Psycho-Pass 14-15
Who says bookworms suck at fighting?
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You’re probably tensing in anticipation for my excuse for being late. You know it’s coming! You probably don’t care either! But that doesn’t stop me from trying to explain myself. I don’t want you guys to think I’m just plain lazy, after all. For one thing, my birthday celebration ate up two entire days. As I tried to catch up with work in the subsequent days I must have gotten a little too ambitious, so I fainted during one of my labs. That knocked me out for another 2 days (literally and figuratively). But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I have returned to tackle my favourite series of the season. I didn’t hit my head hard enough to stop blogging, so it seems. |
I’m a bit blown away by how fast things have escalated in just 2 episodes. This new arc has almost put Sibyl offline in a mere 40 minutes of calculated planning and feverish rioting. In retrospect, it’s probably better they cooled down with that Yayoi episode after Akane’s first showdown with Makishima, because things have moved on to a whole different playing field of craziness. I’m mostly enjoying what’s going on now, although I do find a lot of it requires some conscious efforts to not question loopholes or some very strange occurrences.
The introduction of the helmets is the start of a huge, huge change. Kougami says just as much himself. This isn’t another crime for them to solve and then move away from, but the beginning of a movement that has already begun to permanently change the worldviews of a large group of civilians. Losing trust in Sibyl is very dangerous when it is the main system keeping everyone safe and sound. Trusting Sibyl with everything was never a bad decision because it always worked out, and humans still had a good amount of choice input for things like whether or not to pull the Dominator trigger and such. Moral issues aside – Sibyl got the job done so there was never much reason to complain. These helmets have started to erode that trust by breaking the system.
…and today’s weather will be sunny with some light showers of MOLOTOV COCKTAILS
Right now, most of the hatred seems to be at the men wearing the helmets, but I can easily see this turning into a hatred towards Sibyl later on. For now, all they can do is whack them with baseball bats. As exciting as these riots were to watch, I can’t help but think that the extent of the damage was unrealistic. Not because humans are “better than that” but because the police should still be able to suppress them. Just because Sibyl can’t label them as criminals doesn’t mean the police won’t realize that a dude with a helmet on beating up a chick is a bad guy. It’s kind of obvious who they should be stopping even without a Dominator spitting numbers at them.
Okay, so maybe you could argue Sibyl drastically changed everyone’s mindset so that they can’t even move their big toe without approval from Sibyl. But how could that happen when Sibyl hasn’t even been around for that long? Masaoka actually remembers a time without Sibyl – meaning it’s barely been around for more than a generation. You’re telling me they found a new toy and completely eliminated guns, but you can still buy older laptop and cellphone models when new ones come out? It’s really weird that they think Sibyl not functioning equates to being totally powerless. I know Urobuchi Gen is trying to say that this society relies too strongly on Sibyl to judge what constitutes as a crime and then what actions are acceptable to take in response to one, but this just makes everyone look dumb. Even if guns are too violent, I’m surprised they had practically no other weapons at their disposal except a handful of grenades.
It’s baffling that the police sucks so much at soothing the angry mobs before they get out of hand, I’m willing to undergo a certain level of suspension of belief to enjoy the show. Psycho-Pass falls within that acceptable threshold for me just because it is so deeply compelling. You tend to stop complaining when you get to watch the entire city turned upside down and an exponential increase in screentime dedicated to faces getting smashed in with blunt objects. At least, I do.
The way Makishima is exploiting Sibyl is just so deliciously evil, as if he cant help but rub salt in the wound as well. The idea really starts getting drilled in when the first helmet-wearer goes all hammer-time on this poor girl in the middle of a busy street. Not only does everyone not know how to react, but a drone actually ignores the murderer and suggest that she should go to therapy. If this isn’t victim-blaming, I don’t know what is.
As a side note, this scene was particularly interesting to me because it’s a bit of a textbook case of the bystander effect, which all psych profs drill into your head in first year classes. I think the idea was to say these people really don’t know how to deal with criminals that aren’t tagged by Sibyl. No one reacted because they figured if something was really wrong, they would have a high criminal coefficient, so the anomaly totally froze them in their tracks. However, I would go as far as to say such a thing happening in our society could also happen.
Take the classic case of Kitty Genovese – a woman who stabbed to death in New York while her neighbours ignored her pleas for help. Apparently, some people even peeked out their window, but did nothing. This is the bystander effect – when people fail to react to a crisis because there are other people present. The larger the crowd, the less likely it is that someone will help you. People fail to help this poor girl in Psycho-Pass because of several reasons.
Doing some Home Improvement on her face
The first is that everyone in the crowd looks at each other to decide how to react. They will not decide it is a crisis until other people also start to react in a way that says something is off. If no one screams, everyone will just shuffle anxiously and wait to see who panics first. If one person screams, then everyone else will likely start wailing even if they can’t see what’s happening. As Akane says, people don’t believe (or want to) that they’ll ever witness a horrible crime, so they are shocked when it actually happens.
Secondly, even if they do get far enough to realize something is off, the thought “I don’t have to help because surely someone else will” often freezes people in the spot. This diffusion of responsibility can be overcome if the victim points at a specific person and asks for help. So, if you’re ever being attacked, you need to point at a specific person and tell them exactly how to help you. Why be specific? Because the third reason for people falling prey to the bystander effect is even once they realize something is wrong and that they should do something, they often have no idea what to do. How do you stop a psycho clubbing a girl with a hammer? Just running in might get you killed. Calling the cops won’t really help either since she’ll be dead in just a few, well-placed swings.
The only difference I see from this scene in Psycho-Pass to real life is that no one looked scared. At least some people should have looked at least mildly alarmed and started to back up or something, because this crime isn’t at all ambiguous. It’s not like deliberating over whether a man slouched in the subway is asleep or dead, because this guy is obviously going to town on this chick’s face and SHE DON’T LIKE IT. Otherwise, this actually doesn’t say a lot about how Sibyl has changed society to me since despite the lack of ambiguity, it is fairly consistent with crimes that elicit the bystander effect shown in case studies and psychology articles. Of course, not all situations end up with everyone becoming statues and diffusing the responsibility. This is just a thing that can happen, despite how everyone assumes they would be able to act competently in an emergency. I like to imagine that I’d help someone in danger, but….would I actually? Would I be too scared to do anything? It’s hard to say.
Although no one reacts to the first public murder, the civilians are quick to take on vigilante roles when things become undeniably bad. I loved when the honour students suddenly went batshit on their captors and got this crazy glint in their eyes. Once everyone gets over their initial fear of making choices about what crimes are punishable or not, they take it to the extreme end and start killing everyone they think is a possible helmet-wearer. They have no discretion at all. It’s likely a lot of their actions are just following the mob mentality of wanting to join in, but at least someone had the initial thought that being a civilian hammer of justice was the right thing to do. The riots were a ton of fun to watch, and they were focused on so much that even I was thrown for a loop when Kougami mentioned that it was just a decoy.
I’m really impressed with how amazing Kougami and Akane have been at working together lately. Kagari tags along with them, and he isn’t even close to being able to keep up with their deductions. This is no longer a monologue from Kougami as Akane asks questions with big doe eyes – but a conversation as the two bounce ideas off each other and develop theories. They understand each other on an emotional level as well, and Kougami placates Akane when she shakily picks up a Dominator for the first time after “the incident.” Akane is more than just a good detective now. She is also an ideal partner for Kougami.
I’m not sure many people would agree with you there…
Now I want to move away from the police force to the two very villains Kougami and Akane have spent all their time analyzing. Makishima really gets more and more interesting with every single episode. I like that he sees himself as just an ordinary guy who likes literature, art, and watching murders. The usual. He seems like the kind of guy who is a hopeless dreamer, and wants the world to fit his ideal vision. That’s normally not a bad thing, but he’s trying to achieve his desire in such a brutal way that you just know it’s not right. His desire for a world where people judge themselves isn’t so bad. I mean, that’s what we have now, after all. However, that’s like buying someone a cake and then running over their dog 16 times. It’s a nice thought but just look what you did to achieve it!
Now, as much as I like Makishima and his love for books, his reference to Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the works of Philip K. Dicks among other authors was about as direct as possible. He literally says “you should read this book.” I thought seeing Makishima reading 1984 was about as blunt as things could get, but this just took the cake. It almost made me laugh, it was so ridiculous! The other visual cues and quick references were fine but this was just blasting through the 4th wall in a bad way.
Next week should prove to be another exciting episode. Although I find the lack of things like GUNS to be a bit hard to swallow among other things, I do find this arc to be extremely engaging. I really like it! The new OP and ED animations just make me that much more happier. It’s been a while and this post got really long really fast, so I’ll be curious to see what everyone else thinks about the past 2 episodes. What do you think of the society’s reaction to these crazy helmets? Things sure escalated quickly.
tl;dr Dominators suck
About Overcooled
A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.
POWUH: 500-599 with 519 comments
GAH. Everything just…exploded in these two episodes. I didn’t think anything could top that death of Ayane’s friend but this…oh boy.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that much when no one reacted to the poor woman getting clubbed to death. Based on the society they live in, the people think the society can catch all of the criminals so there probably isn’t that much crime overall so seeing something like that happen in real life probably felt so surreal to most of the people there. The comments they made on the internet suggest that most of them didn’t even know it was a crime and thought it was a act that was being put on since the system wasn’t doing anything to correct the problem, it must be okay to do.
Of course everything went downhill from there…
I’m wondering if the scene from the first episode is coming up. I haven’t rewatched that episode but it was Kougami and Makishima on the top of a building(I think…) and well, the Sybil system is a tall building…
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Even in real life, I wouldn’t expect to be a live witness to a crime. It just..doesn’t seem like it would happen. I’m sure they knew something was wrong when they watched it (they’re not dumb) but they just didn’t know how to react. However, more ambiuous crimes such as killing the helmet people seem to be the ones they more easily classify as being fine.
I was wondering that too, but I was already so late with the post that I didn’t have time to check…I should do that now.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I think the idea that society has been turned into sheep by overreliance on Sibyl was proven patently false. What did it take, a whole hour before people fought back? The reaction to the first public murder I thought was rooted not as much in the bystander effect (the reality of which, especially the Genovese case, is frequently overstated, in my opinion and experience) as it was in the complete mismatch between what they are seeing and what it could possibly be. At the time, people thought it was flatly impossible that someone could be committing a murder in front of them, with scanners and drones evaluating the man. The spoiler has an aside comparison to a real world event:
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I still think Makishima takes his problems with the Sibyl System to such an extent that they become completely wrong, and that the Sibyl System is nowhere near the oppressor that so many people seem to take it for. Even the people who joined up with him and started terrorizing people with the helmets, what freedoms did it take from them? I posit that it was almost nothing. Any ‘freedom’ to achieve something they weren’t going to be able to achieve in the first place is ephemeral. Makishima’s ‘ordinary people doing ordinary things in an ordinary way’ is going on all around them, but he apparently refuses to see it, instead classifying ‘ordinary’ as “whatever you want to do”. What ordinary things have we seen that Sibyl prevents?
