its invasion of Mexico 🇲🇽 and fool the UN 🇺🇳 into participating in: fighting drug cartels. Though, I’m sure with Trump, it’ll be about a lot more than just fighting drug cartels, in fact it won’t even be about that at all, that’ll just be the excuse to sell the war to people or justify it after the fact. Oh, and the UN 🇺🇳 won’t be involved because a US invasion of Mexico 🇺🇸🇲🇽 would be a blatant violation of international law, and there’s no way the UN 🇺🇳 would go along with it or participate in it. I don’t even think Trump will even try to get UN approval 🇺🇳 for the invasion if he goes through with it. Trump doesn’t care about the UN 🇺🇳 and probably thinks they’re a weak liberal institution (or “radical Left” as he would say) getting in his way and preventing from achieving his real goals. Like, with Putin and Ukraine 🇺🇦, Trump would probably try to argue the invasion of Mexico 🇲🇽 was a “special military operation” (if you will) to eliminate drug cartels once and for all, stop drugs from flowing across the border, and protect the American people 🇺🇸. Even if it’s abundantly clear that that he doesn’t give a fuck about the American people 🇺🇸.

But the real reason would be to remove the country’s current president, Claudia Sheinbaum from power for daring to resist him on tariffs by tariffing the US 🇺🇸 back, or refusing to go along with Trump in his mass deportation plans by accepting all of the deported immigrants or threatening to deport any American citizens 🇺🇸 living in Mexico 🇲🇽 in response to Trump deporting Mexicans 🇲🇽 from the US 🇺🇸, maybe he’d even accuse her of not doing enough to get rid of drug cartels, and also for simply being a strong woman ♀︎ in a position of power in a country that directly borders the US 🇺🇸. And also to maybe annex some territory along the way while he’s at it like taking all of Baja California and making it part of the state of California, doubling that state’s size in terms of area and population. Or perhaps making it its own state, who knows?

Maybe even the entire country if he can, if he succeeds at decapitating the Mexican government 🇲🇽, and doesn’t just stop there and withdraws, and leaves a power vacuum or if he doesn’t install a puppet government that will comply and do everything he says. In that scenario, where Trump makes a maximalist claim over the entire country of Mexico 🇲🇽 and annexes the whole thing, Mexico 🇲🇽 will become the 51st state, unless he annexes Canada 🇨🇦 first in which case it would be the 52nd state. As if threatening to invade Mexico 🇲🇽 wasn’t enough, Trump also announced in a press conference recently that he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

That made it clear to everyone that Trump’s desire and plans to invade Mexico 🇲🇽 are driven purely by imperialist ambitions rather than some noble desire to destroy drug cartels. It was never about drug cartels, it was about expanding America 🇺🇸’s empire. Just are his desire and plans to invade Panama 🇵🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱, and annex Canada 🇨🇦, which will not happen peacefully and will have to happen through war if it happens at all.

So add Canada 🇨🇦 to list of countries he wants to invade and conquer. He’ll even have a built-in excuse to do it if Canada 🇨🇦 does indeed cut off power to the northern United States 🇺🇸 in response to Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports 🇨🇦, particularly on oil 🛢️ and gas 🔥. All of the northern states get their power from Canada 🇨🇦, so if Canada 🇨🇦 cuts them off, they will have no electricity ⚡️. He’ll say that they’re cutting off our power, we need to invade them and make them turn it back on or something to that effect.

This is the kind of stuff that we’ve been criticizing China 🇨🇳 for years for doing in the South China Sea with their 9-dash line, now a 10-dash line. Now Trump wants to do the same type of stuff but with the Gulf of Mexico? That will just make the US 🇺🇸 look hypocritical, no one will ever take us seriously again when we complain and criticize other countries for doing things like that. Not that Trump particularly cares if the US 🇺🇸 looks hypocritical or insane to the rest of the world at this point.

Trump’s words are already having a negative effect on America 🇺🇸’s reputation abroad as all the countries that Trump has openly threatened with invasion and annexation have responded in kind, saying that their territories are not for sale and that they will resist any efforts by Trump to take their territories through military force. They’re also clowning on him 🤡 and making fun of him for his idiotic suggestions such as was the case with Claudia Sheinbaum, who poked fun at Trump’s suggestion to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America by saying that North America should be renamed Mexican America.

One thing that I didn’t know about Greenland 🇬🇱 until Trump saying all this nonsense, and that I would like to mention here because it is relevant is that Greenland 🇬🇱 wants to be independent. There is a significant independence movement inside of Greenland 🇬🇱 that no longer wants the territory to be apart of Denmark 🇩🇰, and wants it to break away and become its own independent state. The movement is largely driven by the Inuit people, who were colonized and mistreated by the Danish government 🇩🇰 in the past. Typical colonialism stuff. If there were to be an independence referendum were to be held (and there is supposed to be one in April of this year), it’d probably go through because the Inuits make up the majority of the population on Greenland 🇬🇱 and the majority of them support independence.

The current prime minister of Greenland 🇬🇱, Múte Bourup Egede is Inuit and pro-independence. He’s committed to achieving Greenlandic independence 🇬🇱, and reaffirmed his commitment after Trump started reaffirming his desire to acquire Greenland 🇬🇱 by means necessary (not ruling out using military force). That’s pretty interesting, I had no idea there were people inside of Greenland 🇬🇱 who wanted independence from Denmark 🇩🇰, and that the current prime minister there was pro-independence, and now feels more steadfast in achieving it now Trump has threatened to annex it (yet again).

Trump’s obsession with acquiring Greenland 🇬🇱 goes back years, back to his first term. It was around the 2017 to 2018 timeframe where he first mentioned the idea of wanting to buy Greenland 🇬🇱 and make it a US territory 🇺🇸. No body took it seriously, they thought that he was joking, you know that stupid “Trump being Trump” dismissal, the thing that used to literally excuse Trump for everything and not have him have the consequences of his words, and just moved on. But now that he’s been re-elected, and he’s bringing up again, less people were willing to dismiss it as a joke this time around and more people took it seriously, most notably the Danish 🇩🇰 and the Greenlanders 🇬🇱 themselves.

It seems this time around, Trump is determined to show people that he’s serious about taking Greenland 🇬🇱, even going to the embarrassing length of sending his own son Donald Trump Jr. (or Don Jr. as he’s usually referred to as) to the island as an emissary and scoop out the place, make it seem like the people there want to be apart of the United States 🇺🇸 and want to be Americans 🇺🇸. When the reality is that Don Jr. lied (what a shock 😮), and exploited a bunch of homeless people and paid them money 💵 to say they support MAGA 🇺🇸 and want to be apart of the US 🇺🇸.

