Psycho-Pass – 22 (Fin)

Akane doesn’t believe the law protects the people so much as the people protect the law. The law in the culmination of mankind’s amassed hopes and dreams for a better world to live in; without that collective input, the law—and society—cannot exist. When the will of the people is usurped by a system like Sybil, the momentum of human progress towards that ideal goal is arrested.

I said all Akane cared about was saving Kogami’s soul, but once it became clear after a heartbreaking sequence of events that she wasn’t going to be successful, I realized I was wrong about her becoming lost if she did fail, or that her desire to save Kogami was selfish. To her, no matter how vicious Makishima’s crimes were, on-the-spot execution is a crime, and she does everything in her power to prevent that crime. She just came up a bit short.

She wasn’t being selfish; she was being patient. She doesn’t like Sybil anymore than Kogami or Makishima, but she knows society as it is can’t live without it; not yet. So she’ll continue being one of their ideal poster girls. She does exactly what she’s done every time something horrible has happened in her life, whether it was her first traumatic experience as an inspector, losing Yuki, or losing Kogami, twice: she moves forward.

Sybil is disappointed that Akane couldn’t deliver Makishima to them, but that doesn’t mean they cut her loose. They “lower her ratings” a bit, but they’re sitll all outstandingly high. They want to someday reveal themselves to the world as they did to Akane, and when that happens, they want the people to accept them and be happy about it, and they think Akane and people like her will help pave the way to that. Faced with that grotesque hubris, sucking up her pride is actually quite selfless on Akane’s part.

Two months pass, and we’ve got some changes, all of which do a decent job of setting up the second season that arrived a couple days ago. That’s right, because of the timing of my watching of Psycho-Pass, I will not have to endure a two-plus year wait, but will jump right back into it. Ginoza is now an enforcer, Shion and Yayoi still seem to be having pretty okay sex, and Akane is now in charge of the division.

Perhaps most awesomely, the show ends on a note that may not bode well for Akane’s chances of exacting the change she wants, rather than the “evolution” Sybil seeks. That’s because the show ends just like it began: with a young and eager rookie inspector arriving on a tense crime scene, and the more seasoned inspector telling her they afford to go easy on them. Only this time Akane is the seasoned one and Shimotsuki Mika is the even younger rookie in question. That’s some fantastic symmetry there.

It may intrest you to know that even though we only saw her for a brief moment, I found myself identifying more with Mika, as I did with Akane when she was new. Considering how long this show has been around, I kind of feel like the second line that Mika represents, who can only repeat the deeds or mistakes of her forbears. Similarly, most of what I’ve prattled on about in these twenty-odd reviews may have already been said before in different forms, but better to have stumbled on this great piece of quasi-Utopian fiction late than never. Thanks for bearing with me. On to Psycho-Pass 2.

Psycho-Pass – 21

It’s Tiltrotor Time!

—I didn’t expect you to get here so soon.
—Don’t underestimate the MWPSB. You’re not the only one who can drive Makishima into a corner.

Akane may as well have said “Don’t underestimate me. Don’t think I’ll stand idly by and let you become a murderer. That is not going to happen on my watch.” All great things must end. This is the beginning of the end of Psycho-Pass, and it’s a good one.

The gap has narrowed between Kogami Shinya and Tsunemori Akane. Both have chosen their weapons for the endgame: Sybil—for all intents and purposes God—has bestowed upon Akane a righteous weapon with which to do His work: a non-lethal Paralyzer with the safety de-activated. It did so because Akane convinced them to give it to her, lest the MWPSB use “more primitive” weapons that could harm or kill their beloved Makishima.

But it also narrows because Sybil was right: telling her the truth motivated Akane like nothing else. Her colleagues notice it; Yayoi says she’s “the most constructive of all of them, but also the most depressed-looking.” Masaka sees that she’s bearing a great burden, even if he doesn’t know what it is. But Akane’s Crime Coefficient is a calm, breezy 24. She’s been chosen, and she’s putting aside everything to save Kogami.

