(Spoilers)
Im a little confused, but at the end of the first season. Serano is walking through a garage to his car and someone obviously up to no good walks past him. When Serano gets to the car I assume it was rigged to explode. Im just wondering who the guy was that booby trapped the car.
It's the same cop from the Special Investigations Unit for the Laughing Man case who met with Togusa in the episode "Interceptor."
That guy also killed Nanao at the end of that mini-arc. Look at his face when it shows him close up. He has a very large and very distinctive mole that's visible, at least partially, in all three episodes.
I think this guy also killed a suspect of the Laughing Man case earlier in the season. In the end, I think he was the actual laughing man. It wasn't the kid hacker cyborg.
shareThat suspect's name was Nanao, and that's who I was talking about.
I don't think he was the Laughing Man. In the final episode of Gig 1, Aoi (your "kid hacker cyborg"), said he found an email to Serano containing an article about the effectiveness of micro-machines. He said if anyone was a real Laughing Man, it was the author of the article.
The "Laughing Man" was actually an artificial persona created by the conspirators (Yakushima among them) to bankroll Yakushima's political campaign with blackmail money. That's what they mean when they refer to "copies without an original." Everybody did things to emulate the "Laughing Man" when there was no real person who went by that name.
Also, I think the assassin who killed Nanao and presumably Serano was simply a crooked cop who killed people to cover up the full extent of the conspiracy on orders from Yakushima or someone else privy to the inner workings of the conpiracy.
Here's a theory (admittedly not one ever even suggested in the series but which would not be out of character for the series): Yakushima was simply another fall guy for the real conspiracy that was using the Laughing Man personna for their own nefarious ends. The bomb (or whatever the mystery guy at the end planted) was intended not so much to kill Serano (since he had already testified) but to get Yakushima out of the way, since Serano's death would automatically be linked to Yakushima. Just a thought.
When darkness overcomes the heart, Lil' Slugger appears...
I actually had a theory somewhat along those lines myself, LK.
Yakushima was in fact involved at the highest levels of the conspiracy, but he was the only one who left a trail of evidence pointing to himself. I think Serano was ordered to be killed at the end of Gig 1 by the Chief Cabinet Secretary from Gig 2, who wanted the case to appear closed.
If the investigation goes no further, the Chief Cabinet Secretary isn't implicated, and keeps his job. He is then free to create the Cabinet Intelligence Service under the auspices of preventing something like that from happening again. The creation of this entity to spy on anyone they darn well please would be perfect for a corrupt politician further his own political career through blackmail, bribes, etc.
In short, Yakushima wasn't a duped fall guy in the same way Nanao was, but he WAS the one who did the worst job of covering his own tracks. As a result, Serano needed to be eliminated to prevent the leak of any further information that could lead to even more arrests.
I like to think that makes sense, and fits in with what actually happened in the series.
Hey maybe Gohda was one of the lead conspirators and we never found out.
Either way, it kind of sucks that assassin never got caught at the end, and the murder of Togusa's friend from the police was never solved.
Either way, it kind of sucks that assassin never got caught at the end, and the murder of Togusa's friend from the police was never solved.
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I guess that's the kind of realism we rarely see in TV series.
When darkness overcomes the heart, Lil' Slugger appears...