Rather than detail each episode, I've chosen to elaborate on a Complex episode and a Stand-Alone episode. There's certainly a large amount of variety in the different episodes, though in the latter half of the series we see a glut of Stand-Alone episodes, followed by a glut of Complex episodes that bring a powerful finish to the series. I may get around to a full writeup sometime, maybe as the US DVDs come out, but probably not anytime soon. Of course, with SAC 2nd GIG currently airing, the series really isn't finished anymore.
Part of the complete story, but serving to recap events up to this point, Eposide 9 takes the concept of a chat room to a whole new level. We find a group of people sitting at a round table in a spherical room with text displays containing the occupant's dialogue floating overead, as I said, a whole new meaning to chat rooms. We soon find that this is a chat room dedicated to the Laughing Man incidents and the people within are busy debating different theories about the Laughing Man - from his origins, to his motives, to whether or not he's actually many people, or even someone that never exsisted.
As the episode progresses, a new person enters the room, namely Major Kusanagi in the anonymity of the virtual world. She proceeds to offer up new positions on the theories that have been presented and thus sparks fresh debate over the Laughing Man's origins. When one of the participants seems to have a bit more knowledge than the rest, the Major engages in a private conversation with him and finds out what he knows, namely that he'd seen the Major in action in events a couple episodes back, and she encourages him to keep the information to himself.
I'd have a more detailed summary for you, but I need to go back and rewatch the episode, additionally, screencapping fansubs is too much work for my tastes, so you get no shots from either episode here, at least for now.
As far as the Stand-alone episodes go, we've had some really good ones so far. One of my favorites is Episode 12, where one of the Tachikomas(Fuchikomas couldn't be used due to copyright issues), running on Bateau's all-natural oil, gets the idea in its head to go wandering about, finding all sorts of new information. Shortly after escaping, it comes across a little girl looking for her dog, and agrees to help look for it. Along the way, they discuss kindness and sorrow, with the Tachikoma being rather naive and innocent about such things, whereas the little girl has a full understading of each. In something of an homage to the original GitS Manga, the Tachikoma finds and connects to a boxed cyberbrain and has a moment of realization that it is a small part of something much bigger.
As they continue to look, the little girl relates the story of "The Secret Goldfish," where a girl much like our character here has gotten a goldfish, she loves talking about this beautiful little fish, but then she won't let anyone see it. What no one, not even her parents, knows is that the fish has been dead for a while now. When Tachikoma asks why the girl doesn't just get another one, the little girl explains that she can't because it isn't the same fish and that the girl is sad about the loss but doesn't want to make others sad by sharing her grief with them. Sadly, this portion of the episode ends on a similar note, as we see Tahickoma and the girl at her dog's grave, where she lets him know that she's already known he was dead for several days, even though her parents didn't tell her, because he had been sick and suddenly wasn't around at all. Tachikoma did soften things for the girl by telling her that, since it was just an AI, it couldn't die and would always be there, but the girl declined the offer of friendship saying she wasn't ready for a new pet just yet.
This cyberbrain is the focus of the second half of the episode, where we find the major ghost-diving into the brain to see what is going on. Once inside, she finds a group of people obsessing over the movie being shown in the theatre that is through a nearby door. This theatre is a rather moving virtual preformance of the director's ideal movie, as he never achieved much success in real life. The movie/box was created to allow people a permanent escape from reality, and for some that was a really good thing. At the end of the movie, after Major Kusanagi gets herself out of the dive, she asks Bateau if he's ever seen a movie that has made him cry, to which he replies that tears came out laughing so hard at a Marx Bros. film when he was younger.