This show was never really about the intense rivalry between Kogami and Makishima. That was a sideshow. Rather, it was about Akane coming into her own; it was about the tragedy of someone as brilliant and moral as Kogami becoming a latent criminal and being reduced to glorified hunting dog duty by Sybil, who now seeks the same person who put him in that spot. And it’s about Akane drawing a line. Kogami may be a latent criminal, but he Will Not Be A Murderer. Her goal is as selfish as Kogami’s, if not moreso.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Akane to death. She’s one of the best anime characters I’ve ever come across, and her journey has been engrossing and epic. But let’s not forget a couple things: One, at the moment she’s still a servant of Sybil, which may purport to be beyond such concepts as good and evil, but by any measure, the society it maintains is by no means ideal.

That means she’s willing to capture Makishima alive and give him to Sybil in exchange for Kogami’s life. But the more efficient way to deal with the Makishima situation is, indeed, taking him out. He would say himself, nothing is eternal. He lived life according to his own will; that is probably enough for him. He doesn’t want to join Sybil. And yet if he did, and became part of the brain trust, he could do far more harm for a far longer time.

What I’m getting at is, it’s probably better for society for Makishima to die, not to be turned over to Sybil. That’s an assumption, of course, but let’s not pretend Akane is any purer than Kogami in this situation. They’re both driven by emotions. Whatever you want to call it: respect, admiration, longing, love—Akane feels it for Kogami. He’s all that matters right now. If she loses him, either by murdering or getting himself killed, I can’t imagine how she wouldn’t end up lost.

But as much of a super-sleuthing dynamo as Akane has been these last couple episodes, she still makes a critical miscalculation, rushing to the control room to take control of the emergency power, assuming that’s where Makishima will go. But he’s not there. He’s where Masaoka Tomomi and Ginoza Nobuchika are. Akane is too late in warning them, and Masaoka ends up the first casualty in this final battle.

It is, as befits Masaoka, an excellent death. When Ginoza is crushed by a booby trap, Makishima emerges, and Masaoka fights him to defend his maimed son. When he has him in a lock, Makishima, wily bastard that he is, lights a stick of dynamite and tosses it at Ginoza. Gino orders his dad not to let go of the culprit, but Masaoka can’t fight back his love any more than Akane can. He grabs the stick, which blows up before he can toss it away. We’ll miss you, Pops.

Then Kogami arrives, bandys words with Makishima for a while. He can’t do much with the revolver in the dark labyrinth where fate has chosen their fight to take place, and it comes down to something even more primative than guns: blades. Akane still has her trump card, but can she make it in time?

 

This shit’s heavy, man.

Psycho-Pass – 20

Note: I had planned to finish the first season of Psycho-Pass before the new one arrived, but I didn’t want to rush things…and procrastinated! -H.

Psycho-Pass has gotten noticeably talkier in the episodes leading up to what I can only imagine to be a mind-blowing finale, but when the talking being done (and the talkers themselves) are this compelling, I can hardly complain. This time, Akane’s own Dominator speaks to her. As I suspected, she’s firmly on Sybil’s radar, and they’ve decided to tell her the truth, in hopes it will motivated her to help them acquire Makishima.

Action-wise, there’s not much to speak of here, at least early on: lots of standing around listening to the voice of Sybil, as Akane continually calls bullshit. We also have Akane having conversations in her head with Kagari, Makishima, and Yuki. By scanning her mind, Sybil believes Akane shares their desire to maintain social harmony, and the belief that society as it is would break down if Sybil were brought down.

These conversations serve to reinforce the kernal of the idea that first took root in her mind the first day she joined the MWPSB: that the system is not absolute as she thought. It is not perfect, which means it cannot claim absolute authority over society. Sybil basically expels what little regard she still had for it by revealing their true nature as puppet-masters. But because they can still decide whether Kogami lives or dies, she makes a deal with them.

Once that deal is made—with her pointing a Dominator at her chest and telling Sybil to make its damn move—it gave me every confidence that she’d hold up her end of the bargain, but it probably isn’t wise to take Sybil at its word. Her flashbacks also reminded us that unlike most of the population, her immense natural talent in many disciplines (or luck with tests as she calls it) gave her a choice they didn’t have.

In effect, that choice from a variety of futures afforded her a measure of free will. Sybil indeed cleared up a great many things for Akane, and it’s like a fire was lit beneath her. At the home of the murdered agricultural official, she breaks out her super-sleuth skills, channeling Kogami to Ginoza as she talks. Kogami is already at the granary where Makishima intents to poison the crops.

