Assassination Duet

A long-awaited concession lets Jin, a Chinese vice foreign minister, step into the Kagashewa war memorial, making him the first dignitary from his nation permitted at the site. The choice angers certain parties, and a threat on his life soon surfaces. Around the same stretch of days, Aramaki pays his respects at the grave of an old GSDF comrade, a colonel, and there meets the man's daughter, who confides her worry over the abrupt shift in her brother Yu's behavior.

Once Section 9 pegs Yu as the most probable assassin, Kusanagi and Togusa move to detain him but reach the scene too late. In the same window, a phone call reaches Aramaki from his deceased friend, who partly explains what is driving the plot. Out of loyalty to their chief, the team resolves to bring Yu in without killing him, though several doubt he will grant them that chance. The unit manages to derail the strike, yet Yu triggers a bomb before anyone can stop him.

To preserve Yu's ghost, the operatives break into his cyberbrain and deceive him into believing his task succeeded, hoping the imposed personality will wither away. That personality belongs to the late colonel, Tsujisaki, who admits he copied his own memories into a cyberbrain without grasping the peril, a decision that reshaped him into an assassin. He had uncovered a buried truth about Okinawa and, through it, the reality behind his wife's death, which left him consumed by a thirst for revenge he could not quiet. The episode carries the subtitle LOST HERITAGE and first aired in Japan on January 28, 2003.