Psycho-Pass

[Edort4]

No reason to doubt you. Is just that it struck me funny how confident and reassured you sounded there.

Maybe weak wasnt the right word to describe the feeling this episode left me with. Its just that by the minute 5 I was introduced the new characters, was given a glympse of their personalities and was hinted about the plot of this season. I know that they are 20 minutes long episodes and that season can be only 13 episodes long thats barely 4 hours but I believe they could do a better/stronger (weak comes from here) work with a little bit of narrative structure improvement and playing with the tools it provides.

[Kraco]

@Kraco - Wait, what does criminality have to do with competence? Or was it the lack of respect to seniority?

Well, this is the Psycho-Pass thread and the first season taught us quite sufficiently that a detective needs some ability to think like a criminal to be able to really pull it off. How many times did Akane guess more or less correctly the criminal's intentions? A few times, at least.

[shinta|hikari]

Gotcha.

And you are probably right lol.

[Ryllharu]

Don't forget that the Sibyl system wants Inspectors that blindly follow its orders. They recommend people to take a job with the police. The difference is that Akane scored so high that she could do pretty much anything in society...but chose to work at the police.

The Sibyl system is the brains of the manufactured society, and the Inspectors are its hands. The Enforcers are just reusable materials, because the Inspectors are still tasked with stunning/killing them if need be.

Akane is the aberration, because she still thinks for herself. The Sibyl system finds her interesting enough not to kill her for knowing about them. And in their mind, she made the right judgment call here. The system will be very interested in knowing how this guy was able to make bombs intended for terrorist purposes without spiking his psycho-pass to levels where he would have been spotted right away. Her action to spare him instead of killing him gives them a way to study him (or simply incorporate him into their brain trust).

The key point is that Akane was able to talk him down so all the observers from the other teams wouldn't wonder why she was able to stun him when she should have killed him. I'd like to think the Sibyl system would have simply allowed her to stun him if no one else was looking.


edit:
Kunizuka and Ginoza will turn Shimotsuki around. They are both far more thoughtful than the average Enforcer. She was shocked that Kunizuka saved her (instead of what the average apathetic Enforcer likely does) and that Ginoza was intelligent, gave a shit, and was interested in more than just chasing and shooting. It'll be interesting to see where her character goes, despite the parallels to her and Ginoza. I hope they take it in a different direction though, whatever that may be.

[Buffalobiian]

I hope they take it in a different direction though, whatever that may be

I hope they derail her permamently in such a way that she can't turn her outlook around like Ginoza did. It would keep things interesting, less cliche, and also highlight the difference between the two. I'm totally expecting the reveal that Ginoza was an ex-Inspector to have a big effect on her though.

The psychotropic drugs they're handing out seemed like the obvious answer to how the bomb maker remained unclouded.

[Ryllharu]

The psychotropic drugs they're handing out seemed like the obvious answer to how the bomb maker remained unclouded.

That would be too obvious. I viewed it as more of a company trying to sell mass-produced Xanax...which is pretty fucked up.

Reminds me too much of the soma from Brave New World.

It felt too easy for that to be what works, considering the standard approach last season was robot psychotherapy, even on super traumatic shit like seeing your best friend getting murdered in front of you.

[Buffalobiian]

HS - S02E02

[Inazuma]

Oh boy ...

I love this show so much but looks like we're gonna get some " Sybil moves in mysterious ways " bullshit again.

[Ryllharu]

Fun fact:

Shimotsuki's VA, Sakura Ayane, is a creepy big fan of Akane's VA (Hanazawa Kana).

Perhaps we'll see her character channeling her real world love when she gets all gooey over Yayoi?

[Buffalobiian]

Fun fact:

Shimotsuki's VA, Sakura Ayane, is a creepy big fan of Akane's VA (Hanazawa Kana).



Perhaps we'll see her character channeling her real world love when she gets all gooey over Yayoi?

From which I learned that Shimotsuki appeared in Psycho-pass 1 as:

[Ryllharu]

Dammit, now I'm gonna have to download the extended edition version of those episodes to see if there is anything worth noting in them. Perhaps a little more insight into her character. We know both her friends were murdered, that may explain a bit why she is so strict now...and also how she can be all aflutter over Yayoi despite that.

[Kraco]

The trust in technology seems strong in this show, though I suppose it's no wonder considering a computer more or less chooses a person's profession and thus life. Possibly the society even has constant propaganda going on, brain washing people into thinking there's no hiding from surveillance and no possibility to fool it.

I have to say I like Akane a lot in this season, so far. She's really competent yet remains so cute. That would make it even more interesting if Kogami made an appearance. How would she react and behave?

[shinta|hikari]

Exactly. We may get trolled and get no Kogami at all this season, though.

[Kraco]

Episode 3 - HS





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The beginning certainly was like from some horror movie. The Stockholm syndrome was really fast forwarded, but I guess the dude couldn't be such a wizard if he needed hours for it. I have to say if Akane's hue were affected by this case, it would be due to how thickheaded and unsupportive her colleagues are. It's always nice when the first thing your coworkers think is that you are crazy, not that the criminal might be above average in competence.