Akane showed us a lot this week, like just how much she’s grown and matured. I love how disappointed and disgusted she gets the more Sybil tells her. But it also confirmed to us that she’s far from the cold and emotionless automaton she feared she was, or that her clear hue would seem to indicate. Why else would she agree to giving Sybil exactly what they want, essentially serving as their pawn, for Kogami’s sake?

Psycho-Pass – 19

Getting back to basics, Kogami practices loading and unloading a revolver, reminding me a bit of Travis Bickle. But he still isn’t sure of Makishima’s next move, so he borrows Masaoka’s sportbike and tears off, Tetsuo-thru-Neo-Tokyo style, to the home of his mentor, Professor Saiga.

This is an exceedingly quiet episode of Psycho-Pass, even quieter than the last, which was dominated by Kogami’s goodbyes, but it’s also an episode in which the full extent of what Sybil has done to the country comes to light for us he audience. And even though nobody knows what Makishima knows about Sybil, it’s almost as if they sense it—in their guts and in their hearts.

It didn’t occur to me, for instance, that agriculture is completely automated, or that history is no longer studied, but that’s simply because the show hadn’t really turned its gaze on those aspects of its world until now. This is a truly FUBAR world, for all its aesthetic similarities to our own. Most of the population has accepted it, while intellectuals like Saiga retreat to the forest, unable to harm anyone with knowledge.

Of course, being intellectual means you can find ways around the system of control that essentially imprisons everyone else. Take the chat rooms Saiga participates in, hosted by offshore servers. Kogami’s visit proves more fruitful than picking the professor’s brain and saying another goodbye: when presented with the thread “How To Bring Down Sybil In Five Days”, the chat room participants have at it, providing a wealth of diverse ideas.

At first Kogami just sees them as a bunch of nerdy jokes, but as Ginoza says to his worried therapist about maintaining his hue, it’s about how you look at things. So Kogami picks the “joke” he thinks is “funniest” – meaning the plot most likely to fit Makishima’s cynical style.

That is to cause a food shortage that will force the government to interact with the outside world. Once the gates are cracked, people and knowledge will spread like antibodies, nullifying the entire crime coefficient system, and dealing a critical blow to the superiority the powers that be value so highly.

Meanwhile, Akane deals with the fact that Kogami is gone, and that if they ever meet again her orders are to kill him. She deals with it initially with a stiff upper lip, refusing to be depressed. When Shion gets her to open up, Akane voices her worry that because of her freakishly pure Hue means she’s cold and unfeeling.

For a moment there, I thought something was going to happen with those two, which would have been an interesting development considerin how relatively asexual Akane has been portrayed thus far. Her talk with Yayoi in the cafeteria is far less charged, but just as devastating in that they continue to detail everything wrong with the world they live in, that Akane is only just starting to realize.

Psycho-Pass – 18

Another nice father-son moment

Kogami Shinya is a sharp felow. Since the day he met Makishima Shougo, and resolved to judge him, he’d probably suspected he wouldn’t be able to get the job done if he remained a detective under the law. The bizarre actions and motivations of Chief Kasei this week serve as the final nail in the coffin for his career as a detective, a career he ends on his own terms. It’s a heartbreaking end, in particular for his colleague and friend Akane, but it was inevitable.

“Yes, prove your usefulness by killing your ex-partner. LET THE HATE FLOOOW.”

But first, Kasei, or rather, the Sybil “brain trust”. Faced with the prospect of further challenges to their perfect little system at the hands of Makishima makes them bolder and less concerned with decorum. I mean, trying to pass off the plane crash as an opportunity for Ginoza to sweep his failures under the rug is one thing, but doing it after he and others just saw a body being carted away from a plane that only had Makishima and drones aboard – pretty brazen!

In case there was any doubt, yes: Tsunemori Akane is the shit.

Things get worse when Ginoza, fully aware Kogami is his best detective—better than he’ll ever be—tries to bend the rules a little and get Kogami on Division 2, searching for Kagari. It backfires, and this time Kasei puts her hand on Ginoza’s Dominator as it’s being aimed at Kogami, transforming it into a Lethal Eliminator. Ginoza hesitates pulling the trigger long enough for a particularly gutsy Akane to shoot Kogami instead with the Paralyzer (for the second time sinc they’ve met; both times to save him).

Because she was technically performing her duties, and said she believed Ginoza’s Dom was “malfunctioning”, she gets off without punishment, but there can be no doubt that Sybil will be looking very carefully at Akane from this point on, illustrated by naught but Kasei’s cold cyborg stare. There can be no overstating how masterfully this show stages incredibly tense situations.

