Psycho-Pass S2 – 08
Moe-Pass
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Psycho-Pass has always had issues with keeping its science fiction incredible instead of ridiculous, but I think the reveals of these past 2 episodes have taken the cake. It has just completely flown off the handle, asking us to accept the unacceptable. It’s not that its science fiction concepts are so implausible as to be inherently ridiculous; shows get away with that all the time, such as From the New World having utterly implausible evolutionary biology, and Gunbuster having just as implausible faster-than-light engineering. It’s that these concepts stray too far from the established tone of the show as a serious near-future dystopian science fiction. |
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I’m definitely in the same boat as lvlln here in terms of what I’m feeling about Psycho-Pass now. I’m usually more than happy to gloss over any ridiculous concepts for the sake of having a good time. But this is so, so much worse than a minor slip in quality or asking for a little suspension of disbelief. This is like someone trying to convince you that your pet cat is actually a dog. It’s just too silly to even try and play along with it! |
A+ design choice to give the nurse robot boobs. Thank you, future.
lvlln// Now we’ve learned that Kirito is a sort of biological uber-Voltron, the combination of 184 different people including the brains of 7. It’s certainly very out there, but the idea that such radical surgery may be just barely possible 100 years from now can’t be dismissed out of hand, especially coupled with the surgeon’s admittance that this was very experimental and with a low chance of success. What can be considered ridiculous is that no explanation is provided – or even asked – for the motivation behind such a surgery. If the surgery is so crazy, then why did they do it? Who paid for it? If it was for research, what came of the research, and how many ethics laws did it break? For something this nuts, we need to know more than just what happened, we need to know by whom and why it happened.
Then there’s the fact that this is provided as an explanation for why Sibyl can’t seem to “see” Kirito – he’s just a “jumble of corpses.” Look, we haven’t been taught everything about how Sibyl works, which gives the writers some leeway when it comes to messing with it, but that leeway is nowhere near wide enough to let that explanation make sense, given that after the surgery, those body parts are very much alive parts of a real living breathing human being. Perhaps those 7 brain donors could be a factor as they truly would have meaningful effects on Kirito’s thinking and thus his Psycho-Pass level, but such an explanation is not made; it’s just “jumble of corpses.”
So we have Kirito, the one-in-a-trillion experimental surgery recipient who can’t be “seen” by Sibyl, and they just let him go and lose track of him. Wouldn’t whoever paid for this surgery have a vested interest on keeping track of where he is (this is an area where it would help to know what the motivations for this surgery were)? Are there no procedures in place for doctors to report enigmatic patients whose hues act in strange ways, such as, I don’t know, not even registering as existing? It truly beggars belief that Sibyl was able to just lose track of Kirito – there are many ways to track an individual besides just measuring their hue, and Sibyl surely would want to know more about this person who seems incompatible with their measuring tools.
At least they didn’t try to connect Kirito’s origins story with his ability to lower the hues of those who follow him (yet). It certainly is curious why he seems to have so much success brainwashing people where other criminals have failed – perhaps not being detectable by Sibyl allowed him to experiment with and develop his brainwashing skills beyond what a regular criminal could. Though that would raise the question of why a psychopath like Makishima might not have developed it first. In any case, I’m fine with not knowing yet why Kirito has this magical ability – I just really hope it doesn’t tie back to his 184 body parts or 7 brain parts in some ham-handed way like “jumble of corpses.”
“Bruh, teach me your psychologist mind powers so I can manipulate people”
Overcooled// Remember when I said this show was getting so “out there” that it would be impossible to guess what would happen next? Yeah, that’s still true. It’s especially true this week, in fact. Kamui’s connection to the plane crash was easy enough to grasp, but it got out of hand when they brazenly stated that he was a Frankenstein composite of 184 people. 3 people would already be impressive – unlikely, but possible to believe given the future setting. 184 is just excessive. That’s 181 people too many! You know there’s something off if even the doctor who performed the surgery doesn’t understand the bullshit that’s going on. If he doesn’t know what he did then the Psycho-Pass staff sure as hell don’t know what they’re doing either.The mystery behind Kamui’s invisibility to the system is the dumbest stunt this series has ever pulled. “He has too many dead people organs” isn’t quite the answer I was hoping for.
