Psycho-Pass

[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 (http://nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=613744)





- -- - -- -



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 (http://nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=617184)





- - - - ---



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.

[Kraco]

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.

I think he knew Kamui's goal or at least a part of it, but his own was a separate one. Of course that was also made possible by Kamui, but they were allies, so why not. That shop was for people getting those drugs which turn people into zombies, so it wasn't a random place they chose. All the people present, save the Inspector and possibly employees, were the same kind of zombie people he was. I'm not sure if he foresaw all of them getting slaughtered, but perhaps he did. It would then be like a suicide bombing to send a message, even if the message was lost on the specific people he was "treating" on site. But then again, many of those died anyway receiving his treatment, so it's questionable if they were the intended ultimate audience. All in all he was a bit too passionate to have done all that to only incite Aoyanagi.

[Ryllharu]

I don't understand Akane's character. She never gets stressed despite being so moral in an unjust world? How is that even possible?
Akane believes in humanity and that the system can be used for good I suppose.
I actually think it is the opposite. Akane believes that humanity is capable of truly terrible things, and as such, the shit that people are truly capable of doesn't shock her anymore. That's what keeps her baseline.

It may have been true last season, where she was as much of an aberration as Makishima was. She was simply mentally stable because she was never really all that engaged in events personally.

Over time, she realized that the system identified people as undesirables (all of the enforcers) that had a firm belief in what justice is (Kogami/Masaoka), were thoughtful (Kagari/Masaoka), and genuinely cared about others but were burnt by it (Yayoi). She knows it can make errors. She doesn't trust the system at all, but sees it as the only available avenue to prevent further crime. They've shown she much rather would stun people than execute them. She's willing to wait and talk them down to do so, on numerous occasions.

When her friend was murdered in front of her, she recognized that not everyone in this world is pleasant. She was horrified by the act, but isn't naïve enough to believe that there aren't others equally capable of such acts. That's what got her over it, and what keeps her from losing it.

Those who seem to have the most fragile psycho passes and the most easily clouded hues are those who believe that everyone around them is inherently a good person, and that the system can fix them if they get out of line. They have faith in humanity, and believe the system itself is righteous. They believe that life is fair and just, that people will be rewarded for good behavior, and that they're protected by society, that drugs and therapy will save them every time.

Akane doesn't have that faith anymore. She's seen enough to know that isn't true. It is her determination to actively protect others that keeps her sane.

[Buffalobiian]

I agree with the above. "She believes in humanity" was a poor way of expressing that she believes society can be maintained by using (not necessarily obeying) the current system. Sybil isn't perfect, but won't make everything fall apart. She needs to work with it, and to an extent keep it where it is. It makes you wonder how that professor ended up being locked up for having a high psychopass. You'd think that he'd be well past the disillusion phase and well into the acceptance phase.

[Kraco]

Episode 5 - Horrible (http://nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=620066)




---- - - - - -

Uhhuh...


What I found unbelievable is that there's apparently no military, just some bots guarding the borders. Is it because they couldn't find a way to exclude soldiers from the Psycho-Pass mess, and thus they all would have been doomed social outcasts?

And in this episode we learned they do indeed have a military, as opposed to what the previous season suggested. Aaaand...


... or rely on robots and hope the enemy doesn't use EMP or have hackers...

The military has armed terminators that are easy to hack and difficult to shut down forcefully after being hacked. Not only is the country haunted by the Sybil, it's even cursed by a military as stupid as a rubber boot. The dystopia is even worse than it seemed to be. It's difficult not to root for the psycho wishing to bring down the rotten order. It's a sad state of affairs when the madmen are the last hope for the sane.

[Ryllharu]

Well, this season was nice while it lasted.

Too bad it already jumped off the deep end into Guilty Crown territory.

I don't even want to list everything wrong with this episode because I'll have to remember it to type it. Better if I just do my best to forget it until next week.

[Buffalobiian]

While the drone-killing was uncomfortable, the creepy Enforcer's photos topped the list. He's so close to her as well it's not funny. Face-transplant aside, I still don't think Kamui is Kogami. Kogami wouldn't treat this as a game. This guy's too much of a kid. If he expected police to arrive though, why leave behind clues about face-transplants?

