Posted by OP2 Sequence
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OP2: 「Out of Control」 by Nothing’s Carved in Stone
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「Devil’s Crossroad」
While this Ernie Ball advertisement side-story wasn’t the episode many had hoped for after the events of episode 11, it still played an important role in the general narrative of the series.
One valid criticism of the show is that little is known about the stories and personalities of the Inspectors and Enforcers not named Kougami or Tsunemori. This makes it hard for viewers to become attached to these characters, making a sense of loss when one of them inevitably bites the dust, absent. Hopefully Yayoi won’t be a victim to Urobuchi Gen’s sadism anytime soon, because while her story wasn’t filled with the typical suffering as one would expect from the screenwriter (since this episode was scripted by a rookie, Takaha Aya, instead), there’s a draw to her personality nonetheless.
Yayoi’s dogged determination to practice her beloved hobby and her dream of returning to an increasingly unrealistic career are emotions that aren’t unique to latent criminals alone. Surely many people have passions or pastimes that for one reason or another, they are unable to partake in, and the story of chasing after a pipedream is an all too familiar one as well. Perhaps the aspect of Yayoi’s past that is easiest to relate to is the situation of having your choice of career decided by someone or something other than yourself. Throughout her imprisonment, she stubbornly clung onto the idea that she would eventually return to her life as a Sibyl-approved artist, even if that dream was becoming more and more impossible by the second. This made accepting the career and the freedom that Sibyl offered her hard to accept, even if former guitarist possessed an intellect that was well suited to be an Enforcer. Unfortunately, often times there are factors that are out of our control which restrict or attempt to restrict the professions we can choose from. Despite her status as a latent criminal living many years in the future, Yayoi’s life story is in many ways no different than ours.
That said, there were parts of Yayoi’s backstory which were a little harder to relate with. It appeared in the episode’s flashbacks that Yayoi harbored romantic feelings for the renegade band leader Takizaki Rina (Watanabe Akeno), although the extent of her feelings was never elaborated on. At the very least, Rina meant a great deal to Yayoi because even in the present timeline of the episode, she quickly sought to ascertain whether the object of her affection was safe and sound. The contrast between the concern she showed for Rina and the mental fortitude she displayed in attempting to gun down her former flame shows just how principled Yayoi is, how strong her moral conviction is, even after her dreams were snuffed out by a system she probably despises. We learn very little about Yayoi from what she does as an Enforcer; it is from knowing why she’s an Enforcer, specifically her motivations, that we really learn what makes her tick.
Other than the sly product placement, this episode also provided a fascinating look on yet another dystopian aspect of the society found in PSYCHO-PASS. The whole concept of government-approved artists is a stark and vivid reminder of how pervasive Sibyl’s draconian directives are, and it is a concept that unfortunately has many parallels in present-day authoritarian regimes as well. The rationales are simple and identical. Both societies wish to curb the creation of material that could be detrimental to the stability of society, which it attempts to accomplish using technology to either quash or approve content and content-creators. Yet the human spirit, as clichéd as it sounds, somehow always manages to prevail and be heard. Thanks to the Internet, today’s governments are fighting a losing war to control creativity, and it looks like even in the future with an advanced system like Sibyl in place, “unapproved” content has not been eliminated entirely.
With Urobuchi Gen putting his screenwriter’s cap back on for the next episode, it looks like any more delving into the backstories of the supporting cast will have to wait. Nevertheless, if this episode is any indication of these side-stories’ quality, I eagerly await the next installment (which will hopefully be about Masaoka).
- Sasayama also received a fair amount of screen time in this episode. His personality is aggressive, loud, and brash, just like the stereotypical “bad cop”, but it’s too soon to tell whether there is a special bond between him and Kougami. It is still possible that Kougami would have become a latent criminal had any of his colleagues been killed. At the very least, Sasayama is probably one of the biggest reasons Ginoza became such a hard-ass, having to deal with him every day.
- Interesting that in the past, there was another example of someone holding a knife to a person’s throat with the intent to kill, yet their crime coefficient was not high enough to switch of the Dominator’s safety.
- Many thanks to my good friend BakaMochi, who is now taking screencaps for me. Because of her, I should be able to get posts out faster from here on out, and I’d also like to thank all the readers for being patient with me.
- Full-length images: 15, 16, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 35.
ED2 Sequence
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ED2: 「All Alone With You」 by EGOIST
I really liked the scene with the latent criminal smashing his head on the wall so hard, that blood was coming out while the announcement to slowly work towards a healthier mind was playing in the background. Amazing contrast between the ideal and the reality of the situation.
