Extra Edition: Who Pays the Price—'Endgame' and 'Ghost in the Shell', Attitudes Toward Compensation

Introduction

This main text concluded by noting that there are works that squarely reject the premise of "surviving even if it means reducing." One such work is 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019). However, as I continued my research, this extra edition grew beyond a simple critique of a single work. I realized that to illuminate the conclusion I reached in the main text—that coexistence with AI is nothing less than a readiness to pay the price—I needed to line up multiple works using a single yardstick: "attitude toward compensation."

The villain who pays in full. Those who defer without paying. The one who pays and leaps. The one who pays and yet remains. And those who get by without paying. I would like to look at them in order.

Thanos as the Arbiter of the Universe—The Villain Who Paid in Full

First, it is logical to start with the villain.

Thanos in the previous film, 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018), is no mere tyrant. Since the universe's resources are finite, randomly erasing half of all life contributes to the survival of the whole—that logic is based on calculation, not emotion. In his behavior of cutting off local life to preserve the big picture, he stands on the same side as Zoffy from 'Shin Ultraman.' He is an administrator who decides from outside humanity whether or not humanity should survive. (Note that this resource theory is a setting unique to the MCU; the motivation of Thanos in the original comics is something else entirely: a courtship of the concept of Death.)

However, there is one decisive difference between Zoffy and Thanos. Zoffy only executes and loses nothing. In contrast, Thanos lets go of Gamora, whom he could call his other half, as the price for snapping his fingers; he lives in seclusion after achieving his goal, and in the end, he gives up resistance and is struck down. He paid the price his own logic demanded with his own body. Even though he is a villain—or rather, precisely because he is a villain—it was he who first showed the "method of resolve" in this story.

The Avengers—Those Who Defer Without Paying

Then, what of the heroes who rejected that settlement?

The fingers were snapped, and half of the universe's life turned to dust. The survivors were left with the path of restructuring society based on this loss. In fact, five years have passed in the world of 'Endgame,' and a quiet equilibrium incorporating the loss is beginning to emerge. It would not have been strange for the story of "unconscious resolve" that I discussed in the main text to have started from here.

But the Avengers did not accept that. They do not use the ultimate technology of time travel via the quantum realm to "elevate humanity to a higher existence" as in 'Interstellar.' Their goal was only one thing: to bring back the half that had been erased.

In the process, they certainly paid a price. The Soul Stone took Natasha's life, the power of the six stones burned Hulk's arm, and Tony Stark, who held the stones at the end, died. Looking only at this, it appears they also paid the price and "won while remaining human."

However, the accounting does not end there. The half they brought back returns to a world five years later. An unbridgeable chasm lies between those who disappeared and those who survived. Interference with the past creates branched worlds, and beyond that, the seal on the multiverse is broken. The place for those who returned, the reconstruction of the collapsed social order, the chaos of the opened multiverse—the invoices for these were passed on to the next phase with almost none of it depicted.

Herein lies the fate of the franchise structure. A story that never ends cannot finalize its costs. The dead return in other universes or dramas, and lost order is reset at the beginning of the next work. Thanos's ledger was visible to everyone's eyes, and therefore it was terrifying. The Avengers' ledger is invisible. Because it is invisible, one can be under the illusion that payment has been made. It is correct to refuse the settlement offered by a higher system. But the invoice for what was refused does not disappear, and it usually arrives in a place one is not looking. They did not pay the price; they pushed it outside the ledger.

And what is interesting is where that pushed-out invoice arrived. An organization that views the countless timelines branched by past alteration as "dangerous" and goes around pruning them appears in the subsequent story. It is the Time Variance Authority (TVA). They accept only the "Sacred Timeline" as the true history, and "prune" the worlds that branched from it—regardless of the will of those who branched—and discard them into the void. To protect a single order, they calmly dispose of non-standard existences from the outside. This is the very logic of Zoffy, and the TVA is, so to speak, the MCU version of the arbiter of the universe.

In other words, it is like this. The debt that the Avengers "deferred without paying" did not disappear. It became the starting point for a new story, and it invited an administrator to collect that debt—a higher-level overseer who might prune them. In the main text, I discussed the paradox that the more humanity struggles, the more it is viewed as dangerous by higher existences. The flow from 'Endgame' to 'Loki' unintentionally acts out a microcosm of that. Those who refuse settlement call for a greater settler. The bill for irresponsibility does not disappear; it comes to be collected from above.

However, within the same MCU territory, there is only one exception. Peter Parker in 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021), produced in collaboration with Sony Pictures. He, whose own wish clashed with Doctor Strange's spell and went out of control, bringing villains from the multiverse, chooses only one way to resolve the situation—to erase his very existence from the minds of people around the world. His lover, his best friend, and even his mentor lose the memory of knowing Peter. He could have revealed his true identity to his lover one last time and reconnected. But he did not. Remembered by no one, thanked by no one, losing the support of Stark Industries, he sews his suit again with his home sewing machine and starts over from zero. By offering the room to take back, he paid in full.

If 'Endgame' is a story of "taking back" the half that was lost, this is a story of "offering up" one's own existence. While at the center of the franchise, he alone chose to "pay in full," which the center kept avoiding. One can read that it is not unrelated to the fact that the production lineage is half outside (co-produced by Marvel Studios and Sony). In any case, the presence of this one exception makes the Avengers' deferral, which can be thought of as irresponsible, stand out all the more. And his choice also points to an answer different from Motoko Kusanagi's. Whereas Motoko Kusanagi paid and leaped, Peter paid and yet remained on the human side.Leaping is not the only way to pay the price.

Motoko Kusanagi—The One Who Paid and Leaped

There is a story in Japan that squarely paid the price and, moreover, leaped forward. It is director Mamoru Oshii's 'GHOST IN THE SHELL' (1995).

