Psycho-Pass

[Archangel]

Episode 3:

Nice red herring with the supervisor, turns out the one who looked the most guilty was just an average Joe in this dystopian world.

I still don't quite get how the dominator works though, how did it read the mental status of a Drone? And why did it deem this guy salvageable and not the one in the first episode?

[Inazuma]

You ask the good questions Archangel - but I'll leave it as "Sybil knows best but eventually will turn out as being the supervilain AI overlord"

[Buffalobiian]

HorribleSubs - Episode 03


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I don't know about the whole "reading the mind of a drone" thing.. if the criminal was conscious, then the gun could have been reading his murderous intent instead. Kogami then directed the death shot at the drone (and since it's an inanimate object, it doesn't trigger a re-evaluation).

He was pretty much out of commission though, I'm not really too sure how that theory would hold.

The easiest theory is to say that Sibyl is a super-analytic computer and isn't limited to only recognising data on human mental status.

[Kraco]

It takes much less technology to deduce a robot is out of control than to measure the mental state of a human. Besides, there's really no need to gauge a work robot like that. They are only machines. I bet the gun records everything that happened, so a video of the situation will reveal to anybody afterwards the financial losses incurred by the loss of two drones was highly justified. And that's all that happened: Slight financial losses, no human lives lost.

But at least with this we saw for sure that the gun is able to stop anything. It looked like some sort of plasma shot.

I called Akane a cookie-cutter character after the previous ep and this only strenghtens that view. But on the other hand, being like that looks very natural for a green officer with only school smarts and a friendly personality that wants to trust and help people. With the system and society like it is, I guess the only way to make the show more humane was to have a main character that would better belong to more civilized times and thus struggles against the current cold values. Although GitS worked perfectly despite the friendlier characters being more on the sidelines or even goofy insectoid robots.

[shinta|hikari]

I think the gun evaluated the guy but the shot was used against the machines. I agree with Buff's initial assessment.

[Archangel]

I think the gun evaluated the guy but the shot was used against the machines. I agree with Buff's initial assessment.

Then why did it change modes?

[shinta|hikari]

I was initially thinking that the crimes the guy committed has aggravated his assessment, but I remembered that they were judging people based on their mental state, so that is not possible. It seems like the gun did indeed judge the situation instead of a specific target. The gun did say that the threat was of a certain level before it changed modes.

[Kraco]

How the gun blew up the guy in the first ep and how it put a hole into the droid looked results wise very different. The case with a human target looked like it injected some super catalyst that blew the guy from inside out, but the robot clearly suffered damage similar to more ordinary means of destruction, like a high explosive shaped charge, for example. Even if it looked like a ball of plasma. That makes me believe the system only really rates humans and is more lax with non-human targets.

[shinta|hikari]

It is also possible that the gun analyzed the target and selected the best way to destroy it.

[Xelbair]

It is a 3rd mode - it detected non-organic threat and changed to specific mode.

[Buffalobiian]

HorribleSubs - Episode 04

[Kraco]

Quite bloody indentity theft cases. The traces of the first (?) incident have probably got cold already, but if Akane can track down the (original) person behind Spooky Boogie fast enough, there shouldn't be so much the dudes can do about not getting caught. Like was said, you can hardly move in that city without being recorded. Of course that assumes Akane won't be satisfied only meeting Spooky Boogie online. It's kind of hard to say yet whether she has the detective's instinct to want to dig deeper than the surface at this point. Although of course she might also have the instinct to realise something is different about the cat should they first meet online, provided that's even possible. The murdering thieves might be too smart to risk themselves needlessly.

In any case, internets is serious business... Serious enough to kill!

[shinta|hikari]

I really like how they are taking current trends to extremes in this futuristic fictional world. Internets becoming serious business is actually a very interesting theme, and the offline meeting with anonymity was a great twist on the concept.

[Buffalobiian]

I would hate to get into a popularity contest like that.. but then again I don't like having to work for popularity in the first place.(Being popular in itself isn't really a bad thing, but if that's all you were, then you'll get stuck in an identity crisis trying to maintain it.. which sucks).

The story's once again confirmed that a cloudy psycho-pass is simply an indicator that you are capable of thinking in a way that would let you carry out crimes. We can assume that the Sybil system only allows those who get good grades (smart) and are also of clear psycho-pass (pure) to work in positions of power. However since they're incapable of thinking like real criminals, they are reliant on putting Enforcers on a leash to do all the actual work.

Having to work with people you are theoretically supposed to never understand.. I like this puzzling job.

