Kusanagi a child molester?

[douyang]

One thing keeps bothering me about Red Data. (spoiler alert)




The major walking around that underaged kid wearing only a towel and a pair of panties, and then taking the damn towel off her chest when she gets into bed with him. And then offering to have sex with him. I don't think the kid could have been more than 13 or so.

I don't know about Japan, but I'm pretty sure there are laws in the U.S that would throw you in prison and permanently label you as a sex offender if you were an adult who offered to screw a kid that age, even if nothing happens. Hell, merely exposing yourself to the kid the way Kusanagi did (and getting into bed with him still undressed) counts as sexual abuse of a minor.

I can understand Kusanagi's very liberal attitudes toward her sexuality and showing her naked body to people, given she probably just sees her prosthetic shell as clothing or equipment. But she really should know better, and it wasn't the best of taste for the writers to portray the main character of the show acting that way towards a child, especially in the land of Megan's Law.

I don't really think she was joking about having sex with the kid either. The whole thing is made even creepier by the fact that she was posing as his mother a couple minutes ago.

The whole older woman fantasy thing is kinda appealing, but this still technically makes her a sexual abuser of a child.

[/i]

[GhostLine]

if i'm not mistaken, and i won't be offended if someone knows different, but i believe the age of consent in japan is thirteen.

[Lightice]

if i'm not mistaken, and i won't be offended if someone knows different, but i believe the age of consent in japan is thirteen.

True, but in practice the local administrations have set it to sixteen, in almost entire country.

[marto_motoko]

...is that a 2nd gig episode? Also which episode is it? I HAVE to see this...

[Motoko2030]

Marto, the episode that we are talking about is called Red Data, it is a 2nd Gig episode and its episode number is 17.

[marto_motoko]

Marto, the episode that we are talking about is called Red Data, it is a 2nd Gig episode and its episode number is 17.

Ooh, so it's going to be on the next DVD then, right? I'm only up to DVD 4.

[Motoko2030]

Yes, the Red Data episode will be on DVD 5 and the special edition of DVD 5 will feature 2 collectible figures but no one is saying what they will be.

[cowboyfunk22]

Marto, the episode that we are talking about is called Red Data, it is a 2nd Gig episode and its episode number is 17.

Ooh, so it's going to be on the next DVD then, right? I'm only up to DVD 4.

Yeah, most of this stuff has been comming up as these episodes are shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim (as they will be ahead of the dvd releases until the end of the season). Perhaps we should be more cautious with spoilers until then (im guilty of it too).

[Black Mamba]

I lolz at this episode. I love it! I love the part where Motoko is lieing in bed with her head on the pillow, hair beautifly messed up. Where can I get a screen of this!? Plus the idea of compressing cocaine into statues for easy smuggling; why didn't I think of it?!

Yay for DVR, being able to rewatch episodes not yet on DVD.

[cowboyfunk22]

I lolz at this episode. I love it! I love the part where Motoko is lieing in bed with her head on the pillow, hair beautifly messed up. Where can I get a screen of this!? Plus the idea of compressing cocaine into statues for easy smuggling; why didn't I think of it?!

Yay for DVR, being able to rewatch episodes not yet on DVD.

from www.ghostintheshell.tv , under the episode guide

[Motoko2030]

Thanks cowboyfunk22 for posting that image, I have to agree with Black Mamba that I also loved the part with Motoko's head on the pillow and her beautiful shaped hair messed up.

[Lightice]

Plus the idea of compressing cocaine into statues for easy smuggling; why didn't I think of it?!

They "borrowed" the idea from Traffic, a movie that concencrates on drug-smuggling from Mexico to the US and preventing it. At one point the smugglers invent a way to compress the cocaine into dolls. SAC contains several similar little homages to various movies. Someone should try to collect them all together in a database...

[AlphonseVanWorden]

Just a weird little FYI regarding the compression of cocaine...

It's kind of an old trick. To smuggle drugs across borders, cartels used to mix the stuff with other substances in a pretty low-tech way, or just put it in falsely labelled containers. As compression technology advanced and as smuggling operations developed along something like corporate lines (around the time that narco-states and narco-capitalism came into being), narcotics traffickers learned to break down the coke and recompress it into dolls or other shapes (often mixing or bonding the cocaine hydrochloride with other chemical substances or compounds to avoid detection by customs and border agents). Then "mules"- sometimes truckdrivers or other people who assume that their cargo is, in fact, dolls or whatever- carry or haul the objects over the border. (If you're shipping drugs in bulk, this method is more reliable than having the mule swallow a balloon or condom stuffed with the drugs; there's less likelihood of something going wrong.) When the product arrives at its destination, the dealer or distributor chemically breaks down the dolls or other objects, separates the coke from the other substances or compounds, and makes sure the drug gets onto the streets.