[Kraco]

I don't think there's any chance of Kogami being Kamui. Kogami wasn't ever crazy. He was one of the more sane individuals, aside from the stupid Sybil's all too error-prone evaluation. Sanity is just statistics in this show anyway, as it's up to a computer to decide who is sane and who needs treatment. I have no such recollection of Kogami that he would be willing to kill random people to further his goals. Would Akane even have fallen for some senseless murderer?

[Kraco]

Episode 6 - HS (http://nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=622904)




- - - - - - - -



What a sucky arc.

The only good part of this episode: Removing the masking in the game, making the players see what they did, thus wrecking their hue, and then telling the idiot inspector to deal with the situation because it's her bloody job.

The worst part of the episode: Not shooting the boat if Akane really didn't want to shoot the serial killer. It was no fricking military boat, it would have taken decisive damage and either stopped or sunk.

The bad parts of the episode: Everything else but the above.

[shinta|hikari]

I agree with the worst part you mentioned. More people will die just because she didn't want to shoot the dude. She even stopped someone else from doing it.

The rest of the episode I liked. Kamui taking advantage of Sybil's weaknesses was fun to watch.

[Inazuma]

I'm no 4 Start General but ...

Japan has missiles.
The boat is named What Color

The boat is named after the crime scene's quality stamping for fuck's sakes !

If Ben Laden was cruising on the motherfucking Al Quaaeda Royale I think we would have found him in sixty second with a google search on the fucking international boat registry. Don't they use keywords in their investigation ?

[Kraco]

If Ben Laden was cruising on the motherfucking Al Quaaeda Royale I think we would have found him in sixty second with a google search on the fucking international boat registry. Don't they use keywords in their investigation ?

This single guy is apparently a better computer expert than the rest of Japan combined. I doubt his boat would be in the registry. I'd guess the boat would be invisible to electronic surveillance as well; he must have inserted some firewall somewhere that filters it out.

In the end a lot of the stupid shit happening all the time in Japan in this show is due to the system. Sybil doesn't give a shit about individual lives. It's like Stalin and considers lives nothing but statistics. A hundred random innocents can die no problem if it has a chance to benefit the system. Unfortunately for all the people in Japan, Sybil also considers dangerous human aberrations something that may benefit the system, so psychos can sometimes run around freely killing and destroying if they have attributes Sybil finds especially interesting.

[neflight86]

Just to get my two cents in, I'm finding this second season much more entertaining than the last for some reason. I imagine it's because I like the villain much more; we can actually guess at what he is trying to accomplish (without him waxing philosophical to some accomplice).

Also, Leorio... I mean Togane apparently has some problem with Akane's always-clear hue. I look forward to that climax.

[Kraco]

Episode 8 - HS






- - - - - - -





Shimotsuki really is a model of a person who puts the cart before the horse. A researcher who has a planned result in mind beforehand and then goes out to look selectively for any evidence that supports the intended result. Although I can't really understand why she was so hellbent to get Akane removed that she wasted good effort and even some real results only to cook up such a stupid plot, which was doomed to be a failure. I guess she's simply stupid and naive even if she did have some talent as an inspector. The worst part was that the last move in her plans was always going to the chief to whine about Akane. I hope she's finished with this. She was of little use to Akane's team.

Where the hell is Kogami? Still no sign of him. I want to see how cute Akane will be when she finally meets him again!

[Buffalobiian]

It was my understanding that Shimotsuki's report was a stunt to get around the fact that uncovering the facts would raise her psycho-pass. By telling herself that it was all going towards writing a report about her senior's danger towards society was a way for her to convey those facts without being someone who was out to upturn society.

That's why she said "the chief would understand". Too bad the chief understood it all too well.

[Ryllharu]

It's a shame really, Shimotsuki it turns out, was a really good investigator. She puts Akane to shame in that regard. Now, she stupidly focused in the wrong direction (getting Akane relieved of duty), but she basically cracked the entire case...and found the truth that Akane all but stumbled upon last season. Akane's "investigative" skills is reliant on epiphanies, asking her subordinates to do research, and becoming a target. Shimostuki's was to sit at the library for hours and logically and methodically go through information.

Had she gone to Akane with her findings instead of the Chief, Akane probably would have realized what poor Mika had found, praised her investigative skill, and warned her off before things turned out the way they did.

[Kraco]

It was my understanding that Shimotsuki's report was a stunt to get around the fact that uncovering the facts would raise her psycho-pass.