If Greenland 🇬🇱 does ever achieve independence, assuming Trump doesn’t invade and annex it before then, then it would pretty much just be a bigger Iceland 🇮🇸. I also feel like it declared independence and did break away from Denmark 🇩🇰, then they’d be putting themselves even more at risk of being annexed by the US 🇺🇸 because they’d no longer be apart of NATO, and they’d have to reapply. Meaning the risk of starting World War III would be less, and the US 🇺🇸 wouldn’t be fighting against 31 countries if it invaded Greenland 🇬🇱. Being apart of Denmark 🇩🇰 and therefore being apart of NATO is the only thing that is keeping Greenland 🇬🇱 safe, and is deterring any act of aggression from the United States 🇺🇸, but even that might hold because this is Trump we’re talking about. He’s both crazy and stupid, and is willing to risk a larger European war because he just wants Greenland 🇬🇱 that badly, and he hates NATO and wants to do tear it down and discredit it in any way he can.

Plus, he probably figures that he can defeat all of those countries since the US 🇺🇸 has the most powerful military in the world and it’s stronger than the entire rest of the alliance combined. What could these other countries do without the US 🇺🇸 on their side and instead as their enemy (their enemy from within)? That’s what Trump figures, and now that it seems Pete Hegseth will more than likely be confirmed as Secretary of Defense, there will be very few people in the Defense Department telling otherwise. So, Greenland 🇬🇱 declaring independence from Denmark 🇩🇰 (as understandable and admirable as that might be) wouldn’t save them from an American invasion 🇺🇸, in fact, it would put them at even more of a risk.

At least Egede isn’t wiling to work with Trump on achieving his goal of breaking away from Denmark 🇩🇰, naïvely believing that just because Trump is super transactional, you can get him to do anything you want him to do. He, along with the prime minister of Denmark 🇩🇰 Mette Frederikson, made a joint statement that Greenland 🇬🇱 is not for sale and that it will never be apart of the US 🇺🇸, not playing along or excusing Trump’s threats to annex the territory. 

He also made a statement before that where he said the same thing, that Greenland 🇬🇱 is not for sale and that they have no interest in joining the US 🇺🇸. He isn’t naïve to the fact that Trump is an imperialist who wants American territorial expansion 🇺🇸, and hasn’t deluded himself into believing that he can reason with Trump or appease him or that he can exploit his weaknesses to achieve Greenlandic independence 🇬🇱. There are better ways of achieving independence than working with Trump, Egede understands.

But it isn’t just the countries that Trump has threatened that have responded, particularly those in Europe, and they horrified and appalled that the incoming US president 🇺🇸 is threatening four of America 🇺🇸’s closest allies with war (two of which share a border with the US 🇺🇸), pretty much following Putin’s playbook to a T. If Trump actually goes through with any of this, America 🇺🇸’s reputation will be in the toilet, and no country will ever trust the US 🇺🇸 again with anything. They will fear us and hate us, and rightfully so because Trump will have taken our country down a dark path, a path we will have tremendously difficulty turning back from.

The sad thing is that, domestically speaking, when this all inevitably goes south (no pun intended), Trump will get very little if any blame for any of it from anyone, even though he started it and was the one who wanted it more than anyone else. Trump will just blame everything on other people, and the American people 🇺🇸 will largely believe it. The only people who will actually lay the blame squarely on Trump are the people who already dislike Trump. Speaking of which…

Some (particularly those in the so-called “pro-democracy movement” on YouTube and elsewhere) are saying that Trump is saying all this, making all these threats to act as a distraction for the fact that he can’t lower grocery prices or deliver any of his other campaign promises, but it’s not a distraction. Trump is serious about this. He is openly saying all of the bad things he plans on doing in his second term, he’s not hiding it. Probably because it is his second term, and he feels emboldened now that he no longer has to campaign and appeal to voters or win an election.

He will be a lame duck president and he will no longer legally be allowed to run again in the 2028 presidential election 🗳️ for a third term, although I don’t think that will stop him from trying to stay in office. He’s not planning on running for re-election for a third time, he’s just going to try to stay in office as long as he can by undermining the term limit in every way he can. He’ll try to use the Supreme Court to crown him king basically, they’re already halfway there by granting him absolute immunity, or he’ll attempt to actually change the constitution in a way that will allow him to stay in office as long as he wants and essentially be president for life until he dies. That be a lot harder to do because he would need Congress if he were to make any changes to the constitution, and most attempts to change the constitution have failed. That’s why there hasn’t been a new amendment since the 27th amendment which was ratified in 1992. But if the Trump era has taught me anything, it’s to not assume anything is impossible or to assume that things like the constitution and checks and balances will stop Trump from doing what he wants.

So either way, he no longer has to lie to voters and give lip service to their concerns or grievances, he’s free now to do whatever he wants regardless of what the voters or the public as a whole will think. That’s why he was so open about siding with Musk and Ramaswamy over the HB-1 visa issue. He no longer has to appeal to the racist hard line anti-immigrant side of his base, or pretend to be a populist working in favor of the common man, and can be open about being for the rich 🤑 and serving their interests and his own interests rather than the interests of the working class. And his threats to wage war against four other countries and expand America 🇺🇸’s territory are part of this. He no longer has to appeal to anti-imperialist leftists or the isolationist libertarian right and isolationist far-right and pretend to be anti-war, anti-interventionist, or anti-imperialist. He can finally be out in the open as a proud imperialist wanting to expand America 🇺🇸’s empire through warfare.

He wants to be remembered in history as a “Great Man ♂︎,” and wants to be remembered as the one who expanded America 🇺🇸’s territory after a century, just as he was the one who expanded the US military 🇺🇸 in decades by creating a new branch: the Space Force. He takes pride in the fact that the Space Force was created under his watch, and he will take similar pride in the fact that he expanded the American empire 🇺🇸 through territorial expansion if he succeeds in getting what he wants. So no, this is not a mere distraction as some liberal and progressive commentators will have you believe, this is a legit ambition that Trump has, and now that he’s in office again, he’s going to do everything he can to make it a reality.

That’s what makes it so terrifying, the fact that he isn’t joking, he isn’t just bluffing, this isn’t an elaborate stunt, he’s serious, he means it. All this talk of this being a distraction will be a distraction in and of itself, as Trump gears up for war. The problem that people always seem to run into with Trump is that they never take him seriously when he says crazy or irresponsible things like this. They always assume that he’s joking, or he’s bluffing, or he’s lying, or that he’s distracting people from something else.

And while yes, Trump does lie a lot about many things, and he does say things to distract people from something else he doesn’t want them to know about or think about for more than 2 seconds. But, there are cases where Trump does actually mean what he says, and does what he says he’s going do, and I think that is the case with a lot of the bad policies he’s been proposing since the election 🗳️ and people are worried about. He’s saying it out loud for everyone to hear (or anyone who will actually listen), feeling emboldened by his electoral win to actually say what he means or be more open about what side he’s truly on without having to worry about what voters will think of it, knowing full well that he no longer has to run for re-election, he has their votes and no longer needs them, and hardly anyone will take him seriously anyway on some of his crazier and more destructive policy proposals. They will just assume it’s just “Trump being Trump.”