I'm hoping to see Akane's psycho-pass develop dangerously close to criminal levels in order to see how they'd start responding to that. I can foresee Kogami distancing himself from her for her own good, Akane trying to decide if she wants to know more about Kogami despite the risks, and perhaps something that makes Akane capable of understanding Kogami without going cloudy - explaining why Sybil says she's got an affinity to be an Inspector.

[shinta|hikari]

I hope there won't be any sort of revolution against the system at the end of this show. That is the usual ending for this kind of story. I am hoping for a status quo maintenance ending, but with things that will make you question everything and anything before such a conclusion.

[Kraco]

Yeah, I hope so as well. This sort of story would be better served with just an eye-opener ending, shedding of naivety, and simply realising what kind of a world she's living in. Plus recognizing that she doesn't need to understand everybody to be able to work with them.

[Ryllharu]

I'm hoping to see Akane's psycho-pass develop dangerously close to criminal levels in order to see how they'd start responding to that. I can foresee Kogami distancing himself from her for her own good, Akane trying to decide if she wants to know more about Kogami despite the risks, and perhaps something that makes Akane capable of understanding Kogami without going cloudy - explaining why Sybil says she's got an affinity to be an Inspector.

Except that's not her role and it was something they've already hinted at a few times in episodes 2 and 3.

Akane's special purpose in life is to humanize the Enforcers. Maybe even bring them back down to acceptable levels. She doesn't bring peace to the people they are tasked with bringing in or killing, she brings peace to those who police the city. All they ever see outside anymore is the worst society has to offer.

Kogami has already expressed a desire to be more of a detective than a hunting dog. He likes the brain work. He's not jealous of Masaoka's raw instincts. He admires them, but when he opened up to Akane a little bit, he admitted that he would like to not simply punish people by hunting them down, but track them down. He wants to be what she was allowed to be.

Masaoka is similar. He used to be one of those people, but seeing the dregs of society over and over broke him, and he became more and more of an Enforcer. He can do the brainwork, but as they've alluded to, he's seen it all, and became cynical and jaded. That's why his psycho-pass is absurdly high. I'd guess everyone he looks at reminds him of the horrible things others have done. Akane probably can't help him too much, but it might be too soon to say.

Gino just get angry at being trapped into working there without even really understanding why he is there in the first place, and we know nothing about Kunizuka yet.

Regarding this episode, I do hope Akane is the one who blows up the bad guys here herself. She can't truly understand her charges when she's never had to shoot someone herself.

[Buffalobiian]

Akane's special purpose in life is to humanize the Enforcers. Maybe even bring them back down to acceptable levels. She doesn't bring peace to the people they are tasked with bringing in or killing, she brings peace to those who police the city. All they ever see outside anymore is the worst society has to offer.

Kogami has already expressed a desire to be more of a detective than a hunting dog. He likes the brain work. He's not jealous of Masaoka's raw instincts. He admires them, but when he opened up to Akane a little bit, he admitted that he would like to not simply punish people by hunting them down, but track them down. He wants to be what she was allowed to be.

Will humanising them bring their psycho-pass down? If so, perhaps it's not really a good thing, since the reason the Enforcers are there is because their psycho-passes are high. They have the ability for criminal activity, but choose not to (or are forced not to) and instead work for the law.

[Ryllharu]

Gino made it clear. They either work for the law and are let out from time to time to hunt, or they are imprisoned for life in a care facility. It's not much of a choice.

Inspectors are just as capable as Enforcers are at locating people and using a Dominator. The difference is Akane doesn't want to view herself as a handler who leads a pack of dogs. She wants to believe they're co-workers. Using someone with a high psycho-pass to track people down just shortens the pursuit, but it isn't a panacea for finding criminals. That much has been made obvious in this episode. Everyone but Akane was useless in even getting them started, no one else used chat circles.

[Kraco]

Will humanising them bring their psycho-pass down? If so, perhaps it's not really a good thing, since the reason the Enforcers are there is because their psycho-passes are high. They have the ability for criminal activity, but choose not to (or are forced not to) and instead work for the law.

It's clear the psycho-pass rating does have a solid, undebatable basis, otherwise the system wouldn't have such a huge effect in the society. So, it should be impossible to "save" these people by bringing their rating down. After all, at least some of them were brought in before they had a chance to really do any crimes. However, Akane's role might be to make them feel themselves humans once again, not dogs, despite the high rating. A small thing in the bigger picture but it could be a big thing for them personally.

There are lots of latent criminals out there that haven't become real criminals because of their otherwise successful circumstances. It's not like a crime has much value in itself, it's more like a means to an end. Even the world in this show has lots of people like that wandering around, despite the scanners.