No. I'm sure she realised that her unreasonable effort to get rid of Akane was tainting her hue, and thus she instead tried to fool herself by making it a proper investigation, after a fashion, that just happened to support Akane's dismissal, surprise surprise. So, I think you got it backwards. Her sole motivation was to get rid of Akane. Ironically enough it was such a big motivation that it drove her to the core of the real shit, to her demise.

I agree with Ryll: If she handn't had the anti-Akane obsession, she would have been a merit to the team. Even though Ryll seems to doubt Akane's personal skills, but in truth the fact she can use every single member of the team to the max (except the one who's trying to remove her from her position) speaks highly of Akane's skills. A team needs a coordinator to be a team. Otherwise it's just a bunch of individuals doing whatever, wasting lots of effort, just like Shimotsuki did, since she thought she's so much better than Akane. I wonder how dark her hue would turn if she learned Akane has known more or less everything she now believes she found out, yet still retains her perfect hue.

[Buffalobiian]

I don't think so. She became worried about her psycho-pass after delving into the AA stuff. It was only through passing it off as "concerns for an officer/case" that she kept the rise to a minimal.

Her entire research investivation about patents had been based off the real case with some Togane suspicion on the side. Targetting Akane hasn't really been Shimotsuki's agenda for some time now until when it came to report writing.

I think the episode explained quite well about the link between psycho-passes and people looking up the trap term AA.

[Kraco]

Damn. I only noticed today that season 2 isn't written by Urobutcher. No wonder it turned stupid so soon. Gen usually manages to keep things together until it's time to end the show, and that's when he finally fails. The dunce behind the 2nd season didn't hesitate to fail much sooner.

[Buffalobiian]

HS - Episode 09 (http://www.nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=630795)

--------------------------














I have to say that my enjoyment doesn't deviate too much from Psycho Pass 1. Perhaps it's a matter of relativity. Urobuchi builds things up so well that the ending can't help but be a disappointment. I also came into this series with that lowered expectation, so it hasn't really disappointed me any further.

I'm confused as to why Sybil allows the Togane mother to act in this case though. She's stirring the pot instead of solving the crime. Certainly that's not Sybil's objective.

[Ryllharu]

I'm confused as to why Sybil allows the Togane mother to act in this case though. She's stirring the pot instead of solving the crime. Certainly that's not Sybil's objective.
Togane's mother is Sibyl. She and her team invented the entire system. She's the whole reason the program exists, in some ways, she's the central brain.

She wants Akane dead, or at least discredited and incarcerated. She has a much more loyal (if unstable) stooge in Shimotsuki now that they decided not to kill her after telling her. Stupid twit is so black and white that she is happy to follow the manipulation if it means she can get purge her life of Akane's gray world outlook.

I'm not sure they really care about Kamui to be honest. He's annoying and a thorn in their side (also because it is her fault), but they seem more than happy that it is starting to break Akane. It seems that her non-criminally-asymptomatic-but-perfectly-nominal psycho-pass is a bigger problem for them than Kamui body swapping people and brainwashing others. In the end, Sibyl can simply override the Dominators directly like we saw last season, so long as no one else notices they're doing it.

Akane seems more like proof the system is broken than someone who is invisible or doesn't register (i.e. the members of their brain trust). Akane goes up and down, changes colors, but never very far and she always recovers.



As an aside, brainwashed investigator is kinda hot. She's not a great eyepatch-chan, but she has a nice body. She's a bit more of a Ryomou than a Valmet though.

[Kraco]

I finally managed to finish this season. No wonder it took so long with this miserable thing pretending to be a second season of a good show. Now in retrospect I'm actually happy Kogami didn't appear as more than a ghost imagined by Akane in her moment of need. He would have just been ruined by this travesty. Equally jolly I didn't need to suffer through more than 11 eps to get this off my unfinished list.

[neflight86]

How was it inferior to the first (season), exactly? I thought what we got here was a wholly competent follow up.

[Kraco]

My biggest large problems with it, aside from the numerous weaknesses meantioned before in this thread, were that Kogami never appeared. Not counting the ghost summoned by Akane. He was the best character of the first season. While Akane had really improved a lot and you could see she was clearly Kogami's spiritual apprentice in the second season, what comes to detective work, it only made it worse he never returned.

