Motoko Kusanagi

4

Motoko Kusanagi (草薙 素子, Kusanagi Motoko) is the main character in Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex anime series. She is an advanced cyborg with highly advanced capabilities, recognized as a true professional in her line of duty. Often referred only as "The Major" (少佐), Motoko is one of the best police agents out there, and her squad, known as Section 9, is highly regarded as well. In the Stand Alone Complex continuity, Motoko is a confident, calculating, and somewhat aloof individual. Despite that, she is far from emotionless; she knows how to be friendly and her peers find her quite approachable, while her rage is something to behold. Yet deeper under the shell, she guards the story of her cyberization, or full-body prosthesis procedure, which damaged her memories from her childhood. Over the course of the series, she and her team take on particular cases known as "Stand Alone Complexes": processes or events which harbor no point of origin, leading multiple independent people towards one mutual goal. Beneath the veneer of organized crime, she uncovers plots such as the Laughing Man, the Individual Eleven, the Solid State Society, and the post-human phenomenon.