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| “ | Just as water runs downhill, the human heart tends to revert to its basest instincts. | „ |
| ~ Hideo Kuze, episode 49. |
Hideo Kuze (クゼ・ヒデオ Kuze Hideo) is a major character in the cyberpunk anime Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, serving as one of the two main antagonists throughout the Individual Eleven arc. A full-body cyborg, Kuze is a cyber-network architect and former commando serving in the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force mechanized team. After witnessing injustice against refugee minorities and cyborgs, he began to oppose his country's government, thus becoming a prime suspect in Section 9's investigation of the Individual Eleven terrorist group and virus. In the series, Hideo Kuze is a mysterious figure who catches the attention of the main protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, due to his unknown ambitions and his hidden past. After a brief stint with the Individual Eleven terrorists, Kuze breaks free from their control and becomes the leader of the refugees of Dejima; the world begins to see him as a national threat when he seemingly acquires a nuclear bomb. In the last episodes, Kuze takes a pivotal turn and becomes the deuteragonist.
Biography[]
Childhood[]
In the 2000's, a six year old boy was said to be one of two survivors of a plane crash along with a young girl, who was around his age. While in hospital, the boy was paralyzed aside his face and his left arm. He started making paper cranes in a way to wish good fortune upon the girl who lay on the bed next to his. The doctors were touched, but nothing seemed to really help her from her state. At some point, the girl was brought out of the clinic without warning, and the boy thought she died. Two years later, he continued to fold cranes while waiting treatment. During this time, the doctors introduced him to a cyborg girl who volunteered to keep him company. The two became fast friends, although he was the one who listened while she did the talking. Eventually, the cyborg girl suggested the boy should undergo a cyberization process so they can spend more time together. He accepted, on the condition that she folds an origami crane with her left hand. Unfortunately the cyborg girl failed; he chastised her and rejected her offer, leaving her crestfallen. But in a twist of events, she smiled and promised to return when she could repay the love he gave for her, then ran off. The boy finally understood that his cyborg friend was in fact the same girl who laid in the bed next to his, but was too shy to reveal her identity. After not getting any news of her, the boy finally decided to become a cyborg so he could find her, acknowledge her love and apologize for his rejection. Upon leaving the clinic, he adopted the name Kuze, from the physician who took care of him.
World War IV - The Peninsular War[]
Kuze, in his quest to find his childhood friend, was forced to enroll in the army due to his status as a full-body cyborg. During winter 2032, He was deployed and stationed in Korea by Japan, where he stumbled upon Asian refugees being attacked by Chinese and Korean bandits. Despite being instructed to patrol and not do anything else, Kuze decided to go against his orders and massacred the bandits. However, Kuze's fellow soldiers began to suffer from PTSD and went to consume smuggled drugs. In their hysterical state, the soldiers could not defend themselves from the incoming Japanese media, who have constructed stories about the soldiers being murderers of local folk, while disregarding the fact that they saved refugees. Disgusted at his own country, Kuze deserted after speaking his mind to a misinformed reporter who was shaming the soldiers. Kuze went trading an assault rifle for the reporter's camera, then walked off to into the snow storm.
Refugee Camps[]
After leaving the army, Kuze went to visit the Asian refugee camps to learn more about their situation. He comes to understand that they are used as cheap labor to stimulate the economy in various countries, including Japan. Pitying their suffering and the dehumanization they go through, Kuze begins to help them, and gradually becomes a popular figure. Elders would tell him their life stories, young couples would come to wish him well, and children would ask him to fold them origami toys. Kuze continued to travel across numerous countries in Asia, but in the process, was becoming more and more of a legendary figure as time went by. Eventually, having had enough of the world's lack of responsibility, Kuze announced his plans to create a country for the refugees, who took the news with glee and rallied behind him.
Infiltrating the Individual Eleven group[]
Returning to Japan, his home country, Kuze analyzed the State of Affairs in order to unleash his agenda. He meets and crosses paths with a group of Japanese Ultra-Nationalists who have attacked refugees in numerous occasions. However, the Individual Eleven do not know of Kuze's background and identity, and so he joins them with ease after faking an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister, Yoko Kayabuki. Kuze easily blends in with the Individual Eleven, so much that it seems he actually follows their ideals. Eventually, Kuze confirms his suspicions that the Individual Eleven are a scapegoat organization created by a mastermind with an agenda of his own, who planned to get rid of them after creating enough tensions between Japan and refugees. That mastermind collected members for the group by implanting a virus in cyborgs who were virgins before their cyberization, such as Kuze who was very young when undergoing the cyber-transformation, thus making him unable to have sex. Kuze is one of the 12 members of the Eleven who participate in the declaration of war against the refugees, performed at a broadcast building's rooftop. Realizing that he himself would have been a pawn, Kuze breaks off from the virus and tries to vainly save all the members before being forced to kill them. Kuze then disappears from sight, knowing that his fake assassination attempt and his time as an Individual Eleven have caught the attention of main heroine Motoko Kusanagi as well as the mastermind behind these machinations.