During the lead up to the January 6 insurrection, very few people actually believed that Trump was going to try to illegal stay in power, or that he was going to send a mob to attack the Capitol and try to block the election certification. They just thought that all this talk of election fraud and trying to delegitimize Biden’s win was all just for show, and that Trump would just leave office like any other president before him. When people don’t take Trump seriously, bad things happen. That’s how he’s able to get away with so much stuff. I mean, what are all these “pro-democracy” YouTubers, who make their living off of making fun of Trump or making fun of MAGA 🇺🇸 and just talking about what they’re doing rather than actually doing anything about it themselves, going to do once the US 🇺🇸 is actually at war and entire cities are getting blown away?

Mexicans 🇲🇽 if you’re reading this, if this happens, if Trump invades your country, please fight, please resist. Keep your territory, keep your sovereignty. I have a good feeling that Mexicans 🇲🇽 will fight for their country in the event of a Trump-led US invasion 🇺🇸, they probably don’t need me to tell them that, but I’m just saying. And Americans 🇺🇸, if you’re reading this and you live in Mexico 🇲🇽, if it seriously looks like Trump is going to invade and isn’t just bluster or empty threats, then leave the country if you can.

I understand that maybe hard considering some of you fled from the US 🇺🇸 to Mexico 🇲🇽 so you wouldn’t have to live under a Trump presidency, but still it’s for own safety, and it still to escape Trump. You don’t want to be danger from any of the fighting, any of the gunfire, artillery, missiles, and bombs, disease, lack of supplies (food, water 💦, medicine). You also don’t want to used as human shields by the Trump administration in any way, especially as a way to justify an invasion. Don’t give that to Trump, deny him that propaganda opportunity.

Same goes for Canadians 🇨🇦, Panamanians 🇵🇦, and Greenlanders 🇬🇱, and any Americans 🇺🇸 who may live in those places. Fight for your territory, keep your sovereignty in the face of American aggression 🇺🇸, and Americans 🇺🇸 living there, make a plan B for yourself, draw up an escape plan for in case the place where you currently live gets invaded, and don’t allow yourselves to be used as propaganda tools by the Trump administration to justify their military aggression, or allow yourselves to be used as human shields by the Trump administration. Oh, and members of NATO, please, come up with a contingency plan about what to do if the US 🇺🇸 attacks Canada 🇨🇦 and/or Greenland 🇬🇱. 

It is unprecedented to have a member of NATO attack another NATO member, it goes completely against one of the core tenets of the alliance and one of the core purposes of the alliance, and you need to be prepared for when or if it ever happens. Figure out how you’re going to respond if the US 🇺🇸 does the unthinkable and goes rogue. The fact that we’re even having this conversation, the fact that these are real concerns that we have to worry about—that our next president may become a dictator, may invade four countries (I know Greenland 🇬🇱’s not technically a country but still) and steal their territory, and may rip apart the entire NATO alliance and cause it to completely unravel—shows how far we’ve fallen.

You might be reading this, and thinking to yourself, “really? Are you still going to criticize Trump?” Yes I am. So long as I have a platform, so long as my freedom of speech, and so long as I’m legally allowed to criticize Trump I will. If Trump does go full dictator, and he does terminate the constitution, and makes any and all criticism of him illegal, and my post gets removed or my blog gets shut down, then so be it. They’ll have to take me out kicking and screaming if they try to arrest me for criticizing Trump and his policies or policy proposals (if you can even call them that). And believe me, they’re going to try to implement as much as Trump’s agenda as they can before the midterms, before some of these Republicans get voted out and replaced with Democrats potentially.

I wish we had political commentators here in the US 🇺🇸 that were capable of meeting the moment, and holding Trump to account, but I don’t think the current lineup, the current ecosystem of American liberals and progressives 🇺🇸 in the political commentary space are to the task. I wish there were people like A Different Bias here in the US 🇺🇸, I wish that there was an American A Different Bias 🇺🇸 because he while does do daily uploads (or near daily uploads), he manages to commentate on British politics 🇬🇧 in an intelligent way, and actually explains what’s going on with the different political parties in Britain 🇬🇧 in a way that American political commentators 🇺🇸 don’t do about the two major political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. A Different Bias isn’t 100% serious, he does tell a few jokes here and there, he does get a bit “cheeky” as they would say in Britain 🇬🇧. I hope so used that term the right way.

On top of that, he’s the only other person who has talked about Trump’s invasion plans and took it seriously and treated it with the gravity it deserves, instead of just making jokes about it. The one of only American political channels 🇺🇸 that I know of that has actually talked about Trump’s plans to invade Mexico 🇲🇽 and actually took it seriously was the Sons of Liberty, an anti-Trump populist left wing media group run mostly by military veterans, and they mainly operate on TikTok. Their YouTube channel is just a repository to reupload their TikTok content.

Tom Powell Jr. does the same thing with his YouTube channel. But, he was the only other liberal or progressive anti-Trump content creator anywhere on the Internet 🛜 that has actually talked about Trump’s insane plans to invade Mexico 🇲🇽, Panama 🇵🇦, Canada 🇨🇦, and Greenland 🇬🇱, and actually took it seriously and didn’t just dismiss it as a mere distraction, or as a joke, or as “Trump being Trump.”

Other political YouTubers and TikTokers have talked about the Panama thing 🇵🇦, they’ve talked about the Canada thing 🇨🇦, and they’ve talked about the Greenland thing 🇬🇱, but very few of them have talked about Mexico 🇲🇽. Even though it was one of the first ones Trump and his transition team started floating around after the election 🗳️, it’s in Project 2025, and it was something Trump tried to do in his first term but was prevented from doing so by the Joint Chiefs of Staff which was led by Mark Milley at the time. They’ve only talked about Mexico 🇲🇽 in how it relates to the trade war Trump wants to start with them, not an actual shooting war with tanks and bombs. But Tom was one of the few besides Sons of Liberty to talk about it. I will give him credit for that if I’m no longer subscribed to him and no longer watch him.

The people at the Sons of Liberty, the people who run that channel (both on YouTube and on TikTok), are fucking insane. I don’t exactly trust them to give me serious commentary on the current political moment in America 🇺🇸. They’re not exactly stable if you know what I mean. I mean, these are the same people were openly calling for violence and advocating for class warfare after the Luigi Mangione thing happen, putting the hashtag #FreeLuigi and the hashtag #EattheRich in their video titles 🙄.

Besides the crazies at the Sons of Liberty, most American political channels 🇺🇸 seem content to just make jokes and make fun of Trump and MAGA 🇺🇸 rather than actually explain the bigger picture, and talk about what both parties are doing, especially in regards to preparing for the 2026 midterms. Which is fine, there is a time and place for that, but that shouldn’t the only content that we’re getting from these American political channels 🇺🇸, we should also be getting more serious political commentary like what A Different Bias does for British politics 🇬🇧.