I don't mind that the plot seems to center around fooling the Sibyl once again. It's such an nightmarish system that the best stories simply must be about how it's not actually working.

[Buffalobiian]

It's always nice when the first thing your coworkers think is that you are crazy, not that the criminal might be above average in competence.

They believe that Sybil is all powerful and correct. That's why they (in the beginning) want to be Inspectors, and that's why Sybil is able to rule with an iron fist. This propaganda is also fact as all missed cases are erased from records.

It takes someone unique like Tsunemori to learn of Sybil's true nature and remain compliant with it. I still think drugs have something to do with all this.

[Kraco]

It takes someone unique like Tsunemori to learn of Sybil's true nature and remain compliant with it. I still think drugs have something to do with all this.

Possibly. But I also have a feeling holograms have something to with it as well. Now we even learned hacked robots might be. Back when the hologram hostage left the car and the later events unfolded, I thought maybe the criminal mastermind covers himself with a hologram and the system in unable to see through it, registering only a hologram, not the person hiding inside of it, walking perfectly in sync. I imagine his hue is perfectly clear, just like Makishima's.

[Ryllharu]

But there is a very big difference between Kamui and Makashima, and a very important one at that.

The reason why the latter half of the first season fell apart was how Makashima had been evading Sibyl. He was never an actor in any of the cases he was involved in, merely the mastermind. He felt that he was perfectly sane, justified, a voice of reason to "free" others of their inhibitions. As long as he was only the encouragement, he could maintain his extremely low psychopass. Where it all fell apart was when he murdered Yuki in front of Akane. A clearly criminal act that flew in the face of what we had been shown. It still went down, which is...okay. The problem occurs in the final arc, where his psychopass suddenly skyrockets merely because he...decided to destroy all the super wheat? How on earth could spoiling crops possibly be catastrophically worse on his psyche than murdering someone deliberately to cause pain to someone else? Ruining the super wheat wouldn't directly harm anyone, it just would have stopped Japan from being isolated.

It was that inconsistency in delivery that ruined his character.

Kamui on the other hand, has been doing terrible things the entire time with his own hands. From the start. He offers the same kinds of encouragement that Makashima did, but also spreads his influence on others psychopasses, allowing them to be direct actors with a "clear conscience," and sense of moral righteousness. Very similar to Makashima. But he also kills people, tortures others, manipulates them in ways and using methods that we consistently saw cause spikes in other people's psychopass. And through all this, he registers "0.0" with a perfectly clear hue.

It has been conveyed to the audience from the start that Kamui has found an exploit in the system, and can share it with others. The "code" (brains!) of the Sybil system and scanning software/hardware is so complex that none of them can fathom someone is capable of this. Like a 0-day in your OS that it so convoluted it takes the developers a month to even find, much less fix.

With this approach, you don't ruin the suspension of disbelief because the audience has to accept from the beginning that Kamui has found a way around the rules we've been shown. His immunity and ability to spread it is the vital conceit.

[Kraco]

Episode 4 - HS





- - - - ---



Damn, that system really sucks. It's like Stalin's a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is statistics.

I'd be pretty surprised if after this Shimotsuki still has the guts to act like a bitch every time in front of Akane. Surely she realised now she's so miserable that even Sybil lost hope in her. The funniest part was when she complained about losing command - after never using the command for anything at all whilst people were being tortured and killed right behind a single wall. She should just hand over her resignation application.

Akane really is special if serving this utterly stupid, inhuman, injust, and frustrating system doesn't worsen her hue. She has the nerves of a saint.

[shinta|hikari]

I don't understand Akane's character. She never gets stressed despite being so moral in an unjust world? How is that even possible?

[Buffalobiian]

Akane believes in humanity and that the system can be used for good I suppose. Notice that Kamui has a scar in front of his ear. It didn't exactly look surgical, but I wonder if it's the result of a craniotomy (opening the cranium, think brain surgery) or even a face transplant. For a second I even considered that this guy could be a transformed Kogami. It's only an interesting idea at this stage though since his voice and build doesn't match, not to mention Kogami was never an expert in holograms.

It was really fulfilling to see Shimotsuki witness the result of "I'm only following orders", despite that I actually do feel the need to follow orders even when things go wrong. I say this because in the modern western society where free press and a separation of power exists, wrong rules (such as what happened here) would be picked up and altered. However, that isn't the case here where Sybil runs a dictatorship. Your "following rules that are wrong and need to be changed" wouldn't make it into a feedback system. I'll just end in casualties without benefits.

I don't get the madman this episode though. Was he under full control that this was an experiment to test if Inspectors could be shot, or did he just go on his own fantasy run of trying to save people by beating the living shit out of them? I do sympathise with him a bit in that he had his life pretty much taken from him. The "eustress deficiency" he described is pretty much how you'd look if you're overtreated with antipsychotics.

eustress deficiency = good stress deficiency. aka stress (caused by desires not being met?) in some form is essential for a sound mental state.