Really, I think the message of the show is just misguided (much like I thought the message from Jintai was misguided). If it was that people should be more individualistic, that I could get on board with. But Sibyl doesn’t preclude that. If it was that people should be willing to take more risks, that’s neither here nor there. People who don’t want to take risks aren’t going to. I don’t think we’ve been shown a dystopia. I think we’ve been shown a world that’s better than ours, but still has drawbacks. And I am not convinced that those drawbacks are worse than the ones in the world we have now.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
I don’t think the civilians are sheep so much as they really don’t want to accept crimes as…well, crimes. They didn’t step in when that girl was being clubbed to death and when they do rebel and attack the helmet-people, they refuse to see it as a crime. It’s like they have these really strong defense mechanisms that let them reason out things as being totally legal and fine instead of actually seeing the truth. They have free will though. Enough to rebel when they want to.
So you see it as less of a bystander’s effect and more of a shift in expectations? So once they learned the new behaviour of “okay, crimes really DO happen” they altered their behaviour and started to fight back?
Makishima makes it sound like he’s doing the world this great favour, but I can’t see how’d he ever improve the system by tearing it down. It’d hurt more than help. I would understand if he was trying to liberate latent criminals who aren’t able to do “normal things” but he just hands these things out to anyone. :/ I think his reasoning is really vague because it’s hard to prove that his ideals would lead to a full-scale Sibyl takedown.
Anyways, I still don’t like the idea of Sibyl, but it’s not quite that oppressive. Compared to other sci-fi, dystopian societies, it’s kinda nice as long as you stay sane! As for the message, it doesn’t really matter to me what statement they’re trying to say with Sibyl. I care more about the little details and just enjoying the show, so I’m fine with almost any direction they take it in as long as it entertains.
Anyways, I like that Sibyl isn’t perfect and isn’t horrible – but somewhere in the middle. It leaves it up to the viewer to decide if it’s a good or not, and it’s more interesting to see what parts of Sibyl people agree with and what parts they don’t (in the comments section and such).
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Regarding the bystander effect line: Yes, that’s about how I see it. The crowd watching the girl get beaten 1) can’t believe that someone is *really* getting beaten right there (and the woman didn’t even do anything like cry out for help, almost like she couldn’t believe it herself) and 2) is actually given real-time feedback that a crime isn’t happening by the things that tell them if there are crimes or not: the scanners and the drones. So how could it be a crime? It’s only later, when they realize “yeah, she’s dead, she was beaten right there, and something about that guy in the helmet made it possible to fool Sybil” that the attitude changes. I think there’s *some* bystander effect, in that “Well, everyone else is seeing the same thing I am, and they aren’t doing anything about it”, but I think that the major part was the acceptance by the authorities.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
….Oh my God, even responding to your comments summons Spammy now. I wrote this post, dammit! Don’t eat my comments!
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
It’s official. Highway’s been cursed by Spammy. Someone call an exorcist (Make Rin Okumura one of the listed choices).
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
Psssst
don’t forget about Yukio….. ^^
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Yukio is badass in his own way, especially with the guns but I pick Shura over him. All hail the hot snake girl exorcist!!
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
Tastes differ. I definitely prefer a hot megane with the attitude and badass guns *_* I mean. Which fangirl wouldn’t? 😀
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Episode 14: New visuals for the new OP. This suits it better than the former, in my opinion. The tone of the story and violence keeps getting intense as it goes along and this was an insane start for this episode. The guy in the helmet who was basically a Senjougahara copycat with all the stationary hidden away pulled the scissor version of Joker’s Magic Pencil trick. “I’m gonna make this scissor disappear”. BAM! “Ta da!” “It’s… it’s gone”.
Seeing that woman being violated and beaten to death is nothing short of sickening. Not to mention the mention the bystanders did nothing to help her and instead take pictures and videos of the incident and that machine standing idly by asking if she needs treatment. They have no sense of danger. This scene and the girl being killed with the pen at the beginning proves my point that most of the victims we’ve seen killed in front of us are women. Urobuchi is probably using this in a poetic way showing the tragedy of beautiful women being slain just like how tragic appalling it was for the children being killed in Fate/Zero like lambs to the slaughter. Psycho-Pass loves to indulge itself in poetry, especially in the past episodes and this one with Makishima reading a book titled “A Revolution Sabotaged Before It Began”.