Whatever serious political commentary we’re getting out of America 🇺🇸 is mostly just Leftists trying fit this current climate, this current moment into their already held preconceived beliefs about late stage capitalism and class struggle 🤦‍♂️. Most American political content 🇺🇸 is inadequate, and will not be enough to get us through the next four years of Trump. Sarcasmitron is good, he’s an American 🇺🇸, but he hardly posts any content, just every once in a while. He’s more of a quality over quantity type of content creator, which is fine, but I feel we could use his wisdom a lot more right about now. I at least hope he does a video before the inauguration or after, giving us his thoughts, his postmortem on the election 🗳️ and why he thinks Trump won and what him being president will mean for America 🇺🇸 going forward.

Another phenomenon that I’ve seen arise in the post-election world, the new Trump era, is what I like to call FAFO channels. FAFO is a safe for work abbreviation of a term is very much not safe for work, Fuck Around and Find Out. This hashtag or meme, started popping up after the election 🗳️ happened in response to giddy Trump supporters and MAGA people 🇺🇸 dancing and celebrating Trump’s election win 🗳️, rubbing it in liberals and progressives’ faces, as a way of telling those people that they voted against their own self-interests by voting for Trump, and to not complain when they suffer the consequences of Trump’s worst policies. You fucked around and found out, that’s basically what they’re saying. The government you elect is the government you deserve, that sort of thing, or “don’t complain, you voted for it 🫵.”

That’s basically FAFO is, it’s a simple idea and it’s the perfect rebuttal to any MAGA cultists 🇺🇸 or hapless voter who voted for Trump, and is not regretting their decision or complaining about something Trump or his inner circle are doing. It was initially targeted at blacks and Latinos who voted for Trump because those are two groups, the two demographics that will negatively impacted by a second Trump presidency the most, but it expanded out to encompass all Trump voters, anyone who voted for Trump and may end up regretting it later on or he hurt by his policies and wondering why these bad things are happening to them.

What came out of this are bunch of channels that only exist to upload compilations of TikTok videos of liberals and progressives, even some conservatives, anyone who hates Trump and didn’t vote for him, telling Trump voters they made a terrible mistake and not only will Democrats, liberals, progressives, blacks, Latinos, women, LGBT 🏳️‍🌈 be hurt by Trump’s policies, but they will as well as. Videos of liberals and progressives saying that Trump is stupid and doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Or videos of liberals and progressives trying to explain to Trump voters and Republicans as a whole that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are the same thing and that Trump and the Republicans in Congress want to get rid of it. This was all happening around the holidays too, so a lot of these TikTok videos were of liberals and progressives explaining why they didn’t invite their MAGA relatives 🇺🇸 or Trump voting relatives to Thanksgiving 🦃 and Christmas 🎄 dinner, and why they’ve chosen to disassociate with their MAGA relatives 🇺🇸 entirely

They just can’t associate with people who voted against them, who voted against their rights and right to exist and live peacefully, and didn’t care about them enough to reconsider their vote and vote for someone else besides Trump. When all the stuff involving the spending bill and the government shutdown happened, all of these channels started posting compilations of TikTok videos of people talking about how Elon Musk is the real president and Trump is either vice president or co-president or even the First Lady.

Some of these FAFO channels do “reactions” to these TikTok videos, and by reactions, I mean just watch the videos with a blank expression the whole time and not saying anything at all 😐. It’d be a misnomer to call these videos “reaction videos” in all honesty. These FAFO channels post this content daily or near daily because it requires very little every effort. All have to do is compile TikTok videos, edit them together into a 10 minute or 20 minute video and then done, upload it to YouTube for the masses to gabble up and consume. There are many FAFO channels, but the ones that I know of and could find are as follows: Fiikazzo, WaKera, Shar Henley, Ultimate Public Entertainment, GLOBAL PRINCESS, and Gracey D. Those are the channels to avoid if you hate low-effort slop content like that. I don’t know how much staying power the FAFO meme and hashtag actually has, but I guess we’ll find out after Trump is inaugurated and in the next four years that he’ll be in office for.

Since I mentioned TikTok, I guess I should address the incoming TikTok ban. I’ve never used TikTok in my life, in fact I hate TikTok (always have), so I will not shed a tear if or when TikTok gets banned in the US 🇺🇸. I always felt that there was something sinister about TikTok in a way I never felt about Vine. I don’t know if I can adequately articulate why besides it being owned by the Chinese government 🇨🇳. I actually agreed with the decision by the US Congress 🇺🇸 to force BitDance to sell the app or ban it for this reason, and I was saying that the US 🇺🇸 should follow India 🇮🇳’s lead when it comes to banning the app. Most of the foreign policy and national security community was saying that.

I’m not one of these people that’s sitting around crying over it 😭 like imuRgency, who made a 20 minute video talking about the ban of TikTok in the US 🇺🇸 is the death of Gen Z media as a whole. As if there aren’t other platforms that Gen Z can use and already uses, like, oh I don’t know, YouTube! The platform that imuRgency used to upload that video. As if Gen Z’s entire identity is entirely wrapped up in TikTok 🙄. If you tied you whole identity to a social media app, then you are pathetic, and if entire generation’s identity is entirely defined by a social media app, then that is truly sad. TikTok is not the end all be all of Gen Z media, it never was, and I think if people start thinking that it is, they’re only hurting themselves. 

He also tried to discredit the reasons for why TikTok is being banned, the legitimate national security concerns by saying that everyone uses people’s personal data. And while that is true, it completely overlooks the fact that TikTok is owned by a company that is controlled by the Chinese government 🇨🇳 because there really is no such thing as a truly private company in China 🇨🇳. Everything in China 🇨🇳 is state owned to some degree or another. I mean, do you want a foreign government in complete control over a global social media platform, and have access to the data that’s on there? I mean, the Chinese government 🇨🇳 doesn’t even let their own people use TikTok.

TikTok is banned for all Chinese citizens 🇨🇳 and it is blocked by the dreaded Great Firewall which blocks most websites and apps from the outside world from being accessed in China 🇨🇳. And yet, when this TikTok ban was voted on, the Chinese government 🇨🇳 decried it and said that it was “violation of people’s freedoms” or some other nonsense like that. Now, think to yourself, why would the Chinese government 🇨🇳 not want TikTok to be banned in the US 🇺🇸 when they don’t even let their own people use it? What could their motivation possibly be for wanting to keep TikTok available in the US 🇺🇸? Think about that for a moment.

We’re not talking about corporations having access to people’s personal information, their data, we’re talking about an actual government having that control, a government that is hostile to or in competition with the US government 🇺🇸. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty big fucking difference to me. If the US 🇺🇸 did become a dictatorship, and nationalized all sorts of industries, and placed every company under some degree of state ownership, I think every country in the world would be within their right to ban those companies or social media platforms.

ImuRgency’s video never mentions China 🇨🇳 once as far as I can tell, and that’s a crucial bit of information that he’s leaving out (whether it’s unintentional or intentional, I can’t say) that I think people should know. His audience should know that the US 🇺🇸 is in a cold war with China 🇨🇳, and that TikTok is apart of that equation. They don’t have to like it, they don’t have to side with the US 🇺🇸 (or India 🇮🇳) on the issue, but they should know. He also made a video about the Luigi Mangione thing, which was equally as stupid if not more so. I think I’m thinking of just writing off imuRgency entirely at this point.

