[Dawnstorm]

At this point, people who enter this thread probably have seen both shows, or don't mind spoilers. At any rate, there's a spoiler warning in the title, and there hasn't been a spoiler tag in the last couple of posts, so I'm not going to use spoiler code in this post either. You have been warned.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Spoiler:

The show actually provided a very valid reasoning behind incorporating human brains into the super computer of Sibyl. It's because machines could not hope to understand the complexity of human nature. Machines are in fact, really stupid. Any computer engineer could tell you how stupid a computer is, and we're not getting any closer to them being even 1/100 capable as a human being in thought processes. So the idea that humans would have to be a part of the system is a fairly logical one. I personally think if this process was completely algorithmic base though, it would not have mattered much. Someone or something, AI or otherwise, would have to be coming to these decisions whether they are part of the system or operating the system. The exact mechanism behind the PP ratings was pretty irrelevant in the end because the PP ratings (aside from criminally asymptomatic individuals) were more or less quite accurate.

Even though I used words like "downright stupid" (which I shouldn't have), my point isn't one of plausibility: it's how much it contributes to the story.

In other words: what does involving human brains in the Sybil system change, and how does the story reflect that? Here, I find that the system has been mostly played for effect. "If we show that footage, the system is history." It also serves as the plot set-up: In terms of free-will: We control you, and if we can't controll you, we absorb you so we can better control others.

Enter free will. If you yourself are not in control, someone or something else is. If it were a simple AI (one based on algorhythms like, say, the thing that plays games for you), what controls you is a machine. An autonomous AI would be more person like. But if you're using the brains of psychopaths, then - in some manner - you're ruled by psychopaths. Not really, since the collective has effects you can't quite predict. But PP doesn't exploit that difference. By focussing on Makishima, what we get is a suggestion of: "people like this rule you". It's not quite that simple, because Makishima refuses to be part of it, etc. But antagonist-wise that's what it's played for. A machine would be bad, but psychopaths are worse.

It's possible that's not the intention, but it's such an obvious and expected reaction that I expect a writer who doesn't want this would counter it. All the characters we see have a viewer-friendly, averse reaction to the brain-in-a-char. We have no idea how the system came into practise, either. Yet the system is fairly young. Who is its architect? Still alive? (It's possibly been mentioned, I don't know, but it's not really a feature of the show.)

Imagine for example, a test run (say, as a profiling tool). Imagine a young, idealistic scientist who can solve crimes with this machine, but can't actually do anything, since the experiements are illegal. Imagine an underdog fight to get this accepted. We'd have to get his/her side of the story. Better if he's likable and the antagonists are beaurocrats who just protect the status-quo. Because narratively directed sympathies clash with cliché morality, that sort of set-up would force anyone to think through issues.

I'm not saying that PP should go this route; but they're not mining the potential of the set-up for anything but (a) shock value, and (b) a fairly simplistic philosophical premise, namely that an outside perspective is better at solving inside problems (because they're more objective).

It's true that it "works" in the show (with minor hickups), but the way the show presents the evidence is also not very convincing: uniform crowd behaviour (which comes in extremes of naivity, frustration, range and fear). There's so little nuance, that I have trouble buying the evidence. I find it hard to believe in the "reality" of the life I'm seeing, but the philosophy is not compelling enough to suspend my disbelief for it.

My favourite episode of the final arc was the one with the bad art and animation, where all they do is talk. The show is at its strongest when they pit characters against each other, and unlike many others I actually liked how they ended Akane's character arc. It's just that in the end it doesn't amount to much, because the world feels shallow.

SSY is not without flaws, but it does provide a much more interesting setting. I agree with what you said in your last post:

SSY's story is just about growing up in a dystopia setting in which the truth of it is slowly unraveled to our main characters. The driving force of the plot is learning more about the society around them and the horrifying experiences they undergo as this happens. In some ways, you could argue that the focus on their society is even more prominent than in Psycho-Pass's case.

Precisely. Importantly, we know, roughly, how it came to be. That helps us understand what happened, and it also provide goggles with which to view the show. For example, that the bakenezumi tried to eliminate the humans can be seen in the light of the shows history: if non-cantus users wouldn't have threatened cantus users back then, they might not have been turned into bakenezumi in the first place.

With PP, we don't know how it came to be, which is especially hard to swallow since the system is so extremely young. We also don't know why. Better efficiency in crime-fighting, which is hard to quantify in the first place, seems to be the only thing it has going for it. Also, I'm pretty certain that the sort of experiments needed to develop this sort of system is currently illegal in Japan. So how did this happen? PP does a terrible job making me see how such a system could come into place.

In SSY, the system in place is terrible. But it's not, on the whole, run by terrible people. In addition, we understand why it's there in the first place. The effect of all of this is that it's hard to find villains, or even scapegoats.

In PP, we have no idea how the system comes to be. Thus we know little about its justifications (beyond being more efficient at the sort of stuff we're already doing). And the system is an easy target, because it's got a quasi-personality. If it talks to you in the form of that woman, it's literally a psychopath. Scrutiny at SSY-level would kill PP. (Or not, if you do a good job with it; but there's little of it in the show, as far as I can see.)

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

For reasons that I've already outlined, I just don't feel this groundswell of goodwill towards Saki and Satoru. I wish I could feel something stronger, I really do. But, the truth is, all I feel is indifference.

The scope of imagination that went into creating the New World is breathtaking. But I just can't shake the nagging feeling that the story overall pulled in too many different directions, without gelling together into a cohesive, thematic whole until the end. I don't know why the revelation that the queer-rats are "human" should be as amazing as it seems to be for many viewers, because it felt obvious to me a very long time ago. I recall that many anime-only viewers had already speculated along the same lines several weeks ago, so I can't be the only one who isn't particularly surprised by the outcome.

Well, to me, Saki was - from the beginning - more of a point-of-view character than a true protagonist. She could tell the story, because she was there all the way to the end. I thought the characterisation was servicable, and the pacing was at times to rapid, but that didn't bother me. I always had the bigger picture in mind when viewing the show and what happened to Saki & Co was actually secondary.

Since Saki is also our narrator, the limits of her perspective also make the story. Saki is a good vehicle to tell the story, because she was there for all the key scenes. But her point of view is unreliable, becuase she's a tad naive. (For example, I absolutely loved the final picture of the scroll that says "the power of imagination changes the world", or something to that effect. It shows both Saki's hopefulness, but if you've watched the show from the point-of-view of a present day human, then you can see that "the power of imagination" has, quite literally, changed the face of the earth to what we have here. There's an irony in that image, I just enjoy.

There's an us-vs.-them line plotted into the story that's delicious. Take the ending for example; Saki destroyed the "psychobuster" to save Satoru, and then she asked Krioumaru to sacrifice himself (and held his corpse - now, isn't that touching?). Later, she asks Squealer for an apology, which - I think - she wouldn't do if she actually got the situation the bakenezumi are in. Has Saki learned from all this? Maybe, maybe not.

What I love about SSY is that the story works even if you think Saki is too naive. This is only possible because of the setting focus I talked about above. Take, for example, one of the last scenes:

We see mole rats eating. A huge one waltzes over a little one and just eats, leaving the other one pinned with it. We go inside the building and hear Saki and Satoru talk about humans, bakenezumi, and mole rats. Then they go outside and keep talking, sitting on the stairs. They don't pay too much attention to the mole rats down there, but the camera sure does. There's an element of us-vs-them, in the image, that gets turned on its head. Are the bakenezumi humans? Well, in the end, the fat rat eats. In the end, there's not so much difference between mole rats and humans. Saki doesn't reflect that, or at least not explicitly. Squealer wasn't the fat rat; he was one of smaller ones who knew when to get out of the way, and when to eat. Step up far enough, and the fattest rats are human cantus users. Restrict their ability to eat and their methods to deal with the smaller rats, and they'll starve. It's a back and forth. Who's the fat rat now?

(Incidently, the kid I liked the best among them was Mamoru. Imagine if how frustrated I would have been had I watched for the characters. )