Erm ... I read both and can't remember any. Are you referring to these (admittedly odd, since ignores them and just continues her work) get-togethers with other women? There never was anything going on there ...

Also, in GitS SAC 2nd gig (episode 12, IIRC), she explicitly mentions being straight, or rtaher, that a certain guy "was the first guy she found attractive". She was 12 then.

Well, neither beardy nerd Ishikawa nor visible cyber eyes Bateau nor 'feelings? feelings are for losers' Motoko would last five seconds in a deep cover mission. After Togusa, I guess Bateau is least modified (and most human in behavior). Diverse missions ask for a diversified team, just as a shadowrunner team made up entirely of sammies wouldn't last long either. Not to mention what Motoko might consider social face-to-face legwork ... possibly would involve a lot of kicking and face-punching.

1. The robo-orgies were removed from the english translations of the manga

2. GitS:SAC takes place in a separate universe from the manga which in turn takes place in a separate universe from the GitS films.

3. She's probably bi (at least in SAC).

I see. Should have thought so ... ah well. Hehe, now my friend will hate the translation ...

... and now she will hate Motoko. ^_^

It's not that simple. Batou is a complete cyborg, just as Motoko. It's not like they lose their humanity every time body parts are swapped out. Each of the team members is an individual with very complex personal problems. There's no easy dichotomy that allows you to conveniently decree that augmentation makes you incapable of human interaction. Other team members, regardless of extreme augmentation, have shown varying capacities for it. Honestly, there is a rather unpleasant tendency for people on these boards to (1) assume dichotomy between social capacity and ability (usually in regards to augmentation in an obviously fictional capacity) and (2) to assume linearity of social ability (or other ability, for that matter). It just isn't like that, and the GitS movies and SAC, being extremely well written, reflect this.

Bateau is very modified, just not full borged (i think, though in the first film he say's he is). I think Paz and Ishikawa are the least enhanced after Togusa (Baring perhaps Aramaki) Can't say for certain as the book i've got is in Japanese...

Yeah, of course the characters are more than I said. Bateau has his wartime memories haunting him, and lots of other stuff I don't know yet because I have yet to watch innocence; Motoko had a REALLY harsh childhood and propably has a host of problems we will never know about because she makes the ice queen look like an easy-going hippy. I can't say as much off the top of my hat about Ishikawa, Boma and Paz, but I'd guess they have a decent background too. I wasn't assuming this.

However, I DO think that higher degree of augmentation leads to loss of social abilities. That goes double for Motoko (losing her family AND her body at the same time and growing up entirely in hospitals). Also, the knowledge you're physically far superior to normal people distances you from them. Additionally, there's the whole issue with tons of chips in your head, which HAS to influence brain chemistry in some way. It's not linear, sure, other factors (like the above mentioned Motoko childhood traumata) play a role too, but there IS a decline regardless.

Yes. This is a Japanese comic, not an Arabic.

In some realities she is Matoko Kusanagi until she joins Poseidon Industrial and takes the name Motoko Aramaki.

Besides Manga came first so it should be treated as definitive

It isn't direct, though. It's an issue of environment, experience, and ability impacting your mindset/paradigm/whatever. That's very different from saying flat out that augmentation categorically leads to loss of social ability, which leads you down a very dangerous path.

As for chips in your head affecting brain chemistry, this damnds that you (1) buy into biopsych completely without looking back and (2) that you forget that there aren't chips in your head so much as very large sections of brain removed and replaced by cyberbrains with neural matrices, which, in a sense, would seem to necessitate a complete removal of the concept of brain chemistry.

There's nothing you can really say that is going to predictably or obviously (or at all) impact social capacity. Hell, just about everyone gets this to some degree or another in all iterations of GitS— even Togusa. It is often made clear that what sets Togusa apart in his lack of augmentation is not that he isn't augmented but that his minimal augmentation, in his case, has had an impact on his world views/mentalities/paradigms/etc. In fact, just about everything GitS conveniently avoids if-augmented-then-antisocial causality, and only draws loose correlation (and, as well all know, causation !=... oh, hell, nevermind).

Erm, it is a very significant theme in the series (especially at the end of the first season) that bodybuilding equipment, like Motoko's watch, are unnecessary effects of their past lives. I'll spare overanalysis of a theme I found in execution to be very beautiful, but suffice it to say that the equipment is completely nonfunctional for him. Aside from parts of his brain and spinal cord, he is completely cybernetic.

i think it's fair to say, though, that it becomes more difficult to maintain one's humanity when one's body is replaced with cybernetics, at least in the GitS universe. the Major struggles with this constantly; most of the rest of the team is resigned to the fact that their augmentation comes at a price--a price that's difficult to pin down or define, and one that much of the world might not even notice is being paid, but a price.

He does have a point, seeing as this is specifically a Shadowrun forum, and very few of the posts in this thread actually have anything to do with Shadowrun.

Personally, I don't care one way or the other, but the Admins are usually pretty strict about off-topic threads, especially since the closing of the Lounge.