Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 5

This episode was really interesting and Makishima finally started messing with Kogami. Before I go into the details of Makishima’s plot, I want to talk about one of the most impressive things about this episode.

Ginoza apologized to Kogami for not trusting him and not believing in the existence of Makishima

Ginoza deserves some credit for bringing himself to apologize to an enforcer and for admitting that he was wrong. He didn’t even like treating them like humans and yet he can honestly apologize to Kogami. It makes his character more interesting, especially considering how he doesn’t mind looking down on Kogami, his former partner, the same way he looks down on other enforcers. It didn’t mean he suddenly changed and started treating enforcers better though. He was still his old self, he later called Akane a brat and told her that she is new and she might end up being an enforcer herself if she wasn’t careful enough.

I have to admit that Akane managed to impress me a little by standing up to Ginoza

Let me introduce another important character. Here is the guy who killed Rikako.

Senguji- A cyborg

Everything except Senguji’s brain and nervous system is artificial. He enjoys hunting. Makishima usually supplies the victims and Senguji locks them up in a huge abandoned building and hunts them down. His prey this time is Kogami. You can see where this is going right?

Makishima lured Kogami into his trap using one of Akane’s friends called Yuki. Of course, he didn’t just want Kogami to be killed. He is interested in his character after all. So he turned it into a game, giving some random items to Kogami that could help him survive. He even gave him a way to contact his colleagues. I also have to say that I didn’t expect Kogami to protect Yuki to that extent, since he is different from the justice obsessed protagonists we’ve seen so far. I did assume he would protect Yuki but there was no reason for him to become her shield.  If Sibyl decided that Yuki is too dangerous to be allowed to live, he would kill her without a second thought. At the same time, he is willing to put his life on the line to save a stranger’s life. He isn’t happy about being an enforcer and he knows that he is doomed to live like an outcast for the rest of his life because of Sibyl. At the same time, he trusts Sibyl, the same piece of code that decided that he is no different from the criminals he hunts. There is a contradiction right there. Kogami is not a bad guy and he knows that himself. He knows that Kagari, Masaoka and Yayoi are people who shouldn’t be locked up. So he should know that Sibyl is not always right and yet he is willing to kill just because Sibyl told him to. He is not stupid. He is not someone who would simply shoot and follow Sibyl’s orders because standing there with a criminal in front of him and thinking whether the criminal actually deserves to die or not is too big of a burden for him. So I can’t help but wonder how all this works inside Kogami’s brain. His faith in Sibyl’s judgement seems rather illogical.

Coming back to the hunt, there is no way Senguji is going to win this round. He is too used to killing weak victims with no power to fight back and now he has to deal with Kogami, a guy who is completely different from the weak little rabbits he hunted so far.

Young Kogami and Ginoza

We learned that Ginoza’s father is a latent criminal. From all the subtle signs, we can say that it is probably Masaoka. It makes sense that way. He talked Akane out of filing a complaint on Ginoza and he also got mad at Ginoza when he was picking on Akane. He even called him by his first name.

Why else would he think he could get away with doing something like this to an inspector?

The relationship between Ginoza and Masaoka becomes more interesting if we assume that they are father and son. Ginoza suffered a lot because his father was a latent criminal. He doesn’t respect Masaoka, in fact he is always disrespectful and looks down on him and yet here is Masaoka, just being a parent and trying to look out for him.

There are also some other interesting characters in this episode. I will write more about them if they appear frequently enough.

Kogami picking a fight with a drone because it didn’t let him smoke

Just some nice random shots from the episode.

See you next time ^^/

Other posts on Psycho-Pass New Edit Version:

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 4

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 3

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 2

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 1

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 4

In this episode we got to know the story of the girl who was killing people and creating those grotesque pieces of art.

Rikako Ouryou

Her father was an artist who loved painting and he always drew pictures of naked dismembered women. According to him, these pictures represent the fact that people are capable of unimaginable cruelty and by knowing that, they can learn to control themselves and become more human.