So, no I do not feel bad that TikTok might be banned. I know some people are holding out hope that the Supreme Court will overturn the decision and deem it unconstitutional, but it’s a conservative majority Supreme Court, I think they’re pretty likely to uphold the decision. So, it’s more than likely that TikTok is indeed going bye-bye. All I gotta say is good riddance. Couldn’t be gone any sooner. I will certainly not miss it when it’s gone because I never used it once in my entire life. But what about Trump? How does Trump fit into all this? Well, Trump has flip-flopped on the issue of banning TikTok. At first, during his first term, he was in favor of it, in fact he was one of the first and main ones to suggest we ban TikTok. But last year during the election 🗳️, he was against it. Do I think he’s had a genuine change of heart ❤️ and is taking a principled stance about protecting TikTok for the common man? No.

He was only against banning TikTok for his own self interest. He knew TikTok was a powerful platform and had become even more important than when he was last president because that’s where a lot of young people congregate. He wanted to keep TikTok around long enough to win the election 🗳️, to sucker young people into thinking he genuinely cared about them and their voices to get their votes 🗳️ or their apathy, and now that he’s got their votes 🗳️ and he’s won the election 🗳️, he has no use for TikTok anymore. So, he’s willing to let the ban go through since that was what he wanted to do originally in his first term.

But not until after the inauguration, but why? Why did he want to delay the ban until after he was inaugurated? I think because he wanted people to still keep talking about him. Even if it’s negative, he still likes it when people talk about him and when he’s on people’s minds. Bad publicity is still publicity. He’s so narcissistic and attention-seeking that it gives him life when people are talking about him, and it hurts him when people aren’t talking about him. It makes him feel empty. So, he wanted to keep TikTok around long enough for people to talk about him ahead of the inauguration, and then after the inauguration he’s willing to let it go. Also, maybe he wanted to delay the ban to make young people think he was on their side before pulling the rug out from under them. I wouldn’t put it past him. 

Right now people are talking about the idea that he may use an executive order to “save” TikTok, even though Supreme Court has ruled to uphold the ban and let it pass through (this part is a late addition, Friday January 17, 2025). I mean, I’ll believe when I see it, I do still think this could just be Trump blowing smoke, trying to make himself look good and distance himself from the ban just before his inauguration and just when he takes office. So that people, particularly young people, will see him as their hero for saving their favorite social media app from being banned and will think that he’s on their side and he cares about them when he clearly doesn’t. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Some are questioning Trump’s change of heart ❤️ on TikTok, as they rightfully should, and while I think the election 🗳️ had a big part to do with others, others speculate that some tech billionaires or even the TikTok CEO himself, Shou Zi Chew whispered in his ear and told that keeping TikTok is good because it’ll make him a lot of money 💵. 

So, it’s people taking advantage of the fact that Trump is super transactional, and if you persuade him enough, you can get him to do whatever you want. I think it’s bad to have a president that’s that transactional, but it is good for the billionaire class who want to maximize and maintain their profits 🤑. If Trump does manage to somehow keep TikTok around by signing an executive order (something he very much likes to do), then it would be in direct violation of the law because the law says that if TikTok doesn’t divest from BitDance, then it will be banned. But it doesn’t seem like Trump is that interested in whether TikTok has divested or not, he’s just interested in keeping it around because he wants good publicity going into his second term (which he has so far failed at getting because of all the stupid stuff he’s been saying for the past few weeks and because of the clown car 🤡 that his cabinet picks). 

If he made a deal directly with the CEO of BitDance or of TikTok (the Washington Post article I got this from didn’t exactly clarify), then it seems like he’s willing to keep TikTok available in the US 🇺🇸 even if it is still tied to a Chinese company 🇨🇳. So, he’d be going against his own carefully curated image as the anti-China guy 🇨🇳♂︎, the guy ♂︎ who’s actually tough on China 🇨🇳, he’d also be once showing his blatant disregard for the law, and he’d be undermining the Supreme Court’s authority, when they’re the ones who practically gave him absolute authority and made him immune from prosecution on the basis that every act by a president is an “official act,” and therefore cannot by prosecuted by the law. Presidents are now immune from criminal prosecution. 

That is the gift the Supreme Court gave Trump, and he’d be stabbing them in the back by going against a law that they agreed to uphold. Could it be the first signs of the Judicial Branch being weakened, and all power and authority being entirely concentrated in the Executive Branch? Could be. If Trump succeed it will definitely make him good to young people and to content creators who depend on revenue they make from TikTok. As usual, Biden will get the blame will trying to ban TikTok while Trump will get the credit for saving it. He’ll get to look like the hero while Biden looks like the villain. 

This has been Trump’s strategy all along. Knowing implementing bad policy or making bad policy suggestions, and then putting Biden and pretty every Democratic president after him in a position where they have to follow through with it. So that they get all the bad press, and Trump won’t have to suffer any of the negative consequences of his decisions or actions. So, he still looks good, or at least not as bad, and the gullible American public 🇺🇸 will be none the wiser. It’s a very insidious and pernicious strategy that no other president before Trump has ever tried before, and it only really works because of the complicity of the media and them sanitizing Trump and making him seem like a normal president or even as a good president. 

But, and this a big but, if Trump fails to stop the TikTok ban from going through and his executive order does nothing (executive orders on their own are usually not powerful enough to do anything since they have to be approved by Congress and all that I’m assuming), then it would just undermine his own power and authority. It would make him look weak, and show that he’s not invincible and possibly poke a hole in the idea that he could be a dictator. That being a dictator in this country is even possible. It would also make him look like a flip-flopper and a liar. 

Young people in particular will see him as a liar who never cared about them or their voices and was ultimately exploiting TikTok and exploiting them specifically for votes, which is what I’ve been saying all along. I do hope that the TikTok ban goes through, and Trump fails to stop it, if only that reason alone. He’ll get to be on the receiving end of what he was doing to Biden in just his first week in office. But we’ll see what happens, we’ll see how it pans out. Expect an update on this matter in my next repost since I use these forewords to talk about the news and current events. 

Do I feel bad for the people who used TikTok as their one and only platform? Sure, but at the same time, they should’ve diversified and went on multiple platforms just in case something like that. I know I’m not exactly one to talk since my two main platforms are YouTube and Blogger, and both of those are owned by Google, but you know, neither of those platforms are under threat from being banned. Maybe I might go on Substack or some other platform where I can actually monetize my writings. I do have a DeviantART account, and that’s not owned by Google, so I think I’ve diversified enough.

I’m sure they’ll flock to different social media or video sharing sites like when Vine fell. A lot of the Vine creators migrated to YouTube, most infamously Jake Paul, who became bigger on YouTube than he ever was on Vine, unfortunately 😒. In case of TikTok users and TikTok creators, a lot of them are already flocking to RedNote even before the TikTok ban has been decided on by the Supreme Court or gone in, which is another is Chinese social media app 🇨🇳 😩😤, why do these things keep popping up everywhere!? These Chinese social media apps 🇨🇳 are like weeds, you pull one out, another damn one grows in its place. Wouldn’t kill all of these brain rotted kids to pick a social media app that isn’t from China 🇨🇳, that won’t extract data and give it to the Chinese Communist Party 🇨🇳☭ to do whatever they want with it? To exploit it however they want?

Or why can’t someone from America 🇺🇸, or the UK 🇬🇧, or Canada 🇨🇦, or Australia 🇦🇺, or New Zealand 🇳🇿, or Japan 🇯🇵, or South Korea 🇰🇷, or France 🇫🇷, or Germany 🇩🇪, or hell, Denmark 🇩🇰 (since a lot of these people love to talk about how much they love Denmark 🇩🇰 now ever since and only after Trump started threatening to annex Greenland 🇬🇱, a Danish territory 🇩🇰) create a TikTok alternative that is actually good and isn’t at all tied to an authoritarian government or tied to a massive corporation? Like, why can’t someone just create the Bluesky for TikTok? RedNote is not the Bluesky of TikTok, it’s not going to be the Bluesky of TikTok. It’s probably going to be a lot worse than TikTok, it’s probably going extract just as much if not more data from users and its going to be even more beholden to the communist regime ☭ in Beijing.

I hope it crashes and burns personally. How long will it be until RedNote is also forced to divest from China 🇨🇳 or get banned? Just something to think about for all the pathetic people who apparently can’t live without TikTok or anything like TikTok. Their attention span is so shot that they can’t watch anything else. The most annoying part is probably that TikTok users who have fled to RedNote call themselves, “TikTok refugees” 🙄 STFU 🤬! You are not refugees! Most of you using that stupid hashtag don’t even know what it’s like to actually be a refugee.

You’ve lived a comfortable, cushy life where you never had to worry about war or famine in your own backyard, to where leaving your own country and fleeing to another was something you actually had to think about. Don’t use that word in vain and don’t twist it or bastardize it to mean something it was never meant to originally! I take refugees and refugee status seriously, even if I am lucky enough to have never been a refugee myself. These are real people who have suffered and have struggled a lot, some of them don’t even make it. To make light of that, and use that word to mean you’re moving from one social media platform to another is beyond sick, I have nothing but contempt for such people who use this dumbass hashtag 🖕. But, I guess if Donald Trump really does become a dictator, and wrecks the country as bad as we’re all worried he will, I guess some of these people will get the refugee experience for real as they attempt (keyword: attempt) to flee this country and go to another 🤷‍♂️.

As for people who got most of if not all of their news on TikTok, TikTok was never a great news source, and you should’ve never been using it as a news source. Especially since it was writhe with misinformation and disinformation. As all social media platforms are. The people who I feel the least sorry for are the influencers. A lot of these influencers are multimillionaires 🤑, they live in mansions or penthouses, they own multiple cars (a lot of sports cars), they wear expensive clothes, and a few of them might even own yachts 🛥️ or private jets 🛩️, and if they’ve invested their money 💵 right and saved it in a bank account, they should be fine once TikTok is gone. They will not struggle to make ends meet, or struggle to pay bills, or struggle to put food on the table, or whatever if TikTok does get banned, they’ll be fine. They’ve got plenty of money 💵 to fall back on, more money 💵 than I or my family have ever had in our lifetimes.

One more piece of news before I finally close this out, this just came in: Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas have finally agreed to a ceasefire. The agreement goes as follows, Israel 🇮🇱 will withdraw the majority of its troops from Gaza but will keep some forces in some areas where the fighting hasn’t stopped, but once the line has been stabilized, they will withdraw those forces as well. Hamas will release all of the hostages in exchange for some Palestinian prisoners 🇵🇸, all of whom will be exiled and will be never allowed to return to the Palestinian territories 🇵🇸. The second phase of the deal will entail Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas discussing establishing buffer zones along the eastern and northern edges of Gaza that Israel 🇮🇱 wants to maintain for security purposes.

Good on them, I honestly didn’t think there was ever going to be a ceasefire, certainly not at the beginning of 2025. It’s not perfect, it’s not a resolution that will satisfy everyone but it’s something. Of course, the far-right hardliners in Netanyahu’s government opposed the deal and wanted to continue the war, but Netanyahu himself seems to support it and managed to push it through without far-right votes. The majority of Israelis 🇮🇱 also support the deal because as it turns out, the Israeli people 🇮🇱 are just as sick of this war as everyone else is.

Why do I think Netanyahu agreed to this deal? Because the war was hurting him domestically, and he knew that he if kept this up and if more hostages died, he’d lose power. He’d be voted out by a vote of no confidence, or he’d face several protest demonstrations 🪧 that would force him to resign, and he definitely doesn’t want that. So, Netanyahu really just did it to save his own skin and to stay in power. It’s not because he had some change of heart ❤️ about the Palestinians 🇵🇸 or anything like that.

We’ll see if this deal actually pans out as intended, or if it falls apart and the war continues. Tensions seem to flare and violence always seems to break out every time there’s a peaceful solution to this particular conflict (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸). There are people in Israel 🇮🇱 and even in Palestine 🇵🇸 who don’t want the violence to ever end because it serves their interests. Luckily, it seems like all of the Palestinian leaders 🇵🇸 who did want blood 🩸 are dead 💀, but all the Israeli leaders 🇮🇱 who do still want blood 🩸 are all still very much alive, so who knows? 

I do think both sides are exhausted by this war, and don’t have the energy, or the fervor, or the equipment to keep fighting it. Which kind of proves the point I kind of sort of made before that Israel 🇮🇱 is incapable of fighting a long war. They just aren’t built for it. They’re only able to fight quick short wars where they can control the situation and control the narrative, and end hostilities as swiftly as possible and in as favorable of a situation to their interests as possible. The moment they can’t do that, and the war goes on for months or even years, and they lose control of the situation and the narrative, then they kind of fall apart and kind of burn themselves out despite all the US equipment 🇺🇸 they receive. So, maybe that means there will be a calm to the violence for now hopefully. But then again, maybe not. 

Maybe those pro-war far-right Israeli hardliners 🇮🇱 will get what they want and the war will continue unabated. Given the reaction certain Israeli politicians 🇮🇱 and some in the Israeli public 🇮🇱 have had to the deal, and a lot of them still don’t trust Hamas and don’t trust them to hold their end of the bargain since Hamas hasn’t been willing to give a list of the hostages who are still alive, there is a chance the deal could fall through, and we’ll be back to square zero. Not square one, square zero. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, and the deal will go through, but we’ll see. I’m not going to make any predictions on this issue just in case I’m wrong. If the deal does fall apart, and the war does continue, then Trump will have his first major foreign policy embarrassment the moment he takes office. Speaking of which.

