Psycho-Pass 2 - Episode 6 Discussion / Poll

[Aniwatcher]

Everyone keep saying that the fact that Sybil doesn't change despite everything that happened is a plothole. I see differently, when you have a system or any system that portrays itself as perfect to the population its ruling over, it will never admit to faults because then it wouldn't be perfect. It invites criticism and before you know it people will question everything and look underneath the cover and more problems might be exposed and there will be calls for change. But any change would mean certain people who profit from the status quo will lose out. and before you know it the lie begets revolution.

There are so many problems in the world, alot of it has easy fix and yet they are not fixed because overcoming powerful status quo is extremely difficult and time consuming.

[GDiddy]

You know, at least the deaths made sense to the plot in season one.

It feels like this season they're just piling on deaths just for shock value: 'LOOK AT HOW EDGY WE ARE THAT MOAR VIOLENCE IS GONNA HAPPEN! NOW WE GONNA KILL MOAR PEOPLE THAN GEORGE R MARTIN ON A BENDER'

[thundrakkon]

It's really becoming a case of show, not tell, in Psycho-Pass 2. Sometimes a story takes your hand and walks you through every detail, which gets boring and tedious fast. Psycho-Pass is not one of those shows. People have to actually put themselves into that world and pick up the clues that are given.

Originally Posted by Casshern

The story is getting damn stupid really fast. They've had several criminals with low coefficients already but they still haven't armed themselves with regular handguns.

This is getting repetitive. People in Psycho-Pass cannot use handguns since

1) it raises their CC through the roof since they are using it as an intent to kill, and
2) it undermines the dominators and the Sibyl system itself.

Dominators are used as judge and executioner. Nothing else is allowed, or it worsens the CC. Akane stopped Tougane because she did not want a repeat of what happened to Kougami when he shot Makishima. Akane cannot shoot the gun herself since it will mean she finally makes an effort to kill someone, and again, it will undermine the Sibