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The Laughing Man ('''笑い男''', ''warai otoko'') is a character in the fictional . Lastly, when the major enters the Laughing Man's library near the end of the series, the camera zooms on her hand moving over the phrase "Fuck you" written on the railing. In ''The Catcher in the Rye'', Holden says "You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose." The complex '' focuses on the Laughing Man case, and on a medical/governmental conspiracy tied in to the fate of the Laughing Man. HISTORY The hacker's first appearance in the ''GITS: SAC'' storyline is years before the anime starts, when he assaulted the head of Serano Genomics in public, hiding his face from eyewitnesses and cameras with his Laughing Man logo. The Laughing Man is such an expert that he can "hack the eyes" of entire crowds, in Real Time — hacking their visual cyber-brain implants, either to make himself appear invisible or to hide his face with the cartoon logo. Many of those who indeed saw his face would only recall and refer to the stylized logo as depicted above. Togusa was one such person, as were many of the witnesses of the initial incident involving the head of Serano Genomics. His talents were recognised even by Motoko Kusanagi and Aramaki . When Section 9 finally tracked him down, they offered him a position on the Section 9 payroll; The Laughing Man was flattered by the offer but declined it. The Laughing Man has quite a fascination with '', he can't stand "phonies" (corrupt politicians in this case), and tries to act like the titular "catcher"; helping the weak who might be hurt by said phonies. He also kept a prized left-handed baseball catcher's mitt for a time. The Laughing Man has made it a point that he never came up with the name "The Laughing Man" for himself: it was a label that the media gave that eventually stuck. The Laughing Man's kidnapping of the head of Serano Genomics was actually a spontaneous act, and he did not strike again until some six years later. However, following the kidnapping there was, for some time, a large wave of "Laughing Man"-related Graffiti attacks, corporate vandalism and Extortion . It was later revealed that a corrupt power cabal in the Japanese government used the sudden appearance of the Laughing Man to their own advantage by carrying out acts of corporate Sabotage , then heavily using the "Laughing Man" motif in order to fool the media into thinking it was the Laughing Man's doing, thus shifting suspicion from themselves and their illegal actions. An unexpected element was that 39 people who were arrested in regard to the assassination attempt on Secretary General Daido all showed no sign of external influence by The Laughing Man. It was thought that many of the direct attackers were not influenced at all; they attempted the assassination to be a part of The Laughing Man's effort for the truth, but told police that they were forced to do it through ghost hacking. "The Laughing Man" became something of a Pop Culture Obsession for a time, much to the chagrin of the actual Laughing Man. The irony being that since everybody uses his icon and name for their own purposes (including a reference to Starbucks as the logo is retooled for the fictional Starchild Coffee), the original meaning, an artful forced confession of the truth through fear in the public eye, becomes "phony" itself. The effort to stand for and demand the truth was also lost forever. It is possible that The Laughing Man knew this when he wrote his famous quotation on a wall in the Ministry Of Health, Labour And Welfare and ended it with "or should I?". The Laughing Man admitted that he embarked on his notorious kidnapping caper after chancing upon a letter in the depths of the Net detailing the extensive corruption in the corporate world, leaving the true propagator of the aforementioned incidents a mystery. The identified Laughing Man confesses to have been a brash student at the time, but had mellowed out somewhat over the six years since the Serano Genomics event, seeming to now prefer a more Intellectual approach over his former overzealous and radical approach. His real name, as far as can be ascertained from the number of events where he appears, is Aoi. Aoi means blue in japanese and we are left but to speculate if the name is meant to have any further meaning. After the events of the Section 9 raid by the Umibozu and the last meeting with Motoko and Aramaki, he disappeared again for the last time from Japanese society; he is probably employed as a librarian in the National Library. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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