Here is a picture he drew. Rikako copied this one for her little art show.

I don’t know much about art but that picture is not something I would call a good picture. To me it is just a twisted piece of cruelty. I would never want it hanging in my room and I never would have guessed that it is supposed to teach people the importance of being human.. Rikako’s father welcomed Sibyl but at the same time he lost his purpose in life because of Sibyl. Sibyl built a world without cruelty and he no longer had to teach people about being human. This took a toll on him. He got addicted to stress medications and ended up dying because of it.

It looks like Makishima is the antagonist’s real name, or at least an alias he uses often. This is what Makishima said about Rikako, ‘To her it is like her father was killed twice.’ As far as Rikako is concerned, her father’s talent and soul were killed because of Sibyl. That one statement about her father being killed twice makes Makishima all the more terrifying. He understood exactly how Rikako felt about the whole thing and why she was killing people and trying to make the world remember her father. Makishima gives the same vibe as Johan from Monster and Izaya from Durarara!! He understands people better than everyone else. He understands what a person is thinking and how much the person is suffering and at the same time we can’t help but wonder if Makishima is half human. He understands a person’s suffering but he can stomp on a life as if it is trash. The fact that he understands people gives him power over them. He can manipulate them the way he wants.It is like he is sitting in a high-up place, looking down on humans, toying with him for his amusement and tossing them away when he is bored. I like antagonists like that and at the same time I can’t help but think that the existence of such a guy in the real world would be disturbing.

He didn’t mind helping Rikako do this to a young girl.

I am actually surprised that a guy like Makishima helped Rikako. She was not being cautious at all. She only killed students from her school and she imitated her father’s works, all of which could easily be traced back to her. I know that her father’s works were removed by Sibyl and people no longer remembered him but I am sure Sibyl would have at least saved  copies of all this works. I am expecting people who built Sibyl to at least have enough common sense to do that. Kogami did trace it all back to Rikako. It was all too easy for him. Makishima probably knew that Rikako would be caught pretty soon. I expected Makishima to not have any interest in a toy with that little intelligence.

Watching Kogami calmly barge into Rikako’s school, point a Dominator at her and try to pull the trigger once the Dominator said that her crime coefficient was high was amusing.

He doesn’t mind killing a minor. He was going to shoot her and leave a bloody mess behind.

This was how Rikako ended up once Makishima got bored of her.

In this episode we also learned about what happens to enforcers once an inspector thinks they are useless. They will be locked up in a place with high security and will never be allowed to go out. The place has vents for poisonous gas and these retired enforcers can easily be killed if they appear to do anything dangerous. This makes us look at Kagari, Masaoka and the other enforcers in a different way. They are running around protecting civilians, killing criminals, dirtying their hands and putting their lives on the line knowing very well that the society will always treat them the same way it treats all the criminals they kill and the people they protect probably look down on them too.

Makishima is now interested in Kogami because of the way he solved the case.

Also, the enforcers had to use holo avatars for questioning the students because the school management didn’t want to allow the students’ Psycho-Pass to get clouded unnecessarily. Watching Masaoka and Kagari walk around in that nice cheerful avatar was funny.

I just wanted to put this image here. It looks so beautiful.

See you next time ^^/

Other posts on Psycho-Pass New Edit Version:

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 3

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 2

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 1

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 3

I know it has been a while since my last Psycho-Pass post. I will try to take less time writing new posts from now on.

This is another action packed episode with two different cases. It was interesting and we also got to learn some new things about the characters. I will start with introducing the rest of Kogami’s team. They’ve been around since the first episode and it is high time I talked about them.

Ginoza

Ginoza is an inspector and is Akane’s senior who looks over her work and sees that she does her job well. He doesn’t think that enforcers are any different from the criminals he arrests. We see this at the very beginning of the first episode where he told Akane that she is better off thinking that enforcers are not humans like her. He started off being a character who mistreated enforcers.

Kagari

Kagari is an enforcer who has been locked up ever since he was five because his Psycho-Pass is high and Sibyl considered him dangerous. Now how can Sibyl judge whether or not a five year old kid can grow up to be a criminal?  I admit that there are some psychos who start killing at a very young age but that is not enough reason to isolate a kid whithout actually knowing what kind of a person he will become. As far as we can see Kagari is a normal person with a good instinct. He knows how a criminal’s brain works but that doesn’t make him a criminal.

Masaoka

Masaoka is another enforcer who doesn’t deserve to be treated like a criminal. He is a good old detective whose Psycho-Pass is clouded because he is good at his job. If I have to compare him to someone, it will be Soichiro Yagami from Death Note. They are both good detectives. The only difference is people respect Soichiro while they look down on Masaoka.

There is another member Yayoi . She is the silent type and doesn’t interact with others much. So I don’t know a lot about what kind of a person she is.

In this episode the MWPSB managed to kill the guy who was killing people and impersonating them using their avatars. I also want to say that we got to see the white haired guy talk about why he is giving ammunition to people who want it but don’t know how to get it. According to him, when you give people power and they can act outside their ethics, you get to see their soul sometimes. I have to admit that I am a little excited because he did turn out to be the kind of guy I hoped he will be. He is not evil. He is rather like the child who breaks the wings of a dragonfly for amusement.

They moved right on to the next case after solving the first one. Now the white haired guy is helping a girl make pieces of ‘art’. Her idea of art is a bit grotesque though. She killed one of her classmates, chopped her into pieces and turned her into this and put the corpse up for display.

She says that she has more art pieces she wants to make -_-

The girl referred to the white haired guy as ‘Makishima-Sensei’. He is probably pretending to be a teacher or some kind of higher-up at her school. I doubt Makishima is his real name. He doesn’t have a reason to tell the girl his real name and they maintain records of all teachers and students at schools. Using his real name will make it easier for the police to trace him. But then again, he is the kind of guy who might enjoy thrills like that. So I am not sure. For the time being I will continue calling him the white haired guy.

We also managed to know a little about Kogami’s past. He was once an inspector who worked together with Ginoza. He got along well with an enforcer named Sasayama. They were investigating a case and Sasayama got killed and Kogami’s Psycho-Pass kept shooting up until he ended up being an enforcer himself.  The case was never solved and he is still trying to catch the guy who killed Sasayama. He believes that the white haired guy is the one responsible for Sasayama’s death.

Sasayama and Kogami during their old days

This also tells us a lot about Kogami’s personality from when he was an inspector. He respected enforcers and was good friends with them, enough to ignore his own life and go hunt the guy who killed his friend. It also justifies Ginoza’s actions a little. He saw his partner lose it and become an enforcer. It is no wonder that he doesn’t want to be close to the enforcers and doesn’t want to sympathize with them. He is only protecting  Akane and himself.

Now that I am done talking about the episode, I want to talk about Sibyl system. I don’t dislike the entire idea of the system. It is a rather good idea. Sure, we have only seen violence, crime and Sibyl making enforcers kill criminals, but it is probably because we are looking at Sibyl through the eyes of MWPSB. Normal people probably go around all their lives without ever being kidnapped, attacked, threatened or robbed. There are few exceptions, like the girl in the first episode Kogami almost killed. Let us take a look at Sibyl as a system that makes humans lives easier and safer. Sibyl will tell you what you are good at and ask you to choose a job you are best suited for. Sibyl will make sure that you are safe by locking up all the bad guys. It is a good system but it is the way it is executed makes it less appealing. Sibyl system is not good or evil. It is just a program and it does what it is programmed to do. There is no such thing as a perfect product. It is the humans who somehow stopped working on ways to improve Sibyl system.

