Time of the Machines

The Major's long-standing doubts about the Tachikoma finally surface. Their artificial minds are maturing at an alarming clip, and Kusanagi worries both about what that growth means and about the wisdom of keeping such unpredictable machines in a combat unit. The tanks pick up on her wariness, if only dimly, and cook up an odd plan to charm her into letting them stay.

Batou is called to a meeting with Kusanagi and there learns the verdict: the Tachikoma will be stripped of their weapons and returned to the laboratory for study. He dislikes the ruling but has no room to refuse it, and the order stands.

Kusanagi concludes the Tachikoma's rapid intellectual growth makes them a risk in the field. The units sense her intent and try to win her over. The decision to disarm and recall them for analysis is finalized, and Batou reluctantly accepts it.

Filed under the production subtitle Machines Désirantes, this first-season chapter turns the Tachikoma from comic relief into a genuine question about machine consciousness. One exchange has a unit tangle an operator in a liar's paradox, while another finds a Tachikoma telling Batou that its digital nature bars it from ever holding a Ghost, envying the mortality that his analog self carries.