Also, I bet Akane will either die or end up a latent criminal, courtesy of Urobuchi.
I think this is important to consider; remember when Akane was talking to her friends and her friends commented how Akane’s hue never gets cloudy! Maybe in a way, she could be like Makashima, where both their hue do not cloud!
Urobuchi Gen is surely loves to play with our mind
“Interesting that in the past, there was another example of someone holding a knife to a person’s throat with the intent to kill, yet their crime coefficient was not high enough to switch of the Dominator’s safety.”
If you look closely, it says the criminal is a target(Non-Lethal Paralyzer 184 CC), but not the hostage, that’s why the dominator can’t shoot.
Checked it again.
Sasayama’s gun was clearly targeting him. At first, the criminal was at 98.3 so it locked.
After Kougami came and said that the hostage was in the way, the criminal was at 184.2, already a target for execution. The hostage girl was at 98.3 as well.
Look again! The Red Square is the target system! The girl was the only target! Since the girl is in the way the Dominator is locked! The criminal is always 183, but he wasn’t a target the first time!
@belatkuro, I’m going to have to agree with Airas. Sasayama is pointing the gun towards the criminal (obviously, who would point a gun at a hostage?) but is measuring the hostage. Look closely and you’ll see the red square on her forehead; she’s at 98.3.
5 seconds later the camera goes back to them again only this time they show the criminal’s coefficient too. The hostage is still 98.3 while the criminal is at 184.2. Besides, there’s no way he’d go up from 98.3 to 184.2 in 5 seconds.
Sasayama could have shot him at any given time. He just didn’t want to risk hurting the hostage, though he was considering it. He even said it out loud; “can’t I take out both of them at the same time?”.
At ~15.03, it clearly shows the CC of both the guy (184.2) and his hostage (98.3), but the Dominator’s rigid targeting system does not seem to allow its user to switch targets at will, instead, it can only aim at the person nearest to the user (in this case the hostage, resulting to the trigger being locked), which is really inflexible.
That was why Sasayama was saying why not just wait for the girl’s CC to go over 100 so that he can shoot them both. LOL
This scene shows the flaws in the Dominator’s targeting system.
With a classic gunpowder weapon, a maverick cop would have just shot the guy already. But Sybil being an AI system, has to take into account anyone else within the blast range, in this case the girl hostage with 98CC.
This makes holding hostages below 100CC a viable tactic for latent criminals in holding off Enforcers as they buy time to escape.
Though of course such a tactic will always have the risk of backfiring, resulting in their CC rising rapidly, and like our unfortunate dude here, instead of getting paralysed, he gets turned to minced meat.
This scene shows the flaws in the Dominato’s targeting system, and the scene with Makishima shows the flaws in the Sybyl’s human soul formulae.
With all these “exceptions to the rule” that Psycho-Pass is showing us, there must be calls for changing the Dominators to have a manual override. This is taking away the decision-making process of the law enforcement. And even with that loss of control, I bet the police will still have a hearing as to why one person was shot and the other person not shot!
Too much faith in the bureaucratic system.
You know you’re doing a good job when majority of the discussion goes to a minor plot point in a flashback.
IMO the reason why the criminal has low crime coefficient was because he was kinda calm that’s why Kougami and Sasayama provoked the criminal to increase it’s crime coefficient.
It wasn’t low at all, it was already well into 180 at the start and more than enough to get him zapped.
I had the impression that the dude didn’t care who got in his way as long as they could bring the bad guy down. The hostage was probably just in the way and he was annoyed he couldn’t shoot them both.
That new ED… I’ll just quote George Takei on that.
http://youtu.be/GNkGbTuGHd0
What I got out of this was that this was a parallel to the beginning of the series.
-Yayoi parallels Tsunemori in that she is the new person at a new profession based on her skillset (Enforcer).
-Parallels in having to rely on a system that screws you over when you want it to help you the most (Sibyl system, both as an inmate and when using the Dominator).
However, the difference between her and Tsunemori is that her lack of agency because of the system is more obvious despite her faith in it to succeed for her, such as when she thinks that she can reduce her psycho-pass’s hue and get out of the institution despite the near impossibility, and when symbolically when Inspector!Kogami tricks her with the Dominator as a catalyst for joining. Tsunemori benefits from the system without a problem and got into the job through her own choosing as someone with high grades.