Makishima can fight. As if he needed another reason to be badass but this makes a fist fight between him and Kogami very plausible. If the inspectors are considered shepherds, the Enforcers as hounds, the criminals as wolves and citizens as sheep, then what does that make Shougo? A wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Though his methods may be cruel, he raises some interesting points. Because of Sibyl, people have forgotten to think for themselves as if they are brainwashed puppets unable to make distinctions of what’s safe and what’s dangerous. The system has shown three of its side effects. The first being the loss of will to live like with Rikako’s father and now the disability of self preservation/lack of reaction and loss of self awareness with the girl who was beaten to death. The dystopian civilization here could easily be compared to V for Vendetta, where the citizens live in oppression and Makishima is “liberating” the people and destroying the government through acts of violence. It’s the presentation of the different aspects of humanity.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
See, I don’t think it’s correct at all that the system has made it so people can’t decide what’s safe and what’s dangerous. And I think that Episode 15 proved that point. Plus, the things you mention aren’t side effects of Sibyl, they’re side effects of *life*.
That’s what gets me about the show. I don’t know if it’s trying to show that Sibyl is causing these things, but it’s not showing me things that don’t happen now. So why’s it so much worse? Like I’ve said before, I’m not super thrilled about defending Sibyl, but I think the criticisms are a bit off-base. I’m more on board with it as a allegorical criticism of *current* Japanese culture than as a condemnation of this new thing.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
I like the new OP animation a looooot better than the re-hashed slideshow from before. The ED is still as plain as ever, but ehh…EDs are usually boring.
They were all watching yet the guy was able to just run away afterwards. They REALLY didn’t care enough to help to let a murderer just brush by them. I loved that scene combined with the scissor/pen stabbing scene. The increase in on-screen brutality totally sets the mood of the city going to hell.
I can see Makishima as a wolf in sheep’s clothing for sure! Or even a fox, although that sort of ruins the analogy.
I wouldn’t say they’re brainwashed, because it seems they can overcome it. I’d say it’s more like they’re really used to thinking and seeing the world in a certain way. They just struggle to see crime as…crime. And when they do, they hate to take responsibility for it. That seems to be the trend so far to me – taking responsibility for your actions instead of relying on Sibyl. However, as Highway says, it’s only a shade different from how people already are in real life.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Episode 15: Man, this was absolutely brutal. Everything is going to hell and it’s anarchy in its darkest form. The line between good and bad has been blurred. So much chaos and riots with burning, empty streets everywhere. Resident Evil or High School of the Dead, anyone? If anyone asks what’s the worst kind of monster in the world, they should answer that it’s a human being. I thought Yuki’s death or the woman being beaten to a pulp was bad but torching someone alive takes cruelty to another level.
We’re heading towards the end and I have a feeling this is where some main characters are going to start dying. I can’t explain why but I have a feeling Ginoza is one of them. It would make sense because he’s trying to maintain his Crime Coefficient and he might be killed by the very system he’s assigned to protect, a system that’s backfiring and currently being used against itself.
I liked the interaction between Makishima and Choe. It’s entertaining to see them in such calm atmosphere talking about all sorts of things in the middle of a horrible mess they’ve made. What I understand from Shougo is that this is how are meant to be, they are meant to live in discord and conflict. Joker quote: “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules”. It made me think of a quote from Kirei in Fate/Zero. That conflict is humanity’s primal instinct. Eliminating it would mean eliminating humanity itself. I’m going to derail a bit to show another example. Look at the villagers in Shiki when they started fighting back. Because of conflict, they became more monstrous than their enemy. And in both settings of Shiki and Psycho-Pass, they all did it for the sake of survival. Another thing about Shougo is that he doesn’t fully approve of technology saying he prefers a book over downloads and E-Books because of how authentic the feel is and that it’s a tool to adjust your senses.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
I love the current setting of Psycho-pass and the first thing that came to my mind when I watched episode 15 was Shiki. It’s very interesting how will they decide to finish this anime and you’re right about characters dying. If the author didn’t hesitate to kill Yuki in that way, I don’t think we will have a complete happy end. I don’t know about Ginoza dying, but I do think his coefficient will rise. And somehow, I get the feeling that Kagari won’t get out of this mess in one piece. I like him so much though TT^TT
Conflict is indeed something essential in a human being, as long ass we’re alive and, well….. human, our opinions, interests or whatnot will inevitably clash and that’s natural and even good in a way.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
I love how they paused after the girl was doused in gasoline to really let it sink in that she was going to be burnt to a crisp. Human bonfire! Let’s roast marshmallows and make s’mores!
