Tamal Kundu
As a compilation film version of the first season of ‘Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Sustainable War’ is part of the Stand Alone Complex continuity. The story follows Major and her team as they take on the posthumans, entities with unprecedented intelligence and cognitive speed. Kanami is part of a subplot involving one of the five posthumans that are mentioned in the film. Her fate plays an important role in the overall narrative. Here is what happens to her. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Who Is Kanami in Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Sustainable War?
Kanami briefly appears in the first scene involving Takashi Shimamura, one of the three posthumans in Japan. Like Shimamura, she is a student at the Sakanoshita Junior High School. Later in the film, she appears once more, but this time she is part of Shimamura’s memories, which are being observed by Togusa. Kanami and Shimamura study in the same class. Shimamura evidently has a crush on Kanami, and it even seems to be mutual. The rest of the class seems to think that he is eccentric because he often communicates with the projection of Yuzu, who is supposed to be dead. But not Kanami. She genuinely appears to consider him her friend.
What Happened to Kanami? Is She Dead?
Kanami and Shimamura have a teacher named Yamada. He is also there in Shimamura’s introductory scene along with Kanami. Later, he goes off-topic during a lesson and begins speaking about how the students don’t make the best out of their youth. Kanami speaks up, requesting the teacher to follow the curriculum and give them a regular math lesson. After the class, Yamada tells Kanami to come see him in the counseling room during the lunch break.
It is heavily implied that Yamada sexually assaulted Kanami once she went to see him. As Shimamura’s mother tells Major and Togusa, this was the day when Shimamura had his fever and began transforming into a posthuman. After he returned to school, he found out that Kanami had killed herself. Yamada claimed that she did it because she was ashamed of stealing money from the students’ council to buy a bicycle. Shimamura subsequently designed Think Pol, a program where certain individuals are selected because they are the focus of collective hate at that particular moment. A poll a subsequently conducted among the users to decide whether this person should be condemned or saved. If condemnation wins more votes, the person faces the collective attack of the group on their cyberbrain.
That is what happened with Yamada. With Think Pol, Shimamura attacked and killed him. However, he then witnessed how quickly the group turned against the dead Kanami. Hew and decided to leave it all behind. Another student, Uotori, found it and created a second program, Peep Hole.
