This Stand Alone Complex case sends Section 9 to guard a reclusive market tycoon marked for death, only to reveal the man died long ago. His fortune keeps trading on its own through an autonomous program, a quiet warning about money that runs with nobody left alive to spend it.
Acting on a tip, Section 9 dismantles a ring of thieves scheming to cripple a Japanese financial firm called Interstar. Soon after the operation wraps, an intelligence officer from China warns the unit about activity that may signal a planned killing. The apparent mark is Kanemoto Yokose, a secretive Japanese multimillionaire, and the suspected aggressors are Chinese Socialists. The team takes on the job of shielding him.
Yokose is described as a fifty-six-year-old former mathematician who built his wealth by trading shares. Section 9 and the would-be killer arrive at his estate within minutes of one another, and inside the bedroom each side stumbles onto the same shock. Yokose has in fact been dead for a very long time. The reason everyone assumed otherwise is an automated trading program that kept managing his holdings as though he were still alive.
The closing sequence shifts to the home of Togusa's wife, whose personal computer switches on by itself, seizes the stock-trading routine, buys shares in Serano Genomics, and then goes dark again. The subtitle "¥€$" strings together the symbols for the Japanese yen, the euro, and the US dollar. Directed by Hideyo Yamamoto and written by Kenji Kamiyama, the fourteenth Stand Alone Complex episode premiered in Japan on December 31, 2002, with the English broadcast on February 13, 2005.
Automated Capitalism is the fourteenth episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, in which Section 9 is assigned to protect reclusive tycoon Kanemoto Yokose from a suspected assassination plot.
Kanemoto Yokose is a secretive fifty-six-year-old former mathematician turned multimillionaire who built his fortune trading shares, and is believed to be the target of Chinese Socialist assassins.
Section 9 and the would-be killer arrive at Yokose's estate almost simultaneously and both discover that Yokose has actually been dead for a long time, his fortune kept trading only because an automated program continued managing his holdings.
The episode closes on Togusa's wife's home computer switching on by itself, taking over the trading routine, buying shares in Serano Genomics, and then powering down again.
Automated Capitalism first aired in Japan on December 31, 2002, with the English broadcast following on February 13, 2005.
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