I think it would be kind of neat if Masaoka died while protecting his son, making Ginoza REALLY become a borderline latent criminal. Then he’d somehow keep it down in the end and be an ace detective. I dunno, maybe like Namika I just don’t want Ginoza to die because I love my megane characters. Anyways, I don’t think they’ll drop the issue of his rising stress so something will probably be done with that.
Oh man, I didn’t have room in the post but I REALLY LIKE CHOE. Usually the henchmen or fellow villains working with the main bad guy are traitors, but Choe is almost like a carbon copy of Makishima. It’s nice to see them get along so well and casually talk about overthrowing Sibyl like good friends would talk about the latest episode of The Walking Dead or something.
I think Makishima was meant to be born in a simpler time with books and real cooking and no Sibyl. It’s like he came straight from 2013 and then didn’t like all the changes. It’s interesting how old-fashioned desires like the feel of turning pages go hand-in-hand with destroying Sibyl. He’s really extreme about his preferences…
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
The first thing I thought when I watched those two episodes was “whoa, too fast!” In a way this reminded me of Shiki, when the villagers suddenly decided to go on a vampire hunting spree. Yes, the appearance of people in helmets should have caused a riot and started a panic amongst citizens, because they were obviously doing the bad thing, but the Sibyl system didn’t react to that. Now people are stripped from that feeling of safety they got used to so much, that’s why so many of them went batshit, like those bookworms who were held captive. That scene made me very very happy too, but at the same time I felt a little sad that those people had simply lost it. I don’t know what would I do in that situation, tremble in fear or smash the heads of my captors, but still. 🙁
I’m starting to seriously love Makishima, as a villain. At first I was a little skeptic about him, but now that we got to see that he’s ready to act and, lets say, get his hands dirty, I started to respect him as a villain a lot more. Also, I agree with his goal, because I still think that the Sibyl system isn’t such a good thing, but just as you said, OC, his ways are too violent. They’re damn effective, but you just feel that letting mentally unstable and even inadequate people do as they wish is just not right. But still, he’s a cool villain! :3
So far, I love this shooooooooooow~ the chemistry between Kougami and Akane is so nice _<"
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
heeey, what happened to my comment??? TT^TT
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
It was snatched by the gluttonous spam monster, Spammy. He delights in tormenting us like that.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
hidoooi TT^TT i hate it when that happens ><"""
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Join the club. We have lifetime membership cards. LOL
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Glad your comment got saved!
Things escalated very quickly, but I don’t think it will end as tragically as Shiki. The riots are about just as brutal though. It’s hard for me to compare scenes to the final few episodes of Shiki because those were just so good that nothing else really comes close.
That’s right, this is the first time Makishima is committing a crime himself! I didn’t even notice. I was fine with him working from the shadows though. That didn’t make me love him any less. It’s even more impressive if a villain can achieve his goal just through manipulation in a way. You can predict what you yourself will do, but predicting others is a lot more complex. Makishima is cool…I just wouldn’t exactly be alongside him trying to break Sibyl.
Do you ship those two together? I hate romance, but it could work…
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
Yeah, the conclusion of psycho-pass won’t be as…… bad but I hope it will still end with a bang.
