Tachikoma
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A Tachikoma (タチコマ) is a fictional AI walker/roller tank in the Ghost in the Shell universe.
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[edit] Design and AI
Tachikoma are as large as an average sedan, are painted blue and have four "eyes" fitted on the surface of their bodies. They are controlled by individual AIs, are capable of speech and generally exhibit a childish, curious, joyful and active personality, although they are consummate professionals in the field. They normally operate as independent units and receive orders from human agents, but they can also be directly piloted from a cockpit in their abdomen.
Tachikoma have four legs and two arms. They can move by walking, or they can drive at high speed by using their wheeled footpads, and are apparently street legal (presuming no legal exemption for Section 9). Other abilities of the Tachikoma include jumping great distances, sticking to vertical or inverted surfaces, and grappling/rappelling using their adhesive string launchers. Their movements when walking and jumping were modelled on a jumping spider.
Despite the fact that Tachikoma probably weigh a few hundred pounds each - even without an operator - they are shown scaling simple wire fences and jumping from great heights onto rooftops without causing any structural damage whatsoever. However, this property is shared by other individuals in the series.
Standard Tachikoma equipment includes a light machine gun mounted in the right arm, a secondary weapon in the "snout" (either a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or a six-barrelled minigun), and a built-in optical camouflage device.
Though they possess individual artificial intelligence, every night they are synchronised, so they start the next day with identical consciousnesses that are each the sum of their total collective experience & development. This leads to identity confusion, since each Tachikoma has the same memories.
It is explained in the last episode of the first season that it is their curiousity that lets them be different from each other. It is curiousity that saves a personality from dying when linked with others.
A notable paradox arises from this synchronisation, however. Though the Tachikoma have identical memories, their personalities and opinions are distinct. During the Stand Alone Complex series, an episode is entirely devoted to discussions among them.
These separate personalities reveal three 'main' Tachikoma, with the main voice acting. The first one is Batou's Blue Tachikoma, which has a personality of a hyperactive child. It is curious, inquisitive, and tends to get many 'bright' ideas. The second major Tachikoma (possibly belonging to Major Kusanagi) is more logical, acting as the straight man to the first. The third Tachikoma is simply there and really doesn't do much, other than complete the trio. There is also a fourth Tachikoma with a distinctive personality, who is a bookworm and an intellectual. Its body was taken apart during the experimentation incident, but its AI has presumably been saved for further analysis.
[edit] Voice talent
The voices of the Tachikomas in the American dub are provided by a number of well-known voice actresses who specialize in high-pitched, child-like voices. Among them:
- Melissa Fahn, best known for voicing Ed in Cowboy Bebop and Gaz in Invader Zim.
- Rebecca Forstadt, (aka Reba West), best-known for Lynn Minmei in Robotech and Sugar in Little Snow Fairy Sugar.
- Lara Jill Miller, who voices Clifford the puppy on Clifford's Puppy Days, Kari Kamiya in Digimon and Juniper Lee in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee.
- Sandy Fox, who has provided voices for numerous anime and western cartoons, including The Simpsons, The Critic, Steven Spielberg's Toonsylvania, Please Teacher!, the .hack franchise and Chobits.
- Sherry Lynn, best known for voicing Sasami in Tenchi Muyo!.
- Julie Maddalena
- Peggy O'Neal
In the Japanese version, all the voices were done by seiyū Sakiko Tamagawa.
[edit] Background
Tachikoma were introduced in the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series.
[edit] Stand Alone Complex
In episode 12 of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one slightly-malfunctioning Tachikoma goes on a joy-ride through the city where it meets a young girl named Miki who is looking for a lost dog. The episode is mostly comedy but turns serious, with the Tachikoma attempting to understand sadness and death. In a later episode, the Tachikomas argue among themselves over which met Miki, since they all have the same memory.
Batou has the most affection for the tanks, picking out one tank as "his" and spoiling it with natural oil instead of synthetic. This is what causes his to go haywire later, when the natural oil dissolves some of the proteins in the Tachikoma's AI neurochip. On the other hand, Togusa, the least cyberized of the Section 9 staff, holds a more dim view: "they're just machines." Aside from leading to an indignant outburst from the Tachikomas (who accuse Togusa of bigotry), it sets up something of an antagonistic relationship between Togusa and the tanks, which is revisited in an episode in season two. Major Motoko Kusanagi holds the most pragmatic view of all. Her only regret following the Tachikomas' suicide attack is that she didn't get a chance to dive their AI, and discover whether or not what they had acquired was really a "ghost".
The Tachikomas also show a slightly mischievous side in episode 15, "Time of the Machines". They confuse a Section 9 operator with the same self-referential logical paradox which featured in the Star Trek episode, I, Mudd, wherein Kirk and Spock confuse an android with a statement along the lines of "Everything I say is a lie, and I am lying." The Tachikomas likewise use the Epimenides paradox to get the admin drone stuck in a logic loop. They then steal a piece of equipment left in the drone's care and ridicule it for being fooled.