It makes me wonder how Sibyl treats regular organ transplant patients. Are they harder to scan as well? If someone has a double lung transplant after an accident, could they maybe have a lighter hue? I’m really surprised no one noticed this discrepancy in the first place. It should be easy for Sibyl to scan Kamui even though he has organs from different people. It’s not like his brain is “someone else’s” anymore. It’s his. And it’s working just fine, or else he’d be dead. So what’s so off about his physiology that gets Sibyl’s panties in such a twist?
I never liked Mika, but this was kinda harsh
The infodump nature of this episode means we get a range of different dramatic reveals that go from absurd to genuinely captivating. It’s a weird mixture of events. Kamui gets a lot of time being scrutinized, but we also see how he’s intimately connected to Togane Pharmaceuticals. That’s the perfect cue for us to discover that Togane is working with Chief Kasei, who is also his mother. That relationship isn’t surprising since he had a picture that was obviously a younger version of her on his desk, but it’s still really eerie to hear him call that shell of a body “mother.” You’ve got Kamui doing all sorts of terrible things to bring down Sibyl and the Toganes doing all sorts of equally terrible things to keep Sibyl, effectively giving Akane 2 villains to fight against this season. Which is interesting, because the 2 villains are at odds with each other as well. Akane could technically try to get them to just take each other out, but that’s an unlikely outcome. Still, it’s an interesting dynamic to have a sort of “hate triangle” of rivalries.
Now that we know for sure Togane is evil and not just misunderstood (I judged him too lightly…), all of his conversations with Akane are infinitely more interesting. He’s not just a cardboard cut-out to bounce ideas off of, while giving off a faint vibe similar to Kougami. He’s an actual person with actual motives. It creates a lot more tension when you see the two of them talking, because you know everything he says is with the intention of slowly poisoning Akane. “Yeah, you keep that creepy etching of WC? that some burglar did on your wall. Totally a good idea. Not going to blacken your Hue at all.” Watching him try to get some Hue-darkening tips from Saiga was also amusing, since the two are both really good at reading people. That’s a stand-off I’d love to see more of.
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Final Thoughts
When I heard of Psycho-Pass‘s 2nd season, I was deeply skeptical because I loved the ending to the 1st season so much. But I also had hope, that if this season revisited what worked in the 1st season, if it continued to explore the ways in which Akane was fighting Sibyl, it could end up even better than the 1st season. Clearly my hope was misplaced. Instead, what we’ve got is a V for Vendetta-style experiment-gone-wrong supervillain who’s just a more impressive Makishima. The other big reveal in the episode regarding Tougane being the “son” of Sibyl has some potential to be interesting, especially if it manages to tie back to Kirito’s story somehow, but there’s just too little there so far for us to grasp. I don’t know where everything will land in the next 3 episiodes, but I do know that for it not to end up a trainwreck will take the writers working miracles, something they have not displayed an ability to do.
The “show, don’t tell rule” is broken for this entire episode. It’s pretty much just characters reviewing facts, uncovering new ones, and interrogating other characters. This doesn’t make for a very exciting episode since it’s just a lot of talking. And you can’t zone out either, because every sentence is loaded with important revelations that simply can’t be glossed over. While I’m glad the plot is moving forward, I’m really disappointed with the quality of the writing. I like Psycho-Pass, but not when it’s like this. Not when it provides answers to deeply interesting questions such as how Kamui dodges Sibyl’s cymatic scans with answers such as “A SHIT TON OF DEAD PEOPLE BITS.” That sounds like bad, bad sci-fi…and it is. I really hope they manage to recover for the finale and that we don’t get yet another face-palm inducing twist such as Shou actually being Makishima all along. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
This just sounds idiotic. Who is writing this poo? Or maybe it’s 184 dead people writing it, too. I think 1000 monkeys banging on keyboards would do better.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 83 comments
It’s still not the Hyper Oats level of idiocy.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
Actually, I found Hyper Oats to be by far the most plausible aspect of the scifi world Psycho-Pass has built. It’s merely an extension of the monoculture that’s been developing in agriculture today, with fewer and fewer varieties of being grown for more and more crops. See the modern banana industry for a microcosm. Of course, that EVERY food gets replaced by 1 strain of 1 crop is extreme and highly improbable, but that’s all it is. Not plain old dumb like this surgery twist bullshit.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 83 comments
Please rewatch S1. Hyper Oats IS the plain old dumb. It wouldn’t be an idiocy if it weren’t improbable on several layers as it is. It seems that the writers did not think in advance and introduced this concept pretty late in the series and all becomes contradictory mess thanks to that. Let me make a list of some examples:
– It is stated that 100% of food in PP Japan is produced from Hyper Oats, yet we see Saiga drink coffee and Mika drink some juice with seeds in it. Would they really waste energy, time and money to reproduce every single detail of each food that was replaced with Hyper Oats? Why didn’t they keep other agricultural products then? Or were the animators just drawing whatever pleased them?