Leading the Revolution - Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig[]
Kuze retreats to Dejima, an artificial island he used to make the refugee country. Expecting a rising war opposing Japan and the cyborg refugees created by actors including himself and Kazundo Gouda (the Individual Eleven mastermind), Kuze prepares to raise arms and defend the refugees by acquiring plutonium. During his search for a plutonium source, Kuze is attacked in his neural network by Motoko. However, for the first time ever, Motoko is outmatched in net-diving and Kuze manages to fight her out. Upon leaving his mental server, Motoko recalls seeing a distant memory from Kuze, one she also shares. Both start realizing they might know each other, without anyone suspecting it.
Eventually, Kuze establishes contact with the Russian Mafia to buy their stock of plutonium. However, they are in fact a proxy manipulated by Gouda, who wants to control Kuze through political maneuvers. Kuze and his gang of rebels acquire said plutonium with some raised money, but Motoko's team - who had made contact with Kuze's mind and knows his whereabouts - attacks them in hopes to stop a potential nuclear war. Kuze fights off his enemies, including Motoko's right-hand Batou who seemed to have a jealous grudge on Kuze. Kuze manages to escape swiftly, but leaves behind a paper crane, which the Major picks up.
During his return to Dejima Island, Kuze notices that the plutonium were lead bars, and that no bomb was bought. He begins to feel that someone is manipulating the events from afar, and that it might be the same person who built the Individual Eleven. Kuze says nothing to his allies and plays it off like they had a bomb. When he sets back in Dejima, armed refugees express their intents to fight back, but Kuze is unrelenting. He meets with an old friend, Yousuke Aramaki (who is also the long-lost brother of Daisuke Aramaki, Motoko's mentor). Kuze explains that the war will only result in losses from both sides, and that the Americans will probably jump in to gain as much advantage to improve their Empire. Yousuke wonders what to do, but Kuze assures that he has a secret plan, which involves evacuating non-armed and non-cyborg refugees first, then him leading a group of fighters to hold back and buy some time for an ultimate game-changer. Yousuke deduces Kuze wants to upload the cyborg refugees' minds in the net and save them from certain deaths by making them unreachable, and begs Kuze not to join them as well. However, the Japanese army sent by Prime Minister Kayabuki, under pressure of Gouda, approaches Dejima. A refugee opens fire, and the hostilities begin. Kuze assigns Yousuke to assist the escape while he would join the fray. Yousuke and Kuze bid farewell to each other, and Kuze gathers a group of capable fighters with him.
Final Stand against Japan and the American Empire[]
As the battle rages on, Hideo Kuze heads into combat but loses connection with his fellow cyborg refugees due to a hijacking airplane sent by Kazundo Gouda to disrupt their network. Hideo heads off to a vantage point and effectively puts it out of commission. But in doing so, he attracts the attention of the Japanese army, who had been tipped by Gouda to eliminate Kuze and the "refugee threat". Most of his allies are killed during a helicopter ambush, but Kuze survives due to his impressive durability. His attackers, presuming him dead, leave him. Soon after, Motoko Kusanagi, who had been looking for him, corners him and forces him to surrender. Kuze voluntarily complies after Motoko reveals she had guessed his plan and is even assisting him with safely evacuating non-armed refugees. Furthermore, his capture would also help by creating a diversion. Motoko and Kuze retreat to rendezvous with Section 9, but are intercepted by the American Empire's naval missiles. Kuze valiantly protects Motoko from falling debris and both get stuck underground. Upon seeing Motoko's leg crushed by a metal rod, Kuze stays with her and decides to talk. He reveals his true plan to have the cyborg refugees die in battle so they can live forever in a network hosted by himself. Motoko questions whether their minds will be merged with Kuze, but he admits he is not sure, although he is willing to take the risk. He then laments about the State of Affairs, and the politicians twisting the world into destruction by having no sense of responsibility whatsoever. Comparing his net to the real world, Kuze asserts he can prove an example to use a resource properly. Seeing Motoko's genuine interest, he then remarks she and he have many similarities in physiology; the two being full-cyborgs. Kuze tells her that ever since his childhood, he always believed he was a product of a manufacture due to being prosthetic. But upon accomplishing things that many humans cannot do, such as helping others and building bonds, Kuze began to think of himself as a real person once again. Despite this, he also says that the refugees have now turned him into a legendary figure, which eventually stripped him from the spiritual self-development he had mustered over the years. Hence, Kuze's ultimate justification to leave his body behind and dominate the vast and infinite net is based on his lack of humanity and his uncontested consciousness. Motoko agrees with Kuze's noble goal even though she cannot bear the fact he will leave the real world behind, for there is so much to live for. She nevertheless helps him by ordering the Tachikoma to give more space to Kuze's mind.