By the end of the series, the Tachikoma fleet start approaching sentience; all are sent back to the lab for dissection, amidst fears that they are no longer fit for combat duty. It is the use of natural oil in Batou's personal Tachikoma (all other units used synthetic lubricant) that acted as a catalyst for the behavorial anomalies that began to manifest as sentience. The Major (Motoko Kusanagi) subsequently bans the use of natural oil prior to the later decision to halt deployment of Tachikomas in field ops.
Three Tachikoma survive the lab analysis, (one blue, calling itself "Batou's Personal Tachikoma", and two others, repainted yellow and silver) and prove their worth when they abandon their new civilian jobs to save their imperiled comrades, without explicit orders to do so. The silver Tachikoma is destroyed on sight when it finds Batou under attack by an Armed Suit, a bipedal power-actuated armored exoskeleton. The blue and yellow Tachikoma combine their efforts to save him, and conduct a desperate and ultimately suicidal attack against the Umibozu, while Batou watches from a nearby terrace with a stricken look on his face. This selfless act is the last thing they ever do. Because of their devotion, the collective Tachikoma consciousness is restored from the backups made during the dissection process and loaded into a new fleet, which appears in the second season.
[edit] S.A.C. 2nd GIG
In the second season, S.A.C. 2nd GIG, the enforced synchronizations among Tachikomas are halted, since Motoko Kusanagi allows them to preserve their own personality after acquiring sentience in the first season. They can still share information and sensation with synchronization if they want to, and also specify which area to share. The Tachikomas are also outfitted to perform complex networking tasks, including netdiving, to aid Section 9. Several episodes featured the Tachikomas operating in the nets as bots, manifesting in their physical form but navigating the net as though flying through it. The final episode indicated that while operating within the nets, they could not inhabit their physical units.
It is hinted that Tachikoma units developed ghosts. During the finale of 2nd GIG, while ordered to create a repository in cyberspace for the memories (and hopefully, ghosts) of all refugees of Dejima, they secured instead their own memories within the netspace and selflessly sacrificed their AI satellite to prevent a nuclear explosion. A fellow AI, the bioroid Proto, knows what's happening and says he'd swear they had ghosts right before the satellite and missile made impact.
The destruction of their satellite appeared to result in the Tachikomas' AIs being obliterated. This seems to be confirmed in the final moments of 2nd Gig, where the members of Section 9 are seen using the Uchikoma, a Fuchikoma/Tachikoma hybrid. However, during another scene in the finale, one Tachikoma can be seen placing a globe with the label ALL TACHIKOMA MEMORIES in a large memory storage unit in cyberspace.
As a side note, during the Tachikomatic Days short for the final episode, one Tachikoma, presumably Batou's from its behavior, found itself alone in a white area which did not appear to be what they viewed as the afterlife. While fully colored and shaded, it encountered a blank line Uchikoma in a shower of sakura petals. This may indicate a planned merging of the two AIs in the future or the evolution of the Uchikomas.
[edit] Solid State Society
During the early portion of the film, the Uchikomas are seen being used by Section 9 in a way similar to the way the un-evolved Tachikomas had been used. In fact, they were so unevolved that Batou found it irritating when they did not react like Tachikomas of old during a mission. However, the reappearance of the Major also brings the reappearance of the Tachikomas. Initially they are seen in their new cyberspace form, sporting different colours and even racing stripes. But they eventually are reunited with their physical bodies, and rejoin Section 9.
[edit] Tachikomatic Days
- For a listing of Tachikomatic Days segments and the GITS episode they accompany, see: List of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episodes
Tachikomatic Days (タチコマな日々, Tachikoma na Hibi; also known as Tachikoma Specials or Tachikoma Days) are a series of comedic shorts attached to the end of every episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. The shorts takes up a little over a minute and features the antics of the Tachikoma think tanks of Section 9 and usually involves plot points from the episode it accompanies. Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG (the second season of the TV series) also has Tachikomatic Days at the end of each episode.
Tachikomatic Days is not aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, of which Stand Alone Complex and 2nd GIG aired on. However, they are shown on Adult Swim's free webcast programming service Adult Swim Fix during the Friday night premiere block. Australia's Cartoon Network's Adult Swim Tachikomatic Days are broadcasted with each episode.
[edit] Trivia
- In Episode 16 of Tachikomatic Days, one of the Tachikomas holds a book called "Anti-Oedipus". It is a reference to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's book Anti-Oedipus.
- The animated sequence shown at the beginning of the second series of Tachikomatic Days shorts is a parody of the "Roaring Lion" intro that used to accompany MGM films.
- The animated sequence shown during the credits of the second series of Tachikomatic Days shorts closely resembles the plot and design of the 1980s arcade game Dig Dug.
- The animated sequence shown at the start of the Tachikomatic Days for the episode "Martial Law" is a parody of the Universal Studios logo.
- The series also contains some superhero parodies, such as the AI Sentai Tachikomans in the first series (A parody of Super Sentai shows like Power Rangers) and Spider-Man in the second series.