That tension is followed up by some of the best character work yet in a show that’s brimming with it to begin with, as Kogami prepares to go off the reservation. Karanomori lets him take the last remaining helmet, telling him he has six days before Sybil countermeasures render it useless. She knows he may not come back, too, so wonders aloud if she should ever have slept with him. Then Masaoka pours him some of the good stuff and gives him the key to a safe house he used back in the day.

As this is all going on, Akane is still asleep by his hospital bed. Akane, who made him promise to keep being a detective; not to think of himself as merely a hunting dog to do her dirty work. What Akane didn’t realize is that, if they could talk, a dog would promise anything to you out of loyalty, regardless of whether they could keep it.

Unlike that hypothetical talking, promising dog, Kogami has the benefit of knowing he’s making a mistake out of a largely selfish determination to pursue Makishima and stop the killing. But he’ll do it anyway, because he won’t be able to live with himself anyway if he lets Makishima get away. Tears well up in Akane’s eyes as she reads his farewell letter, but as Masaoka said, far better to have written that then left without a word.

What’s her next move?

Kogami has six days, and then he’s a big blinking light on Sybil’s Big Board. I recall Akane saying stopping Makishima is more important than her remaining an inspector. Would she become a latent criminal to save her beloved colleague from himself, or will she let him do what he feels he needs to do, and hope they won’t cross paths. She won’t be able to just use the Paralyzer a third time.

 

Psycho-Pass – 17

The Cybil System: “It’s not something worth putting your life on the line to protect,” Makishima warns Kogami by phone. As a member of society not under such an invasive system, I knew this intrinsically, and that was before I knew what Sybil actually was. Now that I know the horrifying truth, my revulsion has been galvanized. Now it’s just a question of whether the “good guys” (Tsunemori, Akane & Co.) will catch on.

Wait…there’s a Division TWO?

After killing Guseong and Kagari, a repaired Chief Kasei propagates the fiction that the latter ran away, and pins the blame on Ginoza. But even if Ginoza himself followed Kagari down to the Sybil Core and saw what he saw, he’d have been eliminated too, and the circumstances covered up as neatly as Kagari’s. For their part, the rest of Division One doesn’t think Kagari ran, but that something happened to him. They just have nothing to go on.

Kasei tells Ginoza that Makishima is now out of the MWPSB’s authority, and tells him he will be disposed of as a “research specimen”, if he hasn’t already. This is some truly devious shit, because even at the time, when I had no clue Kasei was part of Sybil, this just felt like the higher-ups doing the dirty work that needed to be done to deal with those who fell through the system’s cracks: the criminally asymptomatic. You know, just good old-fashioned corruption at the top.

I had no frelling idea what was really going on…not until Kasei shows up in Makishima’s hospital berth and talks to him like an old friend, because he’s actually Touma Kouzaburou, that teacher who made body part sculpture and disappeared. This is when shit starts being revealed even Makishima couldn’t have fathomed, for all his literary efficacy. Touma is one of 247 disembodied human brains working as one that form the network that is the Sybil System. Shudder.

Even more incredible, those brains were all selected for those with “irregular personalities” that don’t fit mankind’s “conventional standards” for emotion. In other words, Japan is being ruled by 247 psychopaths. As Makishima says, that is one hell of a joke, and he breaks out a nifty Swift reference about the brains of those who disagreed being halfed to alleviate conflict. But the more Touma talks about it, the more he sounds like he’s just doing it to Play God.

Cruelty, megalomania, lack of remorse: they’re thinks Makishima has in spades, and he’s immune to cymatic scans too, which is why Touma uses this opportunity to welcome him into the fold. But while both Touma and Makishima are criminally insane, their goals are completely different. In short: Makishima isn’t interested in becoming Umpire Number 248. He doesn’t want to officiate the game; he wants to keep playing it.

That’s when he enters Awesome Makishima Mode. Taking advantage of the fact that is Touma is alone and vulnerable, ambushes the cyborg, breaking its limbs one at a time, and making sure Touma knows why Makishima’s not joining their little zombie buffet. When last we see Makishima, he’s looking out on the city from a crippled aircraft, but I’m going to wager he somehow survives the crash.

Just in case, Makishima contacts Kogami, right after Kogami espies a vision of Makishima in his office. As Kogami says to Tsunemori, every battle a detective faces has been lost, in that victims have already been created by a crime. That’s true in that the entire country is presently being victimized by Sybil, but it’s false in that they don’t come upon all crimes after the fact. The crime is still in progress. They can stop it, prevent more victims from suffering, and save themselves while they’re at it.

Psycho-Pass – 16

Those don’t work, remember?

As they approach the Nona Tower and a gauntlet of untold helmeted baddies, Kogami asks Kagari if he’s scared. This question interrupts Kagari’s monologue about becoming an enforcer not to protect the people who took everything away from him when he was five, but simply because being a hunting dog out in the world is preferable to hell as a lab rat in a facility. That is all. Well, that, and he has friends in the CID who he’s loyal to.

Very Akira-esque machinery

That loyalty is tested when he descends alone below Nona’s four official basements and into a cathedral-like anechoic chamber where Choe Guseong is attempting to break into Sybil’s core. Makishima ascends to the tower’s top floor as a decoy for Kogami and Tsunemori. They go after Makishima despite knowing he’s a decoy, because their primary directive is to capture him alive. Well, that, and they both have a score to settle with the bastard.

The city vistas on this show are so sweet

All three detectives are slowed down by helmet guys armed with dangerous tools, but Kagari and Kogami show they’re not afraid of a little hand-to-hand combat and manage to charge through; Akane gets hit in the leg by a nailgun and has to hang back, and we finally come to the scene that starts the very first episode, when I had no idea what was going on. Well, now I know: we were getting a tantalizing glimpse of Makishima’s cornering and ultimate capture.

We had no idea what had led up to that showdown high atop the Nona Tower, or the costs exacted to allow it to happen. Nor did we know how things would go down after literary pleasantries were exchanged (apparently one parries (Blaise) Pascal with (Jose) Ortega (y Gasset). I tellya, sometimes Psycho-Pass is like a Holiday Inn: just staying there makes you feel smarter, or that you should have paid more attention in that Civilization and Its Discontents elective.

Putting aside academic discussion on the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual, Kogami and Makishima have one heck of a physical fight, and as the helmet-men had softened him up—maybe even if they hadn’t—Makishima seems to have the slight upper hand, but in his desire to punish Kogami for forcing him to end things less entertainingly than he hoped, he neglects the possibility Kogami isn’t alone, and gets stoved in the head, ironically, by one of those damnable helmets.

POW!

Kogami tells Akane to kill him. Personal vendettas aside, Akane probably should kill him. But she lowers the helmet and pulls out the cuffs; returns to being an inspector of the MWPSB, and arrests Makishima in the name of the law. It’s another great victory marred by great emotional and practical cost. Meanwhile, far below them, Kagari finally finds Choe, who is finally in. Both of them look at something bright we don’t get to see, like the contents of the suitcase in Pulp Fiction.

Then both Choe and Kagari are swiftly eliminated by Chief Kasei, who AAAAUGH SHE’S A CYBORG! Honestly that’s not that surprising, as there was a noticable coldness to all previous scenes with her. And if he wasn’t already, let there be no doubt any longer that Makishima is hardly the greatest adversary in the show. Hell, he isn’t even the greatest adversary in the building! Kogami was ready and willing to kill him; he just wasn’t able.

That Akane was able to hold back murderous rage at her friend’s murderer just may have given both her and Kogami a fighting chance against the true enemy, if they ever find themselves on its bad side…if they aren’t already. Until then, this episode was a thrilling tour-de-force from start to brilliant finish, one of the best of the show yet. Still kicking myself for not watching this much sooner.

Psycho-Pass – 15

…What Ron said.

Once the mass-produced helmets are distributed to larger numbers of would-be criminals, they begin roving the city in bands, brutalizing the rest of the populace, who are believed as vulnerable and ineffectual to resist as those who were born in a totally sterile environment are more susceptible to pathogens. Once area stress levels rise to a sufficient point, something happens: the people start fighting back. The violence spreads mercilessly like a virus.

Professional and social media explodes with news, rumors, and increasing panic, as the first half of the episode simply lays it all out for us, with no particular narrator or emcee. The MWSPB is caught completely off-guard, and because it was thought the Sybil system would eliminate the possibility of mass riots, they have no resourcs to deal with the chaos tearing the city apart. It’s a pitiable scene in the briefing room, with a grand total of 17 CID inspectors and enforcers mustered and tasked with taking on the riots by themselves with what few effective weapons they have.

I can’t recall a police department being in such dire straits, and it’s frankly exhilarating. Their response to the vast unrest in the city seems almost comically inadequate, but this is what happens to a society that puts all its eggs in one flawed basket. Makishima appears to have found the man who will give him the best show, a master hacker who determines the Ministry’s Nona Tower is the probable location of the Sybil system. What’s so diabolical is that the riots were only meant as a decoy to draw all human MWSPB assets away from HQ, leaving it ripe for attack by some particularly tough-looking helmet guys.

When…heck, if this enormous mess gets resolved, the Ministry, the city, and possiblythe country will owe a great debt to Kogami Shinya and Tsunemori Akane. Among the paltry ranks of the CID, they were the only ones to identify the riots for what they were and had the initiative to race back to the Nona Tower. Even then, as I said, the team raiding Nona look like tough customers, so simply identifying the enemy’s true intent isn’t enough. They have to stop them somehow.

Psycho-Pass – 14

It’s probably no coincidence that the episode after the chief confirms that Makishima is rare but not unique in his ability to confound Sybil, brutal crimes start cropping up that are committed by those with similarly clear Psycho-Passes. Unlike Makishima, they’re wearing helmets, so it much be a question of technology and not genetics.

It’s later determined that the helmets run scans of everyone and copies the lowest Crime Coefficient among them, so as far as any technology with AI is concerned, the one wearing the helmet is a good law-abiding citizen above suspicion, even as he’s shoving scissors or pens into pharmacists or stripping and beating a woman to death with a hammer. The system is being well and truly gamed.

It’s not surprising there’s extant tech that can, if not flummox Sybil, at least deceive her by copying a clear Psycho-Pass. What is truly chilling is how all of the witnesses to these horrible crimes stand there and do nothing, as the helmet-wearer’s associates film it all. Chilling because years of depending on Sybil to maintain peace has rendered the average person incapable of even fathoming what a murder is, let alone do anything to stop it.

While the helmets are yet another tool Makishima uses to enable would-be murderers and thugs, the effect of the crimes being committed on the city are far more than the sum of their parts. In addition to raising the area stress levels, which could render entire neighborhoods latent criminals if kept up, it is a means of planting public doubt in the system; a crack in the dam that could lead to a deluge.

Of course, that’s precisely what Makishima wants: not just to expose Sybil as a sham, but to demonstrate that humanity has been torn from its natural state into a withering limbo of boredom; boredom he’ll cure. And if anyone manages to catch on and try to stop him, so much the better. The status quo is his bane.

Kogami pulls off some nifty detective work here, studying the recorded scans of the crime to determine the Psycho-Pass was coming from someone other than the culprit, and narrowing their search by identifying someone with the motive to harm the victim. Akane’s role here is small, but amusingly consists of literally staying away from the action, lest the perp copy her Psycho-Pass and render the Dominators inert. In this case, having Enforcers who could successfully target and administer justice to “themselves” proved essential.

Psycho-Pass – 13

After reading Ginoza’s report about Akane’s Dominator malfunctioning, the Bureau Chief has a simple response: as far as the public is concerned, that malfunction never occurred. After Ginoza vouches for Akane’s aptitude, the Chief has little choice but to let her pupil in on what the next level up knows.

Specifically, roughly one out of two million people are like Makishima: “criminally asymptomatic” and immune to the Dominators’—to Sybil’s—judgement. That is not a public fact, nor is it ever meant to be, since the Sybil system must be perfect in order to justify society’s acceptance of it.

That perfection is, of course, a farce, and so various means are employed to come as close to perfection as possible, including having humans rather than drones handle Dominators. That requires enforcers who aren’t bound by a clear Psycho-Pass, as well as inspectors who risk theirs by being so close to crime.

It also requires a rather inelegant protocol in the event an asymptomatic criminal is found. Makishima is not the first; the last one, Touma, is officially “missing”, but let’s not kid ourselves: he was quietly eliminated and swept under the rug, and the chief has the same fate in store for Makishima. All Ginoza has to do is fetch him for her.

I don’t think I have to point out the irony of a system of supposed moral perfection requiring morally suspect methods to survive, or the real-world parallels. Suffice it to say, Sybil is a lie, and closer people are to its true workings, the less trustworthy they become. But even so, for now, Ginoza, Kogami, and even Akane are going to stay the course.