I think it’s great that what was previously thought of Yayoi was this very professional woman, but seeing her as a former Rocker and a guitarist with a passion in music shows that, not the whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing, but that the Enforcers shown in the series are more free with their personal pursuits, particularly artistic pursuits and physical pleasures, and are more free with their expressions. Not only Masaoka with his painting skills or that other Kagari who enjoys video games and cooking good food, but also Sasayama who seems more carefree. However, Yayoi’s deserved anger at being denied her passion is seen as threat at the institution and is chastised for being frustrated, which shows how immensely unhelpful and oppressive the doctors and orderly there are.
I hope I’m not implying that the show is bringing the question that the higher a criminal’s coefficient goes up, or is a latent criminal, correlates to someone’s creativity and passion, but when seeing that the Enforcers display very human and passionate pursuits, and then you compare the Inspectors like Tsunemori and Ginoza, who are restrained though Tsunemori is more optimistic and observant of issues as they are, while Ginoza just want to draw clear lines between people so it’s easier to target and avoid and who’s more determinist.
LOL! So that’s why I watch the episode like a breeze, and not pausing the video and spending more time on Google searching and reading stuff. xP
Anyway, I’m one of those lore whore, so any flashback episode is always a plus for me.
Can’t say I’m a fan of the episode placement. I was hoping it would keep up the momentum that the last episode gave instead of going to a flashback.
On its own though, its a decent episode. Yayoi is the least characterized Enforcer so she really needed this episode. Once again things aren’t so clear cut. While the system condemns for her music, Yayoi is at least level-headed enough to put the effort trying to get her hue cleared to get back to society. On contrast her girlfriend Rina is much more free-spirited and happy but essentially proves to be an anarchist intent on hurting others. So Yayoi is now forced to chose between an oppresive system that maintains social stability or an anarchist who hurts others. Of course Yayoi chooses the former.
Sorry, Yayoi only ha two choices:
1) sit in that rehab and never see the outside world again, never play with a guitar; No one gets back to society from the rehab – it’s a prison.
2) get out and get some partial freedom(play with the guitar) with some power.
Yayoi has chosen to sell her soul to the devil to get the power of taking(the title of the episode is “Devil’s crossroad”) – become a puppet of the computer.
I disagree here. There’s a stark difference between Yayoi who wanted to play music because she loves it and Rina who basically proved to be an anarchist willing to hurt people.
You’re basically implying that SYBIL has nothing good going for it but we constantly see the city is quite stable and people are happy. Most of the criminals shown are exceptional to the society mostly people outright willing to screw with the system. The question here of course would be whether its the systems fault or the humans itself are left in the air.
Its what makes Psycho-Pass more interesting than other cyberpunks settings. Most would outright say that the system if faulty but here its more ambiguous.
People are stable and happy because they’re forced to be.
You get to see throughout the series that people are obsessed with leaving their hues clear. And in this episode we see why, once you become a latent criminal you’re imprisoned for life. That probably includes the woman Akane saved in the first episode (we never really get to see her leave custody).
And when things like posting illegal art on the web, reading the wrong things, or playing the wrong music can raise your psycho-pass to the point where you’ll be arrested, you can see how that affects people. The psycho-pass literally makes the concept of thought-crime a reality. The Sybil system controls everything from the music you listen to, to what news you read.
One of the things Kogami says in the episode is that people can get used to any severe situation as long as it becomes the status quo.
It’s not that what Rina and Masayama is doing is right, but the Sybil system is definitely wrong. And I wouldn’t consider Rina an anarchist, since she talked about how the Sybil system prevents a true democracy, more like anti-sybil.
Plus, you could argue that Rina was pushed to this point because of such a restrictive hold the Sibyl System has on creativity.
So Kogami gave a locked gun to see if she would use it in order to prove that she was fit to become an Enforcer?
So how would he explain if she were under fire or about to be killed some other way and couldn’t use the only weapon she had for self-defense? There’s no way he could’ve known that she’d run into her old friend OR that said old friend wouldn’t kill her if she resisted. “Well, she wanted to use it, so she probably would’ve made a good Enforcer…if she hadn’t been killed by the criminals we were chasing.”
Also, have we seen or are we going to see any indication that any of the “latent criminals” besides Kogami (at that’s only kind of) have psychotic tendencies? Yeah, Kogami can get obsessive about cases, but the rest of them are just normal guys and gals. The title of “latent criminal” seems to be simply told to us rather than shown for the main characters, when it should be where we get the most complex cases.
*gave Yayoi a locked gun.
Oh yeah, and Sasayama was a pretty good example of what a “latent criminal” seems like in the field, I just wish he wasn’t the only proper example we’ve been given.
