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View Poll Results: Psycho-Pass - Episode 17 Rating
Perfect 10 44 51.16%
9 out of 10 : Excellent 22 25.58%
8 out of 10 : Very Good 11 12.79%
7 out of 10 : Good 6 6.98%
6 out of 10 : Average 1 1.16%
5 out of 10 : Below Average 1 1.16%
4 out of 10 : Poor 1 1.16%
3 out of 10 : Bad 0 0%
2 out of 10 : Very Bad 0 0%
1 out of 10 : Painful 0 0%
Voters: 86. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 2013-02-15, 01:03   Link #61
BoyTitan
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Originally Posted by Ultramarinus View Post
Yeah, I find it rather hilarious that one guy has the ability to topple a country with just his fists. I could buy it if I was watching Kenshiro.

So they have gigantic Tachikomas with cannons but they cannot assign multiple security drones to a prisoner transport. Suspension of disbelief has a limit and they went past it during this episode multiple times.

Oh God, I'm now just wishing that they won't screw up GitS Arise this bad. I'd literally tear my TV in half.
Dude they have never been turned down before,And it was just touma in charge of recruiting him and he gravely underestimated him as maki said he was not careful.
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Old 2013-02-15, 01:07   Link #62
pyu
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Awesome episode.

And for people who think our leaders in real life do not have sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies, think again.

I believe there was a journalist in the UK who spent many years doing research on business/government leaders in the West and asking willing individuals to fill out a form which basically was a psychological test performed by psychiatrists to identify psychopathy and sociopathy in convicted criminals.

You guys wouldn't really like the result...
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Old 2013-02-15, 01:22   Link #63
Dark Wing
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Originally Posted by LightningZERO View Post
I can see Kougami and Makishima working together to take down the system, but the end will be their philosophical battle in determining the future humanity should follow...or something
Nah, I'm more inclined to believe that Kougami would turn on Makishima and kill him because he feels Makishima needs to pay for his crimes.

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Originally Posted by pyu View Post
Awesome episode.

And for people who think our leaders in real life do not have sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies, think again.

I believe there was a journalist in the UK who spent many years doing research on business/government leaders in the West and asking willing individuals to fill out a form which basically was a psychological test performed by psychiatrists to identify psychopathy and sociopathy in convicted criminals.

You guys wouldn't really like the result...
Like I've always said the greatest minds in the world must have been the craziest. After all one would have to be more then a little crazy to think up many of their ideas.

That being said the results wouldn't surprise me one bit. It's well known that many psychopaths and sociopaths have been rules in any and every part of world history.
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Old 2013-02-15, 01:25   Link #64
Panzerklein
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How the Sibyl work, remind me the Calculator in Fallout Tactcs: Brotherhood of Steel.
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Old 2013-02-15, 03:07   Link #65
Beltane70
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While I liked the episode, I was quite a bit annoyed by how weak the Chief's cyborg body was. If it was as advance as "he" said it was, shouldn't it have been made out of materials that would prevent it from being so severely damaged by a human wielding only a computer terminal?
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Old 2013-02-15, 04:59   Link #66
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Dude they have never been turned down before,And it was just touma in charge of recruiting him and he gravely underestimated him as maki said he was not careful.
None of the 240 people refused before? That's practically unbelievable.

But the thing is that, Makishima has multiple times demonstrated that he's ULTRA dangerous and cannot be expected to operate within normal expectations. He has just incited a full-scale riot the same day, to bring down the system. Why would make a u-turn to join the system a couple of hours later when what they offered was something that appeared to have no advantages whatsoever. You basically turn into a brain in a bowl and get to watch people all day like a security camera. And you're not really governing the country by yourself but with hundreds of others, so I couldn't understand the superiority propaganda of Touma.

Actually, they had assessed that he might refuse, hence one hand on the gun under the table. The security precautions however, is plain out stupid.
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Originally Posted by Panzerklein View Post
How the Sibyl work, remind me the Calculator in Fallout Tactcs: Brotherhood of Steel.
Ah, someone who's a fan of the genre, can't find that many people who both played FoT and Silent Storm.