Kuze thanks Motoko for her help and seems to reach the end of the bargain. She then asks him if he knows how to fold an origami crane with one hand. Kuze coldly replies that a simple control software would allow one to do that, and Motoko bashfully says it's not the answer she expected from him. Intrigued, Kuze returns the question and she reveals at last that she learned to fold by herself, thus confirming her true identity. Kuze finally comes to realize that Motoko is the girl who was in the hospital bed next to his when they were children. Both find respite in each other by sharing their mutual difficulties in having a human psyche placed inside a metal body. After asking if she ever managed to find a reliable person in her life, Kuze confesses he's been looking for her for a long time. The two hug each other and endure through the missile attacks. The Tachikoma, who had been ordered to free space for the refugees, end up not obeying the orders and sacrifice themselves by crashing their AI satellite on an ultimate torpedo meant to destroy the island. The missile attack ceases and refugee casualties are greatly reduced.
Kuze and Motoko are found by Batou, who is shocked to see their enemy being intimate with the Major. Kuze is escorted to Section 9's helicopter and is forced into autistic mode (for a full-cyborg, all physical aptitudes become locked from any motion. Similar to modern airplane mode for mobile phones). During the flight, Motoko notices Kuze has picked apple and managed to bite it, an impressive feat considering his stiff mouth and his autistic mode.
Upon reaching the National Embassy, Kuze is left behind in the helicopter, while Motoko leaves to confront and kill Kazundo Gouda for good. But Gouda was a scapegoat for the American Empire, whose goal was to kill Kuze. An American spy infiltrates the helicopter and injects virulent micromachines into Kuze. As Motoko desperately rushes to save him, Kuze drops an origami crane and seemingly dies, but not before he says "I'll go on ahead". Kuze's death causes Motoko to depart from Section 9 for many years.
Based on the events following the Refugee Revolution, Kuze is hinted to be alive in the net. The sequel movie Solid State Society implies that during her absence, Motoko has contacted Kuze. To a possible extent, she even adopted his mind into her own. The Netflix sequel series SAC_2045 also indirectly refers his deeds and the consequences for America's State of Affairs.
Personality[]
As a child, Kuze was a shy and reserved boy who cared a lot for others. Aware about his limited movements, he always did his best to inspire hope to those around him, without asking anything in return. However, he was quite demanding and hard on people, especially to the cyborg girl who gladly spent time with him.
As an adult, Kuze became aloof, distracted, heartless and inhuman; this is partially due to his quiet nature. However, this is merely on the surface, as Kuze is in fact a kind, easygoing, perseverant, convincing and open-minded man. Everyone who had met him in person admired his intellect and words. Hideo Kuze's experience as a soldier has also contributed to his tactical genius and rational decision-making.
Hideo Kuze is initially presented as a moral-driven assassin with a cold-blood demeanor. Later on the series, we discover that he is a soldier who is disgusted by the State of Affairs between the countries. Seeing that people in power cannot take responsibilities for mistakes they've made, Kuze develops a Messiah complex and turns into a megalomaniac who is determined to help the victims of war and give them a reason to live by their will and their humanity. However, he does not see himself as a godlike figure, but rather someone who is powerful enough to change things.
During the course of his life, Kuze, despite his keen judgment and logical thinking, becomes disputed with his own humanity, knowing he had left behind his real body ever since childhood. Although he sympathizes wholly with the refugees, Kuze seems rather unbothered by their actual suffering and gives his attention on the facts rather the the happenings. His penchant for logical reasoning and lack of emotions have made him unreachable personally, contributing instead to his deification as an ideal, which he outwardly dislikes as it strips him from the right of being an actual living person.