Motoko Kusanagi of Public Security Section 9, who has fully cyberized her body and connected her brain directly to the net, confronts the 'Puppet Master,' a life form that spontaneously emerged in the cyber world. What the Puppet Master proposes is fusion. Two existences melting together, shedding the boundaries of the individual, and being reborn as a single new entity. Motoko Kusanagi accepts this. The new existence, having borrowed the body of a young girl, looks down at the city and whispers, 'The net is vast.' And then, she sets off into the vast sea of information.

This is the quietest and most explicit visualization of the 'Noah-fication' discussed in the main text—the endeavor where humans, by their own will, transcend the framework of the individual and transition to a higher existence. The price Motoko Kusanagi offered was none other than 'herself as a human.' Letting go of her body, her gender, and her status as a single individual, she leaped. Contrary to how Endgame paid 'to remain human,' Motoko Kusanagi paid 'to stop being human.'

What is interesting is that Oshii filmed this in 1995. It was the very moment when the internet began to spread across society, with Windows 95 being released and 'internet' being chosen as a buzzword that year. In the main text, I likened communication infrastructure to a nervous system spread across society. Oshii, in the year that nervous system was born, depicted a human leaping by fusing with that nervous system.

And, Hollywood did not leap.

This story has a sequel of sorts, more than twenty years later. In 2017, Hollywood produced a live-action version starring Scarlett Johansson. The ambition to inherit the theme by carefully tracing the iconic scenes of the Oshii version—the creation of the cyborg body, the fall in optical camouflage, Kenji Kawai's music—was genuine.

But the crucial ending is different. What Mira (Motoko Kusanagi) in the Hollywood version obtains at the end is not fusion into the sea of the net. It is the recovery of her stolen past memories and her identity as to who she is. The story of transcending and leaping was quietly rewritten into a story of reclaiming humanity.

This is suggestive. While the Oshii version affirmed 'letting go of the individual and leaping,' the Hollywood version avoided the leap and landed back in the shell of humanity. It is the same reflex as Endgame refusing to reduce its numbers and remaining human. When trying to reach the largest possible audience, transcendence is avoided, and the story is pulled back to 'remaining human.' Within the single origin point of Mamoru Oshii's version, the leaping Japanese version and the non-leaping American version remain clearly divided. (Note that for Ghost in the Shell, there are other routes such as the 'S.A.C.' series that do not leap and remain within the network, but the discussion here is limited strictly to Mamoru Oshii's theatrical version.)

A story that ends by leaping does not continue.

Here, I encounter another fact.

Apart from the main text, in a digression, I discussed 'Tokusatsu monster movies that were actually bad endings.' Gamera 3, Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman—all are lineages of 'self-reliance endings' that close by pushing humanity into a harsh next phase. And none of them have direct sequels. Gamera 3 is frozen as a 'perfect conclusion,' Godzilla is being remade along with its worldview in -1.0, and the sequel to Shin Ultraman remains only a proposal.

Why? Because a story that ends by leaping, or ends by confirming a high price, forces the sequel to bear the 'responsibility of recovering that price.' The war against the swarms of Gyaos covering the sky, the threat of Godzilla nearly splitting under freezing, the survival without protection—if you make a continuation, you truly have to depict these things. And that is certainly grimmer than the previous work, narrowing the audience. As long as a film expects a better box office performance for the next work than the current one, a sequel that promises grimness is unlikely to be born. There is a paradox here that the more strongly a story is stoked and closed, the less it can have a continuation.

The reason Avengers can continue is that it is the exact opposite. It does not confirm the price, but keeps the world open and defers it. That is why it can continue for as many works as it wants. A story that pays and closes ends only once, while a story that does not pay and defers continues forever. Ironically, the more a story sincerely faces the price, the closer it moves toward the side of oblivion.

Another auxiliary line—the knot that is Hideaki Anno.

I have lined up the attitudes of each work so far, but finally, I would like to write down one different perspective. It is not only Ghost in the Shell (from the Oshii version to the Hollywood version) where the creators changed that let go of the leap. There are also examples where the same creator let go of the leap over time.

And what I notice is that the name of one creator who has been deeply involved in 'Shin Ultraman' treated in the main text, 'Shin Godzilla' discussed in the digression, and even the old and new 'Evangelion' of his own work—repeatedly comes to mind. It is Hideaki Anno. The change between the 'temptation to melt the individual' he depicted in the old Evangelion and the 'return to daily life' he reached in the new theatrical version resonates strangely with the Japanese-American modification of Ghost in the Shell. How the values surrounding leaping moved within the creator over twenty-some years—this does not fit into the vessel of this extra edition. I would like to explore it again in a separate article.

Conclusion—A loop back to the main text.

When lined up by 'attitude toward compensation' in this way, several positions become visible. Thanos, who paid the price of his own logic with his own body. The Avengers, who deferred the price outside the ledger. Spider-Man, who was the only one in that territory to pay it off by offering his existence. Motoko Kusanagi, who leaped by offering her very humanity. And the Hollywood version, which avoided the leap and landed on humanity.

In the main text, I concluded that the resolve to survive the distorted co-evolution with AI is nothing other than the resolve to pay the price. This extra edition is a catalog of the reverse side of that. Do you pay, do you defer, do you pay to leap, or do you get by without leaping? These attitudes that fiction has depicted are also a sample book of our own stance in front of the system called AI.

And what remains at the end is that quiet question. Is a story that sincerely paid the price and leaped destined to be forgotten? Or—thirty years after Oshii's Motoko Kusanagi disappeared into the sea of the net, just as we ourselves now live within that sea—was it just too early, and will we one day catch up to that story?

(Extra Edition: End)