I was worried that Akane’s experience would turn her into an enforcer, but she recovers remarkably quickly. Not only that, she’s all gung-ho about undergoing a “memory scoop”, essentially reliving Yuki’s murder so they can process an image of Makishima’s face, because her memory is the only lead they have.

She comes right out and says she’s willing to become an enforcer if it means nabbing Makishima. However, her Psycho-Pass never reaches the danger zone during the scoop and recovers incredibly quickly afterwards. At this point, and with all the now-realized doubts about Sybil swirling in my head, I was wondering if Akane is “under”-symptomatic; if Sybil has an incomplete picture of her soul.

That could, in theory, eventually make her a target of Sybil’s minders, just as Makishima is. After all, when pursuing perfection, why only go after the asymptomatic? Why not go after the weak readings next? Still, for now, Akane’s still within the dark about all that, and still an Inspector, and her primary goal is to capture Makishima. The photo extracted from her memory breaks the case wide open.

Wanting to know more about Akane from someone who spend more time with her, Ginoza asks Masaoka, and in their conversation it’s revealed that they’re father and son, which…makes sense, actually. I can’t recall any past dialogue that would contradict it. It also explains why the dude is always so uptight: he shares office space with the living embodiment of his potential future.

Psycho-Pass – 12

Complete change of gears this week, as we enter Backstory Mode, starting with how Kunizuka Yayoi joined the MWPSB as an Enforcer. A passionate guitarist, listening to “Non-Sybil-authorized” bands clouded her hue to the extent she ended up in a chilling rehabilitation facility.

When reports of “antisocial organizations” spring up in her neighborhood, she’s visited by Ginoza and Kogami, who is still an Inspector. Brass tacks: Sybil says Yayoi has the aptitude to be an enforcer, they’re willing to give her a chance, and there aren’t a lot of other options for leaving rehab.

Kogami breaks the ice by giving her some long sought-after guitar strings, and Yayoi agrees to assist in the investigation, eventually finding herself in the very club she used to frequent when she was free, listening to the band that clouded her hue to begin with, fronted by the lovely Rina.

Yayoi admired and maybe was also a little into Rina, for she represented a rebellious nature she’d never been able to fully replicate, even if she eventually became a latent criminal. But when she learns Rina is an actual rebel, fighting against Sybil with Molotovs along with music, she seems to turn off her heart and turn on her head.

Believing what Rina is doing is wrong, she pulls the Dominator Kogami gave her and tries to shoot her. The trigger is locked (even Kogami wouldn’t give a non-enforcer latent a live Dominator), but Yayoi passes the test: when the chips were down, she chose the side of law and order, horribly flawed (and unforgiving to her as it is).

Yayoi’s story is pretty simple, but it doesn’t need to be that complicated: even among those wronged or harmed by Cybil’s tyranny may prefer it to violence and chaos. In this regard, Yayoi is an obedient student of her time. She’ll carve out the place she can in this messed-up world, just as Kogami and Sasayama seem to have done (Sasayama is, indeed, kind of a dick, BTW).

They may not be true believers, but they’re willing to stand behind the safety and comfort Sybil provides, because it gives them power. In a world where things are constantly being taken away from you, the opportunity to be on the side of the takers is hard to pass up. Still, it’s encouraging to see there are people out there fighting against Sybil.

Psycho-Pass – 11

Last week, when Kogami finally made contact with the rest of the team it felt like a victory hard-one by having to balance Yuki’s life with the need to play the game set out for him. All that was left was for him to stay out of Senguji’s sight and wait for the cavalry to move in and destroy the cyborg while Makishima, again let down by one of his “clients”, simply retreats. How wrong I was.

Sensing the MWPSB will be on to him soon if they aren’t already (a suspicious proven right when Akane finds him), Makishima accelerates his plans in the most basic way possible: by exploiting the known weaknesses of his adversaries. Kogami takes out Senguji, but gets shot in the process, and so is helpless to stop Makishima from snatching up Yuki right in front of him.

Kogami directs Akane to where Makishima was headed, but when she arrives at a catwalk where he’s seemingly waiting for her, she too is utterly powerless to stop him, but not because she’s shot, or because he has a hostage. Akane’s weakness is that she relies on the Cybil system to activate the Dominator, and Makishima’s Psycho-Pass is pure white, despite his obvious criminal conduct.