Also, GAH I NEED BLEACH TO THE EYES after seeing the ED.
Which is why I think the most significant plot point of the show wold be a clear criteria of how SYBIL judges others. If we know that we would be able to asses the advantages and flaws of the system. It would also answer how latent criminals are rooted out or how Makishima can bypass it.
And here’s something that should’ve been revealed or established in the first couple of episodes: WHY THEY NEED THE DAMN SIBYL SYSTEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. Was it a single incident? Was it through pushed lobbying over decades and only recently implemented? Pretty much my biggest question from the start of the series has been why they need this whole thing in the first place.
So that the responsibility of handling crime and the pressure of upholding justice can be taken off human hands. Its seems easier to put the blame on a machine if the decision made turns out wrong at the end of the day, and a machine isn’t swayed by personal biases.
While the Sibyl system has and will always have flaws that cannot be fully accounted for, I think it’s actually a workable one, provided that it’s designed and constantly updated by people who haven’t lost themselves in the practically unthinking society that Sibyl is currently the overlord of.
That would certainly be easier to swallow if, like Frag said, we got actual guidelines as to what the system uses to judge a person as a latent criminal or not. Then maybe certain characters would make more sense in the positions they’re in, instead of simply having informed flaws that are told and not shown.
It’s similar to Marvel’s Civil War storyline, where an act was put forth requiring Superheros to register officially and reveal their identities to the public. The problem is the Marvel was too lazy to nail down what exactly the act stated, making it hard for the stories that covered it to contradict themselves when talking about it. If Urobuchi wants to present a thought experiment like having a system that determines justice instead of the authorities themselves, he should go the extra mile and make sure he gets out all the information regarding it so that all the guidelines are seen and understood. If not in the show itself, then in supplementary materials like the website or the spin-off manga. You’ve got the tools, Gen, make use of them!
while I do hope for the continuation of the events following episode 11, I was half expecting something like this to happen… we can’t always have epicness week after week 🙁 it is a decent episode by itself, and certainly put some light to yayoi and sasayama xD
my biggest complaint is the new OP/ED… while OP 1 wasn’t my favorite, at least it is better than this new one… ED on the other hand is far worse… wish I could have ED 1 back 🙁
and lastly, thanks for the post verdant, and thanks for the caps, Bakamochi!
its funny how, this far into the show, people are still yammering about how sybil’s flawed…no shit, sybil’s flawed…if it were perfect, there’d be no need for cops…i bet however it looks now is a whole better than when sybil wasn’t around…yes makishima couldn’t be judged, yes dominators are not equipped with an manual override button on top…thats what people like kougami is there for…to fix shit, to make the sacrifice, and to give us a story…so unless sybil decides to go cuckoo one day and decides to annihilate humanity on a whim…stop bitching about an ai…
yayoi looks way better in a suit than in some halfassed rocker costume…and coupled with those perfect lips of hers…hmmm…
funniest thing that occurred to me was when yayoi was questioning the evacuees about rina’s whereabouts, and the woman just stood and waited for yayoi to finish her sentence before telling her off and flee…that looked so damn awkward…
The contrast between the concern she showed for Rina and the mental fortitude she displayed in attempting to gun down her former flame shows just how principled Yayoi is, how strong her moral conviction is
If that was the case it looked rather awkward, she did not try hard enough before resorting to violence. I’d rather think she finally found who to blame for the years spent in the “rehab” facility…
Coincidentally, on the same day I saw a movie called Decoder which made for a fun counterpoint (it tells a story of a guerilla DJ fighting government-sponsored brainwashing through muzak in a dystopian consumerist society, William Burroughs and Genesis P. Orridge play supporting roles FTW). Some of you might want to watch it too – it has very Philip K Dick-ish flavour, but so does Psycho-Pass at times.
I like the subtle touches that have been done with Yayoi’s character. While first appearing as a cold professional, the look at her past shows she used to be just as talkative and emotional as the next person.
The system has subdued, almost broken a bright young woman. Only two or three times has she voiced any personal feelings, most notably when she comforted that girl during the school killings.
“It still played an important role in the general narrative of the series…”
…by telling the evasive backstory of a so far useless character.
And Sibyl can be cured by molotov cocktails apparently.
Because molotov cocktails have no crime co-efficient. Watch out guys! You can’t shoot it with your dominators!
I don’t think anything in the episode shows how she really believes in the Sibyl system. Her only dream is to perform with Rina. With her quiet personality it seems to leave a lot of ambiguity. She is so quiet so far in the main story that it is hard to tell what kind of insights this might shed on her behavior.