– There’s no human supervision in the farming of Hyper Oats. We saw that the PP is not free of criminals and people who want to bring the system down. Just launching a small terrorist attack (of any sort) would be enough to halt production and threaten the supremacy of the system. Are the brains this stupid not to see the risk?
– What is more, they grow it all in one place. Say, a natural disaster strikes, such as a tornado, mega hailstorm, unexpected invasion of an unknown pestilence or pest. All your food supplies are gone in an instant. Risk diversification seems to be beyond comprehension for the brains.
-Apparently, in PP world you can synthesise all nutrients which a human needs for proper functioning from a single plant. And on a mass scale. This is bullshit on a level much higher than building somebody from spare parts.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
Points 2 & 3 are good. Indeed, I recall thinking how ridiculous it was that there was a single easily-infiltrated target for all the food in the entire country. However, points 1 & 4 are weak. Given how modern advancements in GMOs, how much faster the advancements are happening, and how much reward there is for developing better crops, it doesn’t seem ridiculous in the least that a story taking place 100 years from now will have a single crop capable of providing all nutrients required for humans. Unlikely, yes, but not crazy. And it would follow that if a top-down authoritative society had a crop that provided the most optimal return in nutrients for the cost of growth, it would prioritize growing just that and making it palatable for the variety of tastes people have – simulating coffee or juice of all sorts. Given how advanced disguising technology has become in 100 years, and given what food engineers have already achieved today, I don’t find it crazy that the world of Psycho-Pass has foods with as much variety in looks as they do today, but sourced only from 1 crop.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I don’t even find points 2 and 3 to be all that compelling, in the context of a society that has already shown a propensity towards putting all its eggs in one basket with Sibyl. They already figure they can evaluate everyone and keep tabs / control on them that way, why not have just one facility. Who’s going to attack it? The people that they have had 100% success already subverting or killing?
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 83 comments
It makes me wonder why Japan moved away from crop diversification in the first place given the risks (I guess the reason was ‘just because’ ?). It’s really stupid to attempt that. Again, I believe the writers included the idea of Hyper Oats quite late when the series was airing and didn’t bother to give it a proper background.
On the other hand, the Sybil System has a justified interest in brain-connecting operations, so from the storytelling point of view building a human from spare parts is far-fetched, but justified in the context of the story.
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
Well, that was an interesting reveal for Kamui. I guess that explains where Kirito got all his amazing god-like list of abilities from. If a guy had 184 people as part of him, along with his brain being made up of 7 other peoples brains, then it would be understandable that he is now extremely multi-talented. However, as everyone says, this has pushed the limit of the term “science-fiction” and even Dr. Frankenstein would have to look at this poor boy and ask “Why?” There is no way a person with 7 sewn together brain pieces all from different people, would function normally, and definitely not the way Kamui can. Was it really necessary to combine all of these people into one boy? It’s super-obvious that this was never about saving his life, but some psychopathic mad scientist’s twisted experiment. Dr. Togane made a monster, and now that monster is trying to destroy her family’s name and the system that it has supported.
Interestingly, they mention that it was only after Kirito had healed for a while and all the pieces had assimilated as one, that the system no longer recognized him. He became invisible to society. In a way, that makes him similar to Makishima, who also found himself unique and almost unseen by society, and from there his ideas were born, just like Kamui.