Here is a scenario. Let us say that there is a guy who had some troubles in his workplace. He will be more worried about his Psycho-Pass getting clouded than his actual problems and it will only put extra pressure on him. Instead they should say that it is okay if his Psycho-Pass is clouded and give him enough time to recover. Also people like Kagari, Masaoka and Kogami shouldn’t be locked up. Instead they should make a list of people whose Psycho-Pass values are high and put them in a priority list so that whenever they are around a Psycho-Pass scanner on the road or a building, the system will scan their Psycho-Pass first and see if there is any change. As long as their Psyho-Pass remains constant or shows only a slight increase they should be allowed to roam free. Also they can make sure that every person who comes out of his house should get his Psycho-Pass scanned. They can also appoint some cops to keep an eye on people like that occasionally. They can keep cameras in all work areas to ensure that bullying doesn’t take place. They should also make it so that people don’t have to take up a career just because they have an aptitude for it. They should be free to choose and if they fail, then Sibyl can suggest something they will be good at doing. They should also keep taking feedback from people and keep improving Sibyl as a system, find out where it is not doing well and change things so that Sibyl gives more importance to watching over people instead of judging them. If something like that can be done I don’t mind having a system like Sibyl around. After all it will decrease our crime ratio quite a bit and make the world safer.

Kogami working on a case

If you have something to say about Sibyl system or have any more suggestions about making it a better system feel free to drop a comment.

See you next time ^^/

Other posts on Psycho-Pass New Edit Version:

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 2

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 1

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 2

Psycho-Pass is a great anime and I want to write a post for each of it’s episodes. It will probably take a long time for me to do that and I apologize for that in advance =)

The episode started with the white haired antagonist talking to one of his subordinates. Right now it looks like he is just helping people commit crimes. If there is a guy who wants to kill someone, he would provide him with ammunition. He looks like he is just doing this for amusement since he doesn’t benefit from the crimes in anyway. Maybe he is afraid of dirtying his hands or maybe he thinks watching the crimes if more fun than committing them. We don’t know for sure yet. If it turns out that he is afraid of dirtying his hands I would be disappointed since I assumed at the beginning that he would make a good antagonist.

I wish they would tell us his name already.

In the first part of the episode, the antagonist provided a guy who was being bullied with a memory disc that could be used to hack drones. The guy used the drones to kill the people who bullied him.

It is funny how Sibyl doesn’t mind people being bullied as long as they manage to keep their psycho pass clear

Here is another interesting point. When Kogami saw him being bullied he got mad and he helped the guy. But when he came to know that the guy might be the one who killed his colleagues he didn’t mind pushing him into a corner until he snapped.

See what I mean?

He is nice and kind under normal conditions but when  he is on duty he really is like a hunting dog. He was smiling like he was having fun when he shot a drone. I’ve come to like his character quite a bit.

People like Kogami make good detectives

In the second part of the episode the MWPSB has to break into a house because the toilet in the house has been broken for two months and the owner still hadn’t reported it. I sure don’t want to live in an era where police barge into my home just because I haven’t reported a broken toilet. Kogami found traces of a struggle in the house and they confirmed that the house’s owner has been killed but the owner’s avatar is still active in an online community.  This time the antagonist is helping a guy kill people and impersonate their avatars. In the antagonist’s words, he is just giving people a nudge in the right direction and watching them become wolves or guinea pigs.

I wish our virtual reality is as advanced *_*

That is it. The episode was action packed. There wasn’t an elaborate plot or explanations in this episodes. It looks like the animators are trying to make us get acquainted with the way the antagonist, Kogami and MWPSB worked. It was fun to watch and I am looking forward to the next episode. I wish they would tell us more about Kogami and the antagonist in the next episode.

See you next time ^^/

My other posts on Psycho-Pass New Edit Version:

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 1

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version Episode 1

I haven’t watched the original Psycho-Pass version and I wouldn’t be able to compare the two versions.

At the beginning, we see Akane Tsunemori, a new recruit of the CID, become part of a team hunting down a criminal. They are police and are called the MWPSB or the Public Safety Bureau.