To be honest, FoT made way more sense in that they actually protected the system. Here, it was as vulnerable as a wet tissue paper in the wind.
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Old 2013-02-15, 06:24   Link #67
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I have somewhat mixed feelings about this latest episode.

This anime is consistently good-to-great for two particular things:

1. Sheer entertainment value. It has awesome feel, look, and style for a futuristic dystopian sci-fi extravaganza. The characters are also fun, diverse, and engaging. Psycho-Pass definitely has "the sizzle".

2. Being thought-provoking. The show raises ideas, and concepts that are very interesting. Yes, many of them have been explored in other similar futuristic dystopian stories (such as the ones that Makishima himself has referenced), but this one manages to feel fresh to me by borrowing a little bit from each of those while putting its own modern spin on things. I think it also helps that this anime is increasingly Japanese in its focus, which certainly distinguishes it from a lot of other futuristic dystopian works.


And this episode is certainly no exception when it comes to "sheer entertainment value" and "being thought-provoking". It delivers both of the above beautifully.


That being said, the way the plot and setting and "the Sibyl system" contorts itself to give the anti-Sibyl forces at least a fighting chance is, yes, becoming increasingly hard to swallow. Without having pure magic to fall back on (as was the case in Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero), Gen seems to be having a bit of a hard time crafting believable ways for central characters to do what he wants them to do. I almost think he should have just given Makishima outright superpowers if the alternative was this.

With both Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero, there were very few (if any!) times when I felt that key characters made blazingly obvious mistakes that broke my suspension of disbelief. Characters certainly did make mistakes in these shows, but they were for easily believable and deeply human reasons (freezing in horror at the sight of your opponent being different and stronger than you thought, succumbing to the desire to take a huge risk to help someone you deeply love and/or admire, pursuing a particular ideal with reckless abandon, etc...).

But the gaping holes in how Sibyl conducts itself is starting to become a bit much. I just can't think of any good reason to make "an offer you can't refuse" to Makishima until you really do have him in a place where he literally can't refuse it. In other words, until you have him in a place where there really is no way for him to escape - Either join the Sibyl Collective or die. As Alpha Male as he is, Makishima is still just a man, so it's not like it's impossible to negate any risk when making an offer to him.

To be fair, antagonists who are undone by their own arrogance can work, and ultimately the Sibyl system is now 247 antagonists. But that's part of the problem. One man letting his megalomaniacal ego get to him isn't too hard to swallow - but 247 making the same mistake all in one shot? it's rather disappointing that out of 247 brains determined fit to rule, that none thought it might have been a good idea to take stiffer precautionary methods than this with Makishima.

To be fair again, I've certainly read supposedly super-smart comic book supervillains like Lex Luthor and Magneto come up with far more hare-brained schemes than anything Sibyl has done. Urobuchi's writing is still tighter than that of a lot of other writers. But for a man who was nigh-impeccably tight with Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero, I'm slightly disappointed with the plot holes that are starting to creep into this narrative.

I hope there's not too many more, or my views will shift much closer to that of Ultramarinus.

But even in a worst-case scenario, this anime still retains its two main strengths that I mentioned before. This episode was indeed a very entertaining and thought-provoking watch. I just hope that the contextual base for all of this can be the strong foundation that such a skyscraper of entertainment and intellectual allure deserves to have.


One other observation: It is indeed fascinating to think of what the wider world is like in Psycho-Pass. If nothing like Sibyl exists outside of Japan, than Sibyl must go a long way to determining what the non-Japanese think of Japan in the world of Psycho-Pass. Relations between Japan and other countries almost certainly must be strained.