I could see the “Togane’s mom is part of the Sybil System” coming, and like the others, I almost felt sorry for Mika. She finally did some good police work, however her desire to oust Akane led to her demise. As for Togane himself, it’s now clear why a guy who had a CC of 769 at the age of ten was looked over by Sybil and that his mom even covered up his records. You have to wonder how many other criminals are “looked over” and their CCs covered up, if a member of Sybil desires it? 🙁
It’s not that the body of Chief Kasei is or even looks like Dr. Togane. They really don’t look much alike. Togane is calling the brain that’s connected to that android shell his mother, not the shell itself. He knows everything about Sybil and he knows that the brain he’s talking to is his mother’s. From the data that Mika turned up, it actually looks like the Toganes came up with the technique to remove the brain and connect them together into a single consciousness. So really, the Toganes were singularly instrumental in making Sybil possible. o_o
We’ll see how this will all go for Mika too. I think we’re going to have a mature and knowledgeable inspector or enforcer out of her by the end of the series. I’m kind of glad she’s going to learn the truth, it can give her an idea of what’s really going on out there and not just walking around with blinders on.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
I feel like having 7 different brains mixed together would just make you suck at everything since the communication between regions would be uber messed up. But there’s not much sense to having 184 people jumbled together so real science doesn’t really apply here. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster made sense because it used a reasonable amount of people. This is just…too much.
Yeah, I bet Sibyl can overlook anyone they want to. It’s definitely not a fair system.
Kasei actually does look like Togane’s mom to me – just older. She could be the prototype for Kasei’s design. But I probably used the wrong clue to come to the right conclusion ^^;. It’s not surprising that her brain would be psychopathic enough to be added to the Sibyl System.
I wonder how they’re going to “use” Mika from now on. Now that we’ve got so much talking out of the way, surely the next episode will have more action (or at least people DOING things)
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Psycho-Pass’s new head writer is Ubukata Tow, whose writing style is more sensational; even less subtle than Urobuchi’s.
This may explain the over-the-top nature of the recent plot developments, although I’m surprised Urobuchi hasn’t made any comments. He was the original writer after all.
Btw, the character designs remind me of a manga, Reborn, which had a talking gangster baby. Are they connected?
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Yeah, I mentioned in one of the previous posts stating that season 2 was being helmed by a different writer instead of Urobuchi as for why there was a notable difference in quality. Not even Production I.G was involved this time. Ubukata Tow is the writer behind Ghost in the Shell: Arise. Though it’s already stated in ANN articles that Urobuchi is returning to the writer’s chair for the movie in January when the second season is over.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 83 comments
The mangaka of Reborn did character designs for Psycho Pass.
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
I just think its basically different writing styles. Urobuchi seemed to want to concentrate more on the philosophical and psychological, while Tow is more into the suspense, drama, and plot twists. I don’t think one’s better than the other, it all depends on what your own personal likes and dislikes are. I really like this series just as much as the first, but in different ways. Both writers have their good points and their bad.
I have to give Tow his props though. Saying that he came into this series that has been completely defined by another writer’s style and stamp, he was able to still take that world and mold it and put his own twist on it without really changing canon or anything. That takes a lot for a writer. I remember when I had to take over writing a novel from another writer who had started the project. There is a bit of a transition that takes place.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Pardon my language but things just got fucked up, in a very creepy way, no less. So Kirito is Kasei’s dirty little secret she wants to remain buried for the sake of preserving her precious Sibyl System. Well, lady, you reap what you sow. I’m under the impression Kirito’s surgery was part of an experiment to further Sibyl’s evolution.
Well, one can surmise that multi-million corporations must be involved and the higher ups of such places are most likely people with low morals who authorize such things for kicks in the name of science. Get enough influence in a field and make enough connections, you could probably get away with anything. If human experimentation is already a known occurrence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe they’d go this far, too.
I have a theory on why Kirito couldn’t be scanned due to his disposition. A hue scanner, I imagine, before making a registry of an individual would make notes of certain characteristics. Physical appearances, blood, maybe even making x-rays in the process, all the values that one person has because everyone is unique and needs to be categorized. Someone like Kirito, who’s a walking mass of diced meat sewn together, would be impossible because of inconsistencies. Nothing he has matches with the rest of his body, especially his brain. That’s multiple values. It would be like scanning an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. A person receiving one or two transplants might be some work to initiate a scan but 184 people should be impossible. My concern lies in how he was kept alive to endure such a risky surgery.
If anything, the series has provided two entities playing on opposites sides of the field. Kirito, an outsider who lowers people’s hues which would be seen as beneficial and Tougane, the insider capable of easily turning those around into latent criminals.
Oh, the irony in reading that!! If Mika was a character created solely to draw animosity from the audience to ultimately feel sympathetic towards her when she’s forced into a corner, then they’ve done a good job. Curiosity killed the cat. I knew the path she walked would eventually have her biting more than she can chew. Though you have to admit despite the fact she deviated from the main investigation, Mika proved herself a capable detective. Brat or not, I agree that was too harsh.