In a way, achieving your goals through manipulation is really cool. But to see that brainwashing isn’t the only thing he can do…. that was so cool too <3 I definitely like him more now. And I'm not entirely sure if I would go against hi, even if his ways are too costly and cruel. If he was a little bit more respective towards people's lives and didn't kill off people so easily, I would definitely take his side.
I don't know yet, but there's definitely chemistry going on. I actually don't like Akane very much, because she's a little bit slow sometimes. Weeeel, maybe she's not exactly stupid, but I think she's at least too timid and unsure of herself to develop and talk about her own theories on the cases.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
As for the last part, we’re still talking about a show that’s set in Japanese society, even if it’s supposed to be 100 years in the future. She’s by far the junior member of the team, and she’s, well, a she. Even if we imagine that society has gotten less hierarchical and gender biased in the intervening 100 years, the show’s still for a current day audience (so I can imagine there are a lot of people who think she’s assertive to the point of discomfort).
I think she’s actually been pretty forthright and forceful, and yes, she’s not the person coming up with all the plans and connections (that would be Kougami or even Masaoka), but she’s always the second person to grasp the situation when it’s minimally explained to her. In that aspect she’s far better than Ginoza, who can’t break out of the box of his own preconceptions.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
Well, you may be right about the gender thing. But still, if it’s so far in the future I would like to see someone more confident, but either way, that’s more of a minor issue.
\as for Ginoza, I think he’s so strict about following rules and orders because he’s afraid of his hue getting darker for whatever reason. He trusts the system and he trusts his boss, so he doesn’t do much of his own accord because he’s afraid, that’s what I think.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
His blind faith in Sibyl fits exactly into Makishima’s view on the city’s inhabitants. They’re living idle lives like livestock and because of it, they have difficulty recognizing danger that’s right in front of them. They’re are just like sheep. So in that sense, Ginoza is an obediant slave to Sibyl. And he’s afraid because he’s seen what happened to his father and Kogami and doing his best to learn from their mistakes.
POWUH: Meta Resident and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 1758 comments
Well said. He’s just like a sheep. A paranoid sheep at that too o_O but I still like him and hope for the best.
POWUH: 500-599 with 543 comments
I’ve been waiting for the Nona Tower to come into play ever since the first shot of what was happening in the first episode. I remember the coloring/shape of the building, and it’s the same. Looks like the possible final showdown will be coming. The craziness is happening.
I’m proud of Akane. She’s doing better, she fits into the job a lot better, although I wish she could just ditch the skirt! It looks so inconvenient! I’ve hated that since the beginning. Gah. But she knows what to do, how to rely on Kougami’s thoughts and impressions. Kagari was falling behind in their conversation, and that shows how well Akane is doing.
These two last episodes have been very brutal. From the killings in front of so many people to everyone turning on pretty much everyone else, this society is falling apart. These helmets are really doing the damage Makishima wants. It’s crazy how quick it escalated, but at the same time, it feels realistic.
I’m expecting that the police are going to fall apart bit by bit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sibyl system goes down for a while or forever. The police aren’t ready for anything of this scale, and there’s no way anyone is guarding the Sibyl system.
Once some of the crew starts dying, the true element of this show will show itself. Up until the helmets were introduced, we were just learning about the players and the world. But now we’re in the real conflict.
I really can’t wait for the rest of this show. Especially if we get to learn about what happens to Makishima after he’s caught…
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
So we’ll finally see what happened after the short scene in episode 1! I can’t wait to see Kougami get a chance to talk to Makishima.
The police are struggling to keep up (no wonder, considering Dominators are useless) and the internet is spreading horrible rumours. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police start to fall apart too. People will start to blame Sibyl for being flawed and the police for not keeping the peace.
With Urobuchi Gen at the helm, I wouldn’t be surprised if more main characters die…Oh man, I can’t wait.