I think the "cocaine doll" thing was used in Steven Soderbergh's version of Traffic, too. But it's hardly a new idea. The Mahecha-Onofre case dates back to 1991, and the Restrepo-Contreras case is from the mid-1990s. When I saw the film, I thought of those cases.

As Eric J. Stockel mentions in his paper "'Mixture or Substance': Continuing Disparity Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines § 2D1.1" (from the Tuoro Law Center's website):

In Mahecha-Onofre (decided less than one month after Chapman), the defendant, Luis Mahecha-Onofre, was convicted under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. The cocaine was hidden in two suitcases specially constructed to avoid detection. A field test revealed that the suitcases, belonging to the defendant, were themselves made of cocaine. It was later shown that the suitcases were constructed from 2.5 kilograms of cocaine chemically bonded with acrylic, weighing a total of twelve kilograms. The district court determined Mahecha-Onofre's base level offense using the total weight of the suitcases (approximately twelve kilograms), minus all the metal parts, rather than the weight of the 2.5 kilograms of cocaine actually found in the suitcases.

The First Circuit affirmed the district court's decision holding that the lower court was correct in using the total weight of the cocaine/acrylic suitcase (minus the metal parts) when determining the defendant's sentence. The court held that any carrier medium that is chemically bonded with a drug substance is part of that drug "mixture." In reaching its decision, the First Circuit applied the reasoning used by the Supreme Court in Chapman. The court noted that, unlike the blotter paper in Chapman, the suitcase material obviously could not be consumed, but concluded that this fact alone did not command a different outcome, "for 'ingestion' would not seem to play a critical role in the definition of 'mixture' or 'substance.'" According to the First Circuit, one reason why the Sentencing Commission and Congress have explicitly refrained from considering drug purity in the sentencing determination is that weight and purity generally correlate with the seriousness of the crime: "[t]hat is to say, a defendant who has more of the drug is also likely to have purer drug (not in every case, but, very roughly speaking, in many cases)." Applying this reasoning, the court noted that it was important to observe that the effort required to create a suitcase made of chemically bonded cocaine and acrylic "suggests a serious drug smuggling effort of a sort that might warrant increased punishment."

The First Circuit applied the same reasoning in two subsequent cases involving the importation of cocaine, United States v. Restrepo-Contreras and United States v. Lopez-Gil. In Restrepo-Contreras, the defendant was convicted of possession with intent to distribute cocaine after customs agents determined that eleven beeswax statues in his luggage contained cocaine combined with the wax. The First Circuit affirmed the district court's decision to use the entire weight of the eleven statues in determining the defendant's sentence. The court was not persuaded by the defendant's argument that the district court incorrectly applied the term "mixture or substance" when it included the weight of the beeswax statue for sentencing purposes.

Technology and criminal enterprises- especially well-organized, corporate-model criminal enterprises- are natural companions. As smugglers got better at chemistry and acquired better tools, i.e. chem labs and compression and recompression equipment, they came up with methods far more effective than bonding cocaine with acrylic or mixing it beeswax. Some of the bonding and mixing I mentioned creates types of "black" coke undetectable by most testing. ("Black" meaning the same thing that it does in the phrase "black ops", i.e. "hidden" or "secret." The smuggled cocaine looks like a doll or other object, and it doesn't register on most quick-tests.)

[Tonks_kittygoth]

Yeh that bit creeped me out too!!!

I mean, its bad enough, and kinda silly to walk around in her undies all day with "the boys" (I feel bad for Togusa's wife!) but she seemed to be pushing it with that kid. Though he did sort of start it by checking out her, uh, prostetics, when he was trying to get her help.

My husband thought maybe she was trying to test him to see if she could trust him, knowing that he really couldnt hurt her, but.. still weird.

I dont think she was serious when she asked him if he wanted to find out, and his reaction was pretty funny.

[Lightice]

I think the "cocaine doll" thing was used in Steven Soderbergh's version of Traffic, too. But it's hardly a new idea. The Mahecha-Onofre case dates back to 1991, and the Restrepo-Contreras case is from the mid-1990s. When I saw the film, I thought of those cases.

Yeah, but the kid states "it was once used in Mexico", or something in those lines - it's pretty obvious nod towards Traffic, especially thinking all those homages to other works of fiction in the series...