Something was obviously off about Tougane but him turning out to be chief’s son threw me for a loop. What he said about Mika made me curious. Him saying despite the predicament she’s found herself in, her Psycho-Pass hasn’t shot up. She may be another special case like Akane. After all, they’re about to allow her the same “need to know” privileges Akane has. Because Kasei’s body is robotic, that would in other words mean she’s the head brain of the Sibyl System.
@Overcooled: I don’t know if you’ve seen it but I marked my 8000 comment milestone on the previous Psycho-Pass 2 post.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
It’s super sketchy that they thought it would be worthwhile to perform surgery on 184 people (or what was left of them). There was definitely another motive other than reviving them into one singular vessel. This breaks just about every single code of ethics you’re supposed to follow for experiments though…that’s for sure.
Alright, here’s my opinion on the scanning thing. I always imagined an ideal Sibyl system would calculate Hues using a weighted system that puts like 80% of influence on scanning the brain. Because aside from interviewing patients, that’s our next best method for diagnosing mental instability of any kind. So really, you’d mostly need hormone levels and info about brain activity. For example, dopamine levels and which areas of the brain are getting the most blood flow. Knowing what’s going on with the heart or liver isn’t really that important. Just think about how we diagnose mental illnesses now: we don’t care if you have 6 livers or 1, as long as your brain is alright. Even with a mishmash of parts, things like neurotransmitters and hormones will still be the same as any other person’s. The scanner should be able to still read the most important parts for judging someone’s Hue.
But in the end, this is speculation based on a surgery that is impossible and technology that we don’t know the specifics of so I can’t entirely write it off. Things are kept vague so they don’t have to try and properly explain things. But it’s likely that the Psycho-Pass staff intends for an explanation like yours – that scanning a person is impossible because their brain is full of different parts. I’m just not sure if that would actually be the case if such a crazy surgery was successful…
Yes, congrats on 8000 comments! I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to reply to comments (but I did read them all).
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
What’s really interesting is that Sybil/Dr. Togane doesn’t really seem that concerned about Kirito. She basically just tells her son to take care of it and that’s it. I’m thinking that Kirito was just a “fun” project that the psycho lady doctor did just to see if she could. However, her experimentation with her son is another matter entirely. From what I saw a read, with her son, she was trying to create criminally asymptomatic individuals artificially, in order to increase Sybil’s ranks. However, it of course failed considering Togane’s huge CC.
The only hitch in that theory is that we’ve seen scans can be taken without an form of line of sight for the person. Such as that dominator that could shoot through walls, it was able to calculate CCs without even physically seeing them at all.
However, I do think you’re on the right track. I do wonder why the system did pick up on him right after the surgery, but didn’t later after every thing had assimilated into one body. I would actually think the effect would be opposite. That the system wouldn’t have picked up on him at all while his body was still raw and healing, but that it was able to do so once he was healed and everything was assimilated.
And yes, not only is it unbelievable that he didn’t just die through such a procedure, but also how the heck is he such a well functioning, normal person considering he’s the human equivalent of a 184-piece jigsaw puzzle?
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Can someone help? Spammy is up to his no-good tricks again.
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
Ubukata is in charge of the general writing, but the one who’s really in charge of the specifics is Kumagai Jun—he’s the script writer, not Ubukata. So while Ubukata might have influenced his writing in general, in the end, what Jun writes, goes. Urobuchi, who’s supposedly supervising, didn’t seem to supervise it very well. He’s let the script writing go to comedic lengths with the implausible revelations and often bad dialogue.
As to the impossibility of 184 transplants, someone in another site said skin grafting may be the 80-90% of it. So it is less implausible, except for the brain joining. Again, the bad thing about the writing is that things are revealed, but we’re left to speculate too much, specifically on things like how the transplants happened. It’s like, there’s no explaining on how the viewer can stomach something; they just drop the bomb and let it go off. Move on to the next hot spot.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 83 comments
I don’t really know the role division and what their positions mean in the realm of animation-making in Japan. May I know where you learnt this?
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
@SherrisLok: I searched around forums. I found explanations about the differences between supervisor, series composer/composition, and screenplay in MAL and another site (I forgot).