I’ve been lambasting Cybil to kingdom come for the whole run of the show, as any free will-loving human being would, but I thought that at least it kind of worked on some level, i.e. is able to identify criminals through cymatic scans. Turns out it can’t’ even do that, at least with Makishima. Sure, he’s just one man, but who’s to say he’s unique in the world? Even if he isn’t, he’s a game-changer.

Makishima in his sporting generosity tosses Akane Senguji’s rifle and gives her an ultimatum: if she doesn’t kill him with that gun, he’s going to slit Yuki’s throat right in front of her. It’s basically the worst choice you can give someone who’s life will be ruined forever the moment she pulls that trigger. But I guess that’s his point: Makishima will have value for him if she puts in an effort.

But she doesn’t. She can’t. She holds the rifle with one hand, wobbles and shakes, closes her eyes, and aims nowhere in particular. She’s lucky she didn’t accidentally shoot herself, but poor Yuki isn’t so lucky. The round misses her, but Sakishima’s razor doesn’t: punishment for his disappointment. He then disappears, leaving Akane to fester in her grief.

We’ll see how Akane’s hue fares following the most traumatic experience of her life by far: not only watching her friend be murdered before her eyes, but being unable to save her despite possessing the exact tools to do so. Makishima is convinced his criminal coefficient is nil because criminality cannot be measured by the Cybil system. His will to observe humanity “in all its splendor” is impervious to technology; impervious to judgement.

Right now Makishima is just getting his jollies testing how far he can go with that goal, and how many others like him he can find. Akane seems like a long shot, but he’s really excited about Kogami, who after all didn’t lift a finger to stop Makishima because he was bleeding out, not because he lacked the will.

Here’s where I have to ask, isn’t there some kind of entity in government that is above Cybil, so that society can be defended against those like Makishima? It doesn’t seem like there is, so I guess it’s up to the MWPSB. They certainly have their work cut out for them. As for this show, it’s found a new level of cruelty.

Psycho-Pass – 10

Makishima is one magnificently manipulative bastard. Initially, his newest mark Senguji Toyohisa believes Makishima merely procured fresh, intelligent prey for him to hunt the old-fashioned way with a twist: a big shotgun and robo-foxhounds. But Senguji is only a formidable but ultimately expendable means to test Kogami, and while he’s not quite out of the frying pan by episode’s end, he’s passed that test so far.

Makishima’s scheme seems ridiculously convoluted at first: kidnapping Akane’s friend Funahara Yuki, using her phone to text Akane about something, assuming Kogami would accompany her to the obvious trap where he’d go in and enter Senguji’s hunt. But as Kogami puts it all together, it’s all very elegant an ingenious. Senguji typically hunts for his own amusement, but this time someone’s “watching from the bleachers,” and not actually rooting for him, but Kogami.

As I said, Kogami doesn’t disappoint, treading carefully, noticing when things aren’t right and knowing when to run and hide. Poor Yuki doesn’t know what the hell is going on, and would’ve gotten killed a dozen times over, but she’s not a cop. When Kogami realizes he’s the target, he also realizes Yuki’s presence there has a purpose he hadn’t considered.

That’s when instead of leaving her behind, he tells her to strip, and ends up finding the transponder antenna hidden in her bra which she didn’t even know was there. This was ultimately a very weird but clever extended application of fanservice, as there turned out to be a logical reason for Yuki to be running around in her nightie, but required significant intelligence—and grace under pressure—to divine.

When Kogami treads too far into the abandoned complex, Akane loses all contact with him, and when Gino arrives with backup, he’s quick to suggest Kogami may have set this whole thing up to run away, and Akane was naive enough to trust him. When he decides they’re going in with Dominators, essentially leaving it up to Cybil whether he should live or die, then telling Akane she only has herself to blame for it, Gino’s far enough across the line to piss of Masaoka, who grabs him and throws him against a crate.

Before things get right out of hand, the question of whether Kogami ran away is settled when he makes contact with the transponder. He and Yuki aren’t out of there yet, but Makishima has intentionally given him a fighting chance, however small, and he’s going to take it. And while I sorely hope Yuki gets out of this okay, if she doesn’t, that can’t possibly bode well for Akane’s Psycho-Pass.