Akane

A system called Sibyl made the jobs of these people extremely easy. It is possible to calculate the Psycho Pass of people. Psycho Pass is sort of the mental health of the individual and based on that, the crime coefficients of people can be calculated. It is the probability that a person might commit a crime. If the crime coefficient is high, the person will be locked or killed. All the inspectors like Akane have a team of people called Enforcers working under them. Enforcers are people that Sibyl decided are too harmful for the society and the only time they can go out is when they are investigating a crime. It must be convenient, leaving all the dirty work to the Enforcers.

Shinya Kogami- An Enforcer

I’ve seen enough Psycho-Pass images to know that Kogami is a protagonist but he didn’t get enough screen time in this episode. I didn’t expect him to be an Enforcer though. I wonder how crime coefficients are actually calculated? There isn’t enough explanation about that in the anime. Maybe Sibyl calculates the crime coefficient based on the person’s heartbeat, his stress levels, his history etc. I wonder if they are enough to say that a person is ‘bad’. There hasn’t been enough talk about how Sibyl works but I already dislike the system quite a bit. It makes the detectives  arrest or kill people who have done nothing wrong just because there is a probability that they might do something wrong. Now do you see something wrong with this logic? We all have moments when we get really mad and think of punching or hurting someone but it doesn’t mean that we will go ahead and do it. Sibyl will consider people like that dangerous because they’ve thought of using violence.

Kogami using a Dominator. I am sure a lot of people would have liked to use this fancy gun

Dominators are said to be the eyes of Sibyl. They can calculate the crime coefficients and use a laser beam to paralyse or kill the  criminals. They are extremely powerful and leave  a bloody mess behind. If the dominators tell them to shoot, they shoot. The detectives job look extremely simple doesn’t it?

Dominators can make people explode. I guess there are a lot of anime that like this killing method

Akane and her team had to hunt down a guy who ran away become the system detected that his Psycho Pass is clouded. He took a girl hostage. Kogami successfully killed the culprit but the girl’s psycho pass got clouded and that is understandable. She was living a peaceful and normal life until a guy took her hostage, raped her and abused her. She might have felt powerless, confused and angry. She might have thought about hurting the guy who did that to her. Sibyl decided that this girl is dangerous because she felt such strong emotions and the dominator’s mode in Kogami’s hand changed to the lethal eliminator mode, the mode used to kill people.

Interestingly enough, Kogami was going to shoot her, before Akane shot him with the paralyser mode. Akane later talked to the girl and managed to lower her crime coefficient and save her. It isn’t like Kogami was a cold hearted guy. He got used to shooting people using the dominator so much that at some point he stopped thinking about what he was doing. He shot when the Sibyl told him to shoot. That is all. There is also one more interesting person in the anime.

His name was not mentioned but it is clear that he is the antagonist of this anime. He looks like the kind of person who does ‘bad’ things just because they are interesting. Antagonists like him are more interesting to watch than the antagonists who want to rule the world, or who do bad things because they are evil. Imagine a guy walking up to Aizen or Orochimaru and pointing a gun at them. They won’t be scared or angry, they’ll probably just give the guy an amused smile and see what the guy is going to do next. They won’t run or hide and that is precisely why they are interesting. I don’t know how the antagonist of this anime really is. Maybe I am just placing too many hopes on him because he looked interesting. I hope he won’t disappoint me though. I am more interested in Kogami’s and this guy’s characters more than I am interested in Akane’s character. She doesn’t look that promising. We’ve seen tons of characters who play the good protectors of justice part.

The music is normal and most of time you don’t even notice it. The animation is very good and the backgrounds are detailed. Take a look at the images below.

It looks pretty, doesn’t it?

Try watching this anime if you find time. I highly recommend this anime to all the anime fans who like psychological anime. I don’t recommend this to people who hate blood, violence and brutality  though.

See you next time ^^/