On second note, there's also his perception of being a soldier who was once exploited like an expendable by politicians. Longing to find the human inside him, Kuze tries to connect with the refugees, adopting their goals, their ordeals, their mentality and their spirit. However, this turns on the other side as he inevitably becomes their legend, the perfect image that the refugees want him to be. Kuze, in retaliation to every trace of humanity the world has stripped him, decides to build a revolution where he becomes master of fused multiple human consciousness inside a vast network, similar to the Puppet Master in the Oshii films. In addition with the original Puppet Master, Kuze's reason behind this is to see to the world's stability and achieve his own success as an individual. Kuze believes that the egalitarian system cannot give peace due to the selfish instincts of human nature. Therefore, he sees himself like a sacred figure who can lead and force everyone towards balance, transforming human subjects into pioneers from beyond who collect knowledge and live indefinitely. In short words from Motoko Kusanagi, "He's like Hitler with the intent of Gandhi".
Kuze's inner conflict is finally answered when he gets stuck with Motoko under debris, reuniting with his long-lost childhood friend after many years of searching. She becomes the very person whom he needed in all his life: She asks his motives, gets to know the real man under the legend, and supports him, although at their own discretion. Touched by her sympathy, Kuze returns into the mind of the isolated boy who needed someone to recognize he undeniably existed as a real human being. As his true self, he moves on from the past and finds solace with his actions by accepting Motoko, the only one who could truly love him for who he was. It can be inferred he has no regrets and doubts when leaving his body behind upon his "death".
Appearance[]
Hideo Kuze is a cyborg with handsome features and a well-toned body. He had chosen to wear a customized sculptured face when he reached his young adult years. His hair was black and reached his lower neck.
When deployed in Asia as a PKF, Kuze wore the white arctic jumpsuit required. He also had an accompanied helmet with a transparent visor attached. Upon deserting and becoming a vagabond (Ronin), he would sport numerous clothes ranging from white shirts, his old green military uniform and other apparel. However, he would never change his body, and over time his hair turned white and his skin mostly lost its pigmentation.
In his first appearance in the anime, Kuze is seen wearing an all-white getup consisting of a tank top and sport pants. Later on, he wears a grayish-white lab smock over the former attire.
Finally, his last chosen clothes during the final battle are his signature appearance. He dons a practical brown jacket covering over a black turtleneck and gray military pants tightened by a belt. His jacket has many pouches, and notably has a holster for a knife.
Abilities[]
Among the most powerful full-cyborgs in Ghost in the Shell, Kuze is shown and mentioned many times to be in the top-class, surpassing even the likes of Motoko and Batou. He is arguably the strongest cyborg in the SAC continuity, even in spite of his untended body. Kuze possesses numerous fighting skills, alongside a great ability to strategize. He also has an aptitude for hacking, all while being able to defend himself from net attackers. Due to him possessing the minds of 3 million people, he is also extremely knowledgeable and prepared for situations. His cold-blooded and stoic attitude makes him an ideal leader in the face of dangers and critical situations.
Kuze's most notable trait is his physical strength. He was shown to be able to soak up bullets from automatic rifles and helicopter rotating cannons, as well as surviving an otherwise fatal fall. He also dismembered Batou's leg with relative ease. His skin can also regenerate.
Trivia[]
- His likeness is based on Japanese-Taiwanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro.
- Hideo Kuze shares similarities with a lot of historical figures, even contradictory in ideologies, including Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, René Descartes and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Kuze's actions and views during the Peninsular War draw similarities to former Canadian military officer Roméo Dallaire, who led the ill-fated UN PKF unit in Rwanda and witnessed massacres.
- Wanting to bring the Puppet Master in an ideal situation for the SAC continuity, Director Kenji Kamiyama and Mamoru Oshii decided to adapt Kuze to have more of a social impact and an intimate relationship with the Major.
- Main villains in the SAC continuity had similar traits to the original Puppet Master, leaving the audience to guess who could take the mantle in the SAC continuity. Among The Laughing Man, Kazundo Gouda and Kuze, the latter ended up being that character, only revealed in the end with the latter's ultimate plan.
- Kuze is similar to Roy Batty from the movie Blade Runner. They are both ex-soldiers, combat units, and possess a great strategic mind. They also serve as the main candidates for individualist philosophy.
- The number of years Kuze spent without maintenance is unclear, however since he is around his early thirties in the anime, it must be close to a decade.