Still, given the public face of Sibyl, I can easily imagine some political activists in America, Canada, Australia, etc... arguing that their countries would be better off emulating the Sibyl system used by Japan as it brings with it almost total employment and relative lack of crime. I find it interesting to think about political debates raging in various countries over the merits/demerits of the Sibyl system. It would probably be similar to our own debates over it here on Anime Suki. Ultimately, it looks like the libertarian critics of it would be largely (if not entirely) right, going by this episode at least.
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:02   Link #68
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To be fair, antagonists who are undone by their own arrogance can work, and ultimately the Sibyl system is now 247 antagonists. But that's part of the problem. One man letting his megalomaniacal ego get to him isn't too hard to swallow - but 247 making the same mistake all in one shot? it's rather disappointing that out of 247 brains determined fit to rule, that none thought it might have been a good idea to take stiffer precautionary methods than this with Makishima.
If I got it right, at the moment the chief was a single brain, they let him "handle" Makishima because they were friends. He also said something about not losing your single identity (s/he then sat on her chair to show Makishima how the switch brains works, or something like that; did they implied that they couldn't switch w/o a cable??). Not that this would redeem the whole scene, because honestly it couldn't. The fact alone that they didn't destroy the video is enough to condemn it, I'm still laughing.


Anyways, this episode, letting aside the sheer entertainment value gave me the same feeling I had in the previous one.
In that episode I felt that they cheapen Makishima to make shine Akane and in this one I felt like they cheapen the whole Sybil system to make shine Makishima.
On the matter I say that what he did in this episode is what I was expecting from him in the previous one.
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:12   Link #69
zeando
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I'd assume it's some sort of network, with the cyborg simply acting as a terminal/receptacle for the 200+ brains stored in the basement.

That said, if true, the cyborg shouldn't have cared about its "life" ending, by begging him to stop. On the other hand, based on how the cyborg looked when it shot up our midget enforcer, and how it looked later, I'd have to wonder at the possibility that there are multiple "chief" cyborgs, because that's a heck of a job at cleaning her up otherwise, though if that's true, it still makes it confusing that the cyborg would beg for its life.

So...I'm a little confused, though I still think it likely that "Touma", etc, are still "alive" in that big room down underneath the tower, and the begging a simple literary oversight.
Didn't touma himself explained they/brains take turns in using the chief cyborg body?
also, touma said to shouma, that nothing is left of him except his brain, while talking about his appearance
so, it should be quite clear touma's brain was in there, and he was one of the around 40 brains not currently being workpower for the system (or maybe it wasn't so clear )
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:19   Link #70
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rewatch the previous episode, didn't you noticed the chief overriding the sibyl judgment and manually enabling the decomposer mode on kagari?
Well as was said in previous episodes going from paralyze to destructive mode is not that hard but going from complete safe mode? I guess with their power it is possible though it was still a dumb idea considering how long it takes for dominator to load

They really messed up the scene with Makishima's escape.
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:25   Link #71
zeando
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Well as was said in previous episodes going from paralyze to destructive mode is not that hard but going from complete safe mode? I guess with their power it is possible though it was still a dumb idea considering how long it takes for dominator to load

They really messed up the scene with Makishima's escape.
are you thinking the chief would have tried to kill makishima? o_O losing such a nice brain?
it's likely he would have manually enabled just the paralizer
and also makes me wonder why they didn't kept shouma paralyzed until after they got his brain, i mean, brain first chit-chat later

if all the setup was touma's brain idea alone i could see the other brains being cursing him right now, if instead it was an hivemind idea they've just showed to be a bunch of idiotic brains
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:27   Link #72
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As everyone guessed, it is just a bunch of brains. What disappoints me is that it is just still very much under human authority...

I would like to see megalomaniac AI that forcefully took over.....
Aka computer taking over?

