"Bato Kannon" by Aya Kato
Image credit: Otaku România Culture
Batou: This area was once intended as the Far East’s most important information center, a Special Economic Zone in its heyday. These towers survive as a shadow of the city’s former glory. Its dubious sovereignty has made it the ideal haven for multi-nationals and the criminal elements that feed off their spoils. It’s a lawless zone, beyond the reach of UN or E-Police. Reminds me of the line, “What the body creates, is as much an expression of DNA as the body itself.”
Togusa: But the same applies to beaver dams and spider webs.
Batou: I’ll take the coral reefs as my metaphor. Though hardly so beautiful.
If the essence of life is information carried in DNA, then society and civilization are just colossal memory systems, and a metropolis like this one, simply a sprawling external memory.
Togusa: “How great is the sum of thy thoughts. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.”
Batou: Psalms 139, Old Testament. The way you spout these spontaneous exotic references, I’d say your own external memory’s pretty twisted.
Togusa: Look who’s talking!
— Batou and Togusa in “Kō̄kaku kidōtai 2” (Kanji: 攻殻機動隊, “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence”) written and directed by Mamoru Oshii, (Japan: Production I.G, 2004). Adapted from the manga by Masamune Shirow.
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