Togusa

Togusa stands out from the squad by his style, sporting a heavy mullet along with turtleneck sweaters worn under sports jackets. He is around five foot ten, with light brown hair and brown eyes. Alone among Section 9, his body stays almost wholly organic, fitted only with a cyberbrain rather than the heavy prosthetics his colleagues carry.

Togusa tends to run emotional and short-fused, weighed down by a nagging fear that he falls short. That reads most rawly in the manga and softens into greater competence, tempered by self-doubt, in the films, with Stand Alone Complex splitting the difference. His temper boiled over once when a killer struck right under his nose, and he hurt the man so badly that he wound up on trial. Being the only agent without a military background leaves him uneasy about his worth, though that very difference is why he was recruited. Warm with Batou, wary about the blurring boundary between human and machine, and openly scornful of the Tachikoma tanks, he sticks with his old Mateba Autorevolver over the standard Seburo, trusting that it will not jam and that six rounds do the job.

Togusa joined Section 9 from the Niihama police, where he had served as a detective, recruited personally by the Major. What made him valuable was exactly what set him apart: an honest cop who had skipped cybernetic conversion, and a married father of a young girl, chosen to inject unpredictability into a unit otherwise stocked with ex-military. His home life and disposition shift with each version of the story, yet he remains the team's human center, and he may well be the person who finally broke the Laughing Man case.

In the 1995 movie he shows up first, unnamed, riding a surveillance van with Batou, then properly enters at the wheel of an armored vehicle as the Major armors up in back; asked why she transferred him over, she tells him a team needs varied minds because sameness means death in their trade. His detective's eye soon picks up on Section 6's part in the Puppet Master theft. Innocence, set years on, finds him grown timid beside a colder Batou, and he takes on the job of minding Batou's basset hound through a case, which delights his young daughter while wearing on his wife.

Stand Alone Complex probes his police past through a wiretap case and again credits him with unraveling the Laughing Man affair. Though the least enhanced of the group, he holds up in close-quarters fights against cyborgs while taking the heaviest injuries; shot during an investigation, he briefly asks himself whether he ought to convert fully. Aramaki has him detained and benched on purpose when hauled in for questioning, a step meant to keep the family man out of danger, and the isolation nearly cracks him, spurring an attempt on one of the Laughing Man conspirators. By Solid State Society the Major is gone and Togusa runs field operations for a much-enlarged Section 9, now partly cyberized and open with his family about the work. His cyberbrain gets hijacked as he tries to carry his daughter clear, driving him to point his revolver at himself until the Major steps in; he later helps storm the Solid State Society and stands guard over Aramaki.