Sorry, I'll pass. I've seen way too many movies with such concept like for example Terminator and I, Robot.
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Old 2013-02-15, 07:33   Link #73
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The good:

- I liked the Kougami and Akane scene; Kougami's nervousness about Makishima was well done, as was his frustration towards Makishima being taken out of the MSWPB's hands.
- Ditto for Kougami's little Shougo-hallucination.
- Akane could be considering the pros and cons of the system by now.
- It was only a little scene, but I liked the interaction between Masaoka and Gino.
- The way that several of the team seemed to think Kagari didn't run away was good. Masaoka and Kougami are both pretty good at psychology and prediction.
- It was nice to see Makishima's very firm refusal of the system. It's a bit cheap, but it was an effective way to make the audience cheer for Makishima.

The bad:

- Rather than the series being a portrayal of a value clash between people and a well-meaning but deeply flawed Sybil system, we now have a cacklingly evil Sybil system that's not just using psychopaths' brains but is the psychopaths.

- Touma talked big about how they could force Makishima to join the system but he was going to ask him first anyway...but he had very few precautions in place. Relying on Makishima being disorientated or unwilling to fight, and having only a Sybil-equipped Dominator to fight with in case he did fight? Ridiculous.

And also ridiculous that he even asked him in the first place, given that he didn't intend to take "no" for an answer, and anyone with half a brain (...sorry...) should be able to guess that Makishima would refuse. Although it is a nice illustration of how omnipotent the Sybil system feels. The mistakes they've made actually make a lot more sense if they're viewed as the products of overblown egos who feel as if they are gods of prediction and judgement. (And yet they are okay with having the Inspectors and Enforcers making limited judgement calls...)

- It's looking more and more as if Kagari really died. There are very few possibilities left. Could be that the Sybil system changed its mind and decided to hold him captive to frame him and as an excuse for shutting down the MSWPB team. ("Just now, we caught your Enforcer, Kagari, and killed him. He had definitely run away. The MSWPB must take responsibility for this, and so you're all fired.") But then, they don't necessarily need him to still be alive for that plan. Only other possibility with him still living would be that Shion helped him escape using her mighty tech skills, but then, it would be very difficult for her to pull that off without being killed by Sybil herself, and she wasn't dead in this ep. But...you know, there were probably a bunch of helmets lying around. Kagari could possibly have escaped with one, although I don't know how he could avoid the cameras.
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Old 2013-02-15, 08:34   Link #74
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Rather than the series being a portrayal of a value clash between people and a well-meaning but deeply flawed Sybil system, we now have a cacklingly evil Sybil system that's not just using psychopaths' brains but is the psychopaths.
Eh. I think it's a bit hasty to label Sybil as evil right here and now. If anything, this series represents the quintessential clash between order and chaos, collectivism against individualism. Whether one side is more "evil" than the other is more a matter of personal conviction than anything else.

I'll admit. I did not expect the brains. It didn't really surprise me, but I didn't think it would really be that. Still, this episode clears up quite a few things about the system. One is that the system isn't quite as vulnerable as we were initially led to believe. After all, despite its flaws, the system is still an aggregation of human brains, allowing for a considerable degree of flexibility when it comes to judgment and enforcement.

Another revelation is that this fictional society is presumably the last society on Earth ruled by law. If we are to take this new information at face value, it would mean that the world is teetering between two extremes. In a sense you could view Sybil as a sort of extreme reaction towards the rising trend of anarchy in the world. Of course, my interpretation of that offhand line should be taken with a grain of salt.

Lastly, instead of a dictatorship as I initially assumed, the mode of governance used in the society is actually much closer to an aristocracy, where only the best minds are given the power to rule. To further complement that, these minds are robbed of that tendency for corruption and self-interest that plagues the human condition so much. They're all simply reduced to brains-in-a-vat determined to make the most efficient possible decision. You could even call it a grotesque caricature of Plato's ideal society.
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Old 2013-02-15, 09:03   Link #75
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The issue with the Sybil system is that it is entirely based on faith; it IS flawed, criminals DO commit crimes still. The only reason it still has power is because people believe in it.

Further, what people believe in was a lie. The Sybil system is not what they say it is, and this means permanent deception of the population.