I think the main reason Yayoi turned her gun on Rina was that she felt betrayed (Rina’s attitude towards her dream of performing again together) and helpless. The endless denied requests for Ernie ball and Kogami’s ploy was to show her the only way out of helplessness in the current scheme of things was to take grasp of power by becoming an enforcers.
I wonder if Yayoi assumed that the dominator system would be nonlethal take down, so she could stop Rina without killing her.
I have a serious question:
There are zones where the Sibyl System isn’t allowed to work. Why don’t people just move there?
Since the first episode abolition blocks haven’t been mentioned anymore. I’m not saying that the system shouldn’t be fought against, but at least you can live free from it while you fight it. Do you think blue hair girl lived in an abolition block? it didn’t seem so. I wish they explored that a little more.
Also this episode made like less of the girl the episode was about. I liked blue hair girl.
I predict this is going end up like either minority report or the matrix. either total abolition or give the people the choice to live in the system or not. the last i supposed they already had.
I find it strange that this far into the show, there are still so many people defending Sibyl, a system that doesn’t take the humanity of the very people it judges into account. The system is written by men too. Maybe it was initially created for good purposes, but ended up doing so much ill.
Also I think the reason that there aren’t more groups running around fighting against this system, is that it is relatively new (1, 2 generations, not even?), and that possible malcontents were probably the first against the wall, before they had the chance to react.
Reminds me of how a friend’s grandfather was pushed to suicide by the Chinese government during their leap forward movement, for the crime of having a German medical school education and being a doctor, and thus judged more likely to speak out. Many other academics shared his fate.
Yeah, kind of makes you wonder why they have it at all.
Which is bad, considering it’s the biggest plot device in the story.
I don’t mind flashbacks as long as they actually have a purpose. I wonder how this will tie into the story? Parallelism?
Amazing episode.
Sasayama is not the character I expected him to be. From the photo of him smiling and Kougami saying he liked women and kept touching Yayoi and Shion’s butt I expected him to have a womanizing, cheerful, seducing personality but he’s kind of the opposite. He’s stern and aggressive so that came as a surprise to me.
Also I’m guessing those aren’t the real OP and ED. Well.. I hope not. The song used there will stay but I hope the animations won’t. The OP and pretty much used anime footages and ED, we didn’t get to see much other than few news one.
For a title as severe as “latent criminal” I expected the rest to be like that to some extent.
> Hopefully Yayoi won’t be a victim to Urobuchi Gen’s sadism anytime soon, because while her story wasn’t filled with the typical suffering as one would expect from the screenwriter (since this episode was scripted by a rookie, Takaha Aya, instead), there’s a draw to her personality nonetheless.
Though you need to remember that the original story draft (ストーリー原案) was created by Urobuchi nevertheless, so she couldn’t add something original here, I guess.
I hope to draw some attention to Rina’s last line before leaving.
“You can’t shoot me”.
It doesn’t seem like she knows that Yayoi cannot fire her dominator. To me, it seems that she felt that she was doing the right thing for going against the Sybil system. In other words, despite her wrongful actions(if any, and she probably has some), she seems confident that the Dominator will be unable to fire at her due to her low CC.
Another Makishima type person who truly believes that what he/she is doing right and justified, and has a low crime coefficient as a result?
Just some food for thought
I wasn’t expecting Sasayama to be a douche,he enjoys his job way too much…
so Yayoi was a hack performance artist with no real artistic vision…
…and then she became a total sellout.
Huh…good for you I guess.
Dystopian features of Psycho-pass world and the sybil system are again highlighted, from futility of the efforts to “resocialize” latent criminals, to the naive and easily crushed attempts at resistance. And even if someone with power to make difference – politician, industrialist, whoever – tried to change status quo, it would be easy for Sybil to mark him as latent criminal… after all isn’t even thinking of changing the system a crime? Truly this makes enforcers into basically, “thought police”.
A stark difference in choices is seen in Yayoi and Rina. One thinks she should save her friend from self-destruction, other thinks she needs to help people free themselves. The narrative, interestingly, doesnt take sides – it is up to you to judge and decide, dear viever. What would you do in such world – which might be closer than you expect.
There is kind of contradiction in Dominater’s system that just consider individual’s emotion. When it comes to the authentic weird criminals, the bizarre equipment often shows the generous manner that someone who has good mental state or has particular cases nevertheless they are intended to commit the crime.
-Comes in whistling setting up a chair and sits on it as I puts on my Yuri Goggles- Don’t mind me. P:
Right there with you.