Ending illogical?

[Sun_S]

So, watched the ending and found it illogical. Maybe I'm just missing nuances?
I watched the English dub. I'm not a native speaker of English, but so far, I haven't had problems following dialogue in series or movies. Yet here I sometimes couldn't understand the leaps characters made in their dialogues. So maybe that's one reason why. Anyway, let me break down how the ending looks to me and why it seems illogical:

1) "Laughing Man" gave up on his goal:
For most of the series, the team had pursued the "Laughing Man", a hacker named Aoi (?) who had wanted to reveal the truth about cyberbrain sclerosis treatment methods to the world: That the officially permitted micromachine treatment was worthless and that the vetoed Murai vaccine was effective.
When he had first appeared to the public, he had tried to force this truth out of the creator of micromachines, Mr. Serano. Serano didn't admit to anything though. So the hacker fled and spent the time after that leaving cryptic clues to the public and making sparse appearances, all while not just telling people the truth about the vaccine directly, or leaking incriminating info on it. Yes, I'm aware that not all "Laughing Man" incidents really were him because cyberterrorists and people out for money made use of the same moniker.
In the end, he had a talk with Major Kusanagi that was not so much about what had become of his original goal but about philosophical implications of copying your memories/self, how to be sure you really are yourself afterward etc (which was also spurred by the fact that the young man wasn't even the original person to find out the truth, so not the "real"/"first"/"only" Laughing Man). The team leader decided they wouldn't pursue him anymore, and that was that. No word of what Aoi would do later - or maybe the talk about authors who only publish very little meant that he would stop "working" now.
End result: Aoi apparently just gave up on a goal that had been very important to him. It was more important to him to have had a "good run" than to let people know about the vaccine's effectiveness. Huh?

2) Section 9 didn't help with LM's goal, either:
Section 9 also didn't tell the public about the vaccine (or did they?).
Sure, the matter was out of their hands as they had been a secret organization anyway and officially dissolved on top of that. But why not disseminate the info online? Or was that exactly what Ishikawa did before he blew up the "internet café" where his pursuers finally caught him? I didn't quite get what he did there.
At least I remember a discussion they had while watching a broadcast of the trial, saying the prosecutor might not be able to reveal the truth, either (IIRC).

3) Unnecessary deaths:
The team's investigative results were leaked to the press, and as a result, they had to be officially erased in order to be able and continue working. So, instead of telling his team, Aramaki gave them vague hints that something was off, then sat by as they were pursued by a highly qualified team of specialists (forgot their name), many of whom they killed. So, lots of unnecessary deaths. Not to mention that their dead pursuers had been as much a valuable asset for crimefighting as had been Section 9.
They could have faked it all in cooperation with that other team, but of course the more people know about a secret, the more likely it is that it'll get known after all. Okay. Why didn't Aramaki get permission then to let Section 9 handle it themselves? We've seen numerous times during the series that in their world, you can never really be sure of reality. Somebody might be hacking your brain at this very moment, making you experience things that aren't there. They could have set up an elaborate scheme where they make their pursuers believe they have killed or arrested them. But they didn't.

4) Serano's death:
I didn't understand why Serano had to die. From the talk he had with disguised Kusanagi, I got that he knew deep down that his treatment was worthless all while not wanting to admit that to himself or others. Okay.
Who killed him and why? Was it the original Laughing Man? That would make no sense because maybe he could have admitted the truth during the trial or at least let slip something unintentionally.
Was it the government/the lobby that tried to suppress the Murai vaccine?

[Sun_S]

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer in such detail!
I guess you are right in that the series doesn't spell out everything. They do struggle with exposition throughout the season - sometimes they'd have the characters stand and explain for viewers and it slowed down the experience (after all, "show, don't tell"), at other times, they'd just throw around information without telling you more (like the whole meaning of something having a ghost) and you could only hope you'd figure it out over time, and at other times again, you got enough basic info to figure out the rest until the end of the episode. With a complex world such as in this series, it may be tough to keep both seasoned viewers/readers of the previous versions and new viewers like me aboard in regard to exposition.

Looking at your answers to 1 and 2, it makes more sense to me - if Ishikawa already disseminated the real info on the vaccine, then the Laughing Man may have decided that that was good enough and that the world now had all the info to make up its own mind.
As to why they didn't arrest him, you're right, the team had let others go before if they thought it served the world better. With Aoi saying that he's done interfering, they may have decided his past actions weren't worth punishing since he was a kind of whistleblower.

Guess 3 just is a bit weird then.

And if 4 is true in regard to Serano wanting to drop the bomb, then it would make a lot of sense that those shielding the cure from public use would very much want him dead.

Once again, thank you! This has helped me.

[idioch]

Wow I don't really know where to start for comments, and you guys have some pretty big posts. I'd definitely suggest you guys rewatch things again though as you definitely missed some things. The Laughing Man case was much more then about the vaccine, it started out about that with the initial kidnapping but after the copy cat does his blackmailing and other stuff (desks/lawn cutting). It ends up being a investigation about corruption, as the general of the current political party was the one pulling the strings on the situation back then.

The reason why Aoi or anyone really for that matter couldn't just bring this to light is because in a age of technology like this where one can hack anothers mind, and potentially tamper with data on the net itself. Well you need to have someone willingly confess (ie. the first kidnapping), Aoi could have hacked Serano's brain and made the confession through him but it wouldn't have solved anything (probably make things worse). Or have data like the paper records of the vaccine users. On top of this there's alot of political stuff to deal with too, it's the reason why Section 9 ended up dealing with it the way they did.

I don't think I had any trouble grasping things for season 1 or 2. But I have watched them a few times, it's a very well done series that I'd always recommend to people. Also don't forget to check out the movie Solid State Society too.