The second reason was that Sybil was so random and worked against its own purpose half of the time. There was something along those lines in the first season as well, but those were more like poorly chosen actions Sybil still thought would serve the purpose. Now we had the crazy mother and son, who somehow enjoyed turning Inspectors black as a pastime.. Uhh... Right. Not to mention the conclusion worked against everything established before. When it got rid of the criminal brains, it would also stop recognizing a bunch of abnormal brains, thus allowing more latent criminals continue to walk around freely or become real ones.

[shinta|hikari]

Has anyone seen the movie (http://www.nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=719365) yet?

[Munsu]

Has anyone seen the movie (http://www.nyaa.se/?page=download&tid=719365) yet?

Well, I just downloaded the BD version of Psycho-Pass 2, so not yet. Seems like the movie has the return of Motohiro Katsuyuki as director, who I don't think was involved in season 2. More importantly, it seems like Gen Urobuchi did the screenplay (Fukami Makoto as well who was also involved in the first series, but not in the second) so that's a huge plus for story potential.

Anyways, with this knowledge that this came out already I'll be looking into catching up with the series soon then.

[shinta|hikari]

Not happy with the movie at all.

It didn't suck. It just wasn't what I expected or wanted from a sequel. I really hope this is just a setup for a proper season 3.

[Munsu]

Not happy with the movie at all.

It didn't suck. It just wasn't what I expected or wanted from a sequel. I really hope this is just a setup for a proper season 3.

Honestly, I never have high expectations from movies story wise other than eye candy (well animated action sequences, etc.), but it's disappointing to hear that this might not be up to snuff.

Guess I'll find out later on myself.

[neflight86]

I saw the movie as kind of the finality of what they can meaningfully explore in this concept (though I would love to be wrong); how Sybil measures up to the rest of the world's systems. Worth watching but now, a few weeks after, kind of difficult to remember.

[Kraco]

What on Earth happened to the world in Psycho-Pass? I always thought it strange the Japanese would willingly subject themselves to the Sybil system, making themselves little more than slaves to the black box, but this movie suggests the rest of the world might be no better, being nothing but one big battlefield of a never-ending war. Sounds kind of dubious. But of course it's the only plausible explanation for a system like Sybil to be implemented. In the end it's just a choice between two dystopias: Be free but live and die in a constant fear and fight, or be a slave living peacefully in a fake happiness. The common factor between those two is that in neither situation people have any rights.

I fully agree with Shinta: I'm not happy with this movie. It did have some good action and technology. The action was most of the time annoyingly one-sided, but that's a very common sin in any fiction. What frustrates me the most is that nothing happened between Akane and Kogami. Akane has developed hugely as a character throughout the series, but it seems like she's destined to develop only as an inspector and detective. She should have done something for herself for a change. She hates Sybil so much that it shouldn't certainly stop her. We went through the second season without Kogami at all, and now when he finally was there, at the end of the movie the situation is exactly the same as at the beginning of it. Of course this is just my personal bias, wanting to see poor Akane (and poorer Kogami) experience something romantic. For those not caring for such stuff, this movie probably was much better.

[shinta|hikari]

It's not just that. It's ridiculous how Akane beat Kogami in melee combat (the quick draw part), and how Kogami got beaten up pretty much the entire movie. I was expecting him to own, not get owned.

[Kraco]

Yeah, I can't say I would disagree. Although I don't mind Kogami losing to the mercs. They were clearly superior skills wise and far more ruthless, and above all, there were many of them. Kogami did handle the government troops quite fluently, though. Hard to judge the Akane case. It's possible Kogami has been working as a sniper most of the time, so maybe he's rusty with his pistol. All in all considering he was fighting the whole army, if things got to the pistol level, he would be screwed in any case. So, I'll forgive him that isolated case. It's not like Akane wouldn't have trained, and the only thing she ever trained were melee and pistol.

But yeah, it's a story problem. His role ended up being a punching bag, which wasn't cool at all. At least he did save Akane once. That hopefully gave Akane a bit of doki doki.

[Buffalobiian]

I liked this movie.

What I didn't like so much that Kogami didn't really do all of this because he had a goal. He sort of just fell into the role while trying to save his ass from Sybil after he was no longer compatible with it.

Akane's growth and training just allowed her to beat Kogame once. I doubt she could have fought anywhere near as well as him against the merc. It makes sense for Akane to be better at the quick-draw as well. Those dominators take so long to verify you'd be dead if you were any slower.

[shinta|hikari]

You must be an M.

[Munsu]

Season 3, episode 1 is out.