The saddest part about all of this is that Trump will get credit for all that. It’s already happening, the Wall Street Journal article that I got this news on said as much, they’re giving Trump credit for leading to this outcome, making it seem like the Israelis 🇮🇱 and Hamas were afraid of Trump, or were more on board with him as opposed to Biden and that’s why they agreed to this deal. Even though it was all Biden and Blinken’s diplomatic skills, and their backdoor dealings that facilitated this breakthrough. I mean, the WSJ is owned by Jeff Bezos, and he already kissed the ring, so it’s not that surprising.

Had it not been for Biden and Blinken, there would not be a ceasefire right now. And yet, Biden will not get credit for it, Trump for some reason even though he did absolutely nothing except make some vague threats. Biden and Blinken did all the actual heavy lifting. Like with the economy, Trump will get to enjoy the fruits of Biden’s labor, and no body will question him when he says it was all because of him because he was the president elect and every world leader takes him seriously as a strong leader, which they don’t. People like Kim Iverson will get to make their little YouTube videos and make Trump out to be some kind of hero who stood up to Netanyahu and put him in place, told him what’s what, a principled anti-war and anti-imperialist advocate, and a champion of Palestinian rights 🇵🇸, even though he is very clearly none of those things. The war in Gaza destroyed Biden’s presidency, and completely doomed his chances for re-election, and by extension, doomed Kamala’s chances for election.

It’s just like with Jimmy Carter (who passed away recently RIP 🪦) and the Iran Hostage Crisis 🇮🇷. The hostage crisis in Iran 🇮🇷 (at the US embassy 🇺🇸 in Tehran) destroyed Carter’s presidency, and hurt his chances for re-election, and it allowed Ronald Reagan to swoop in, get elected as president, and end the hostage crisis and take all the credit for ending it even though it was probably through Carter and Muskie’s diplomatic efforts that the hostage crisis was able to be solved peacefully (after military efforts to resolve it proved to be ineffective) and Reagan was able to claim the victory and receive all the glory from the gullible American public 🇺🇸. And just like now, the media was complicit in it, they helped facilitate the fall of Jimmy Carter just as they helped facilitate the fall of Joe Biden.

The mainstream legacy media is evil, I have no qualms about saying that, but it’s always been evil. Before we had fake news, we had yellow journalism. There are good people who work for these companies, good reporters, good anchors, good commentators, but they’re being led by horrible people, who support and are probably in the pockets of Donald Trump. They worked hard and were ultimately successful in getting him re-elected because they care about views and ratings more than anything else, and Trump brings in the views and the ratings. They made more money 💵 during Trump’s presidency than they did during any other presidency before or since, of course they want him back. They don’t care about journalistic integrity, they don’t care about democracy or the rule of law, they just care about money 💵, maximizing their profits as much as possible 🤑, and reporting on Trump’s stupidity is where the money 💵 is. This is just the world we live in now unfortunately, brace yourself 😒. 

 

—

 

(This is a textless poster for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.)

 

I just finished watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, both the first season and the second season referred to as 2nd GiG, and I must say that I really enjoyed it. I'm going to try and keep this one short (or at least shorter than my usual journals), since I don't remember all the character's names, or all the details. 2nd GiG is certainly fresher in my mind than the first season, as well, and this is supposed to my thoughts on the whole series. So, I'm mostly going to keep things general and brief.

The first thing I would like to say about this series, and it will probably be the most controversial thing I have to say, but I actually think this series is way better than the 1995 movie. I know, I know, the 1995 movie was so revolutionary for sci-fi anime and anime in general at time, and it was one of the key films that helped bring anime to the West and make it mainstream. It was also super influential that inspire other anime and even some western movies like The Matrix, but I think it is seriously overrated. People tout it as a masterpiece, as one of the best anime movies ever made and one of the best cyberpunk movies ever made, but there was just something about it that I just couldn't get into.

The animation and other technical aspects of the 1995 movie were all good and worth praising, and I liked the designs of the characters and the technology, but I really didn't care that much for the story or the actual characters themselves. The only character I really liked or connected to in the 95 movie was Batou, everyone else was cold, stoic, wooden, and distant.

I guess maybe my issue with the 95 movie was that it was trying too hard to be philosophical and deep, to the point where it felt pretentious at times, and very far up its own ass. As I said though, it did give us The Matrix, and I'll always be grateful for that; so will my dad even if he doesn't know Ghost in the Shell inspired The Matrix.

But, none of that is the case with Stand Alone Complex. I actually liked all of the characters, or at least all of the major characters in Stand Alone Complex. Maybe it's because I felt that the characters in this show all actually had personality and were actually entertaining to watch; they joked around, and they had banter with each other. They felt like actual people, not just planks of wood spouting exposition or philosophical jargon to each other.

Speaking about Section 9 itself, I actually felt like they were a real team in this, like they worked and coordinated with each other, and had a level of camaraderie that they didn't really in the 95 movie. In the 95 movie, Section 9 didn't really feel like a team, it felt like it was just a few people working independently and not as a cohesive unit. The Major and Batou did most of the work, Togusa did some work as well in that movie, it was mostly the Major and Batou doing most of the investigating counter-terrorism stuff.

So, the characters and the character development were all so much better here than in the 95 movie, at least in my opinion. I liked the story arcs of both seasons, and I was thoroughly engaged with what was happening. Maybe the reason why I liked the story of Stand Alone Complex so much is that it is much more political than the 95 movie. I mean, there's politics in the 95 movie, but there's a lot more in this series, and most of the politics in the show is geopolitical, which is what I'm interested; I'm way more interested in geopolitics than domestic politics.

They keep mentioning these conflicts called World War III (which they claim went nuclear ☢️) and World War IV (which they claim was completely non-nuclear ☢️), which is also referred to a few times as the "Second Vietnam War 🇻🇳." They don't really delve into these conflicts, like what caused them, who the belligerents were, and who won, but it is part of the lore of this show and that's one of the things that I loved.

I'm really interested in wars, and I'm particularly interested in hypothetical wars, wars that could happen in the future or wars that could've happened in the past. So, this was definitely right up my ally. This show takes place in the 2030s, which is not that far away from the year we're in now, so I'm wondering what could've happened in the decades before then to allow two world wars to happen in that time, and why is World War IV called the "Second Vietnam War?" What did Vietnam 🇻🇳 do to start a world war, or what did foreign powers like the US 🇺🇸, China 🇨🇳, and Japan 🇯🇵 do to start a world war with Vietnam 🇻🇳?

As an American 🇺🇸, I also like how they refer to the US 🇺🇸 as the "American Empire 🇺🇸," like that's the official of the country in that show's universe by the time the show actually takes place, in the 2030s. My impression is that the US 🇺🇸 became full-on monarchy 👑 and dropped all pretenses of being some exceptional nation destined by God himself to spread "freedom" and "democracy" to the entire world, and embraced what it actually was: an empire.

When this all took place, I don't know, but from it seems, the American Empire 🇺🇸 lost a bit of global dominance and influence due to the world wars of the 2st century, and Japan 🇯🇵 has emerged as a global superpower. But, the American Empire 🇺🇸 still lots of influence over Japan 🇯🇵, so Japan 🇯🇵 can't that much more powerful than the American Empire 🇺🇸 if they are still dependent on them to some degree.

Still, I liked that America 🇺🇸 is just straight up an empire in this show. Even Shirow Masamune knows that the US 🇺🇸 is an imperial power with an empire over this world, so he had it become a straight up monarchy 👑, a constitutional monarchy 👑 basically indistinguishable from the British Empire 🇬🇧.

But, the American Empire 🇺🇸 basically does what the US 🇺🇸 as we know it currently does, but the mask is fully off by that point. Everyone kind sees America 🇺🇸 for it is at that point in the show's universe/timeline, and no one has any false naïve notion of it being some great bastion of democracy, or as the "indispensable nation." It's just another empire in the long history of empires.

One of the things they take about the American Empire 🇺🇸 doing in the past before the events of the show is that they apparently orchestrated a civil war in Mexico 🇲🇽, and then tricked the United Nations 🇺🇳 into sending a peacekeeping force to help stop the drug cartels and the drug trade that took root there because of the war. We learn about pretty extensively in the episode where Saito tells his backstory to a bunch of asshole cops who he's playing poker with ♠️♣️♦️♥️. He got involved in the war in Mexico 🇲🇽 through some mercenary group that he decided to join. That's where he met the Major and later joined Section 9.

She, Batou, and Ishikawa were apart of the UN peacekeeping force 🇺🇳 sent to Mexico 🇲🇽, in one units among many others in the peacekeeping force along with some American 🇺🇸 and British 🇬🇧 troops. Saito was sniping them from abandoned, bombed out building. Eventually, he was shot and apprehended by Motoko herself, and that's how he became acquainted with her, and eventually lead to him becoming a Section 9 member. They started out as enemies, and became close friends and teammates working together in a cyber-crime/counter-terrorism unit within Japanese law enforcement 🇯🇵.

The Soviet Union ☭ also apparently didn't collapse in the Stand Alone Complex universe, and it became something called the Ameri-Soviet Union 🇺🇸☭ or something like that, so it is kind of alternate history too a bit. The female prime minister in 2nd GiG mentioned that, but it raises some questions. In the first season, there's a female Russian assassin 🇷🇺 who they straight up say is from the Russian Federation 🇷🇺; they said she worked for the Foreign Intelligence Service (SRV RF) in the Third World War.

 

(This is the flag and emblem of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺.)

 

So, you're telling me that there's a Russian Federation 🇷🇺 and a Soviet Union☭? Huh 😕? The only thing that I can think of is that Russian Federation 🇷🇺 was a thing in this universe, but it and the other former Soviet states ☭ decided to band together and reform the Soviet Union ☭; perhaps after the Third World War. Then, they absorbed Alaska and some other part of North America (probably Canada 🇨🇦), and became the Ameri-Soviet Union 🇺🇸☭. Unless Alaska's the Ameri-Soviet Union 🇺🇸☭ and mainland Russia is the Russian Federation 🇷🇺, meaning that the Soviet Union ☭ was reestablished in Alaska, while the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 controls what we consider Russia 🇷🇺.

I mean, it's not too unbelievable or out of the realm of possibility, I mean, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 was the last remnant of the Soviet Union when the Russian SFSR ☭ broke away and became the Russian Federation 🇷🇺. It was both the USSR ☭ and the Kazakh SSR ☭ before finally becoming Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 and dissolving the USSR ☭ entirely. So, maybe the USSR ☭ was reestablished in just Alaska in the Ghost in the Shell: SAC universe 🤷‍♂️.

 

(This is the flag map of Alaska with the Soviet flag ☭ imposed on it.)

 

 

I don't know, some of the lore of this show is a bit confusing, and kind of contradictory at times in some areas such as this, but it is pretty cool and the kind of stuff that I like. Shirow Masamune (the creator of the manga) and Kenji Kamaiyama (the show's director) certainly weren't afraid to get wacky with the lore, I mean this world is basically nothing like our own, and it takes places a decade from now, the 2030s.

If they really wanted to get wacky with it, then they might as well as had a second Mongol Empire 🇲🇳, like Mongolia 🇲🇳 somehow becomes a major superpower on the level of the US 🇺🇸, China 🇨🇳, and Russia 🇷🇺, and manages to restore the Mongol Empire 🇲🇳 and capture a lot of the territory that was in the old Mongol Empire through some major global war like World War III or World War IV. I would not be surprised if someone's already written a story where something like that happened. If they haven't, then maybe I will.

But, as wacky and confusing as the lore can be, it is pretty relevant to our world. In fact, the show's even more relevant now than when it was aired in 2002 to 2005. Even though, this is an alternate world that is very different than our own, and clearly went in a much darker direction than the one we're currently in, a lot of the geopolitics in the show is a commentary or an allegory for what's happening in our world now, or was happening in our world during the 1990s and 2000s; a time when the future of the world was most uncertain.

There's a lot of discussion in the show about Japan 🇯🇵's relationship with America 🇺🇸, and how independent Japan 🇯🇵 actually is. There's also the stuff about America 🇺🇸, you know, is America 🇺🇸 some great defender and spreader of freedom and democracy, or is it just an imperial power trying to rule the world no different from past imperial powers like Britain 🇬🇧 or France 🇫🇷? There's also stuff about capitalism and communism ☭, corporatism and consumerism, and what is a revolution, and what makes someone a hero or a genius?

It's pretty fascinating and thought provoking stuff, and there's the usual philosophical stuff that we've come to expect from Ghost in the Shell, like what makes us human? What is the boundary between individualism and collectivism, and when does one stop being an individual and become part of a collective? Or can the mind exist without the body, or are they inseparable? That kind of stuff.

A lot of philosophical discussions actually come from the Tachikomas, the autonomous AI spider tank characters in the show. They're supposedly the comic relief of the show, but they a lot of deeper and metaphysical philosophical discussion occur through them because they are becoming more "self-aware" and more "life-like" despite being robots.

I know, the 95 movie had a lot of philosophical stuff in it, and that's one of the big reasons why people like it, besides the animation and the music, but I personally feel that this show handled the politics and the philosophy much better than the 95 movie did. Speaking of music, the music in this show is excellent!

I bought nearly all of the albums available on iTunes, and I listen to them often. Yoko Kanno did a truly great job with this soundtrack, just as she did with the soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop; another one of my favorite anime shows. I like that she didn't try to copy or emulate Kenji Kawai's score in the 95 movie, and just did her own thing with it, it worked out beautifully to her favor.

Overall, this show is great. It's entertaining from start-to-finish, the animation is good, the character designs are good, the characters and character development are great, the story is fantastic, the lore is cool and fascinating, and the music is beyond top notch. Give it a watch, even if you haven't watch the original 95 movie or read the manga. This show to me so far, is the best thing to ever come out of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. That may change after I watch Innocence, Arise, and that more recent Netflix show, but for now, this is the best. 👍