So we don't have an aristocracy in Sybil; we have a Theocracy. It only exists because of faith, nothing more or less. The common people live in the lie, and everything works as long as they keep believing in what isn't true; That Sybil is perfect.

Sybil needs to shut down not because it is evil, but because you can't rule via faith alone. If they showed everyone what Sybil really is, let everyone know its limits and flaws, and the population STILL accepts it? Then you have an Aristocracy.
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Old 2013-02-15, 09:20   Link #76
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I'm not sure how you get much more evil than a totalitarian oligarchy that has completely eliminated the judiciary system, has the ability to quickly/instantly determine the death or permanent incarceration of any citizen, has the populace completely duped on what it really is, and is made up by a bunch of sociopathic brains.

Honestly, a completely non-emphatic machine would probably be preferable to this. At least such a machine would almost certainly be objective. With these brains, how can you ever be assured that they're not ordering someone to be killed just for sadistic shits and giggles?

We know at least one of them is a serial killer, and they just wanted to recruit another serial killer. So it's hardly out of the question that Sibyl might order someone killed "for the lolz".

It's honestly impressive how disturbingly monstrous Gen has made Sybil. In some ways, it's more frightening than the Borg.
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Old 2013-02-15, 09:23   Link #77
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But even in a worst-case scenario, this anime still retains its two main strengths that I mentioned before. This episode was indeed a very entertaining and thought-provoking watch. I just hope that the contextual base for all of this can be the strong foundation that such a skyscraper of entertainment and intellectual allure deserves to have.
I agree there are a lot of plot holes but then if you remember I complained about the world building early on in this series which I think creates these plot holes.

I find the concept of psychopaths judging everyone to be a fascinating idea but the whole way this system came about does seem silly to me and it still hasn't really been explained.

But the series like you said is super entertaining and well as I've said many time Urobuchi is a master of dialog. Strangely enough I find most of the interesting philosophy not in the story itself but in the random bits of dialog: what Makishima says to the chief, Kougami's discussions with Akane, etc

Of course some of this dialog is taken from other sources but even then I enjoy seeing all the references Urobuchi is making and think he must be having tons of fun with this series, showing of what he loves.

I suppose in some ways the bigger picture might be a bit disappointing but for me these little moments spread throughout the series are endlessly fascinating. That is what really makes Psycho Pass a must watch for me every Thursday.
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Old 2013-02-15, 09:41   Link #78
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I'm going to be honest

I think this has crossed the line from being unique idea to being silly and convoluted

Is this show a parody now?
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Old 2013-02-15, 10:10   Link #79
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The way the story is going, the final enemy should be the Ministry of Welfare, and not the Sibyl System they set up, unless those two are one and the same. Whoever runs that Ministry still has not explained how or why they came up with this scheme. After all, the Sibyl System would seem to be composed mostly or entirely of sociopaths of the criminal sort (since a non-violent sociopath would not be caught and brought in), and who in their right mind would turn their government and judiciary over to a bunch of murderers? They didn't even bother removing free will from the brains.
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Old 2013-02-15, 10:17   Link #80
Dark Wing
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Aka computer taking over?

Sorry, I'll pass. I've seen way too many movies with such concept like for example Terminator and I, Robot.
Isn't that pretty much what happened?

The computer or rather the minds that make up it's consciousness took over after the gave it more room to grow then needed?

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After all, the Sibyl System would seem to be composed mostly or entirely of sociopaths of the criminal sort (since a non-violent sociopath would not be caught and brought in), and who in their right mind would turn their government and judiciary over to a bunch of murderers? They didn't even bother removing free will from the brains.
How do we know that for sure? After all it was stated they could remove Makishima's brain by force if they had to (Destroy His Body and Take His Brain) so obviously they've could've done this to plenty of non-violent sociopaths who've been detected.

Also if you remove the free will how would they be able to calculate and handle problem solving and who better to handle the hard chooses then the individuals who don't feel remorse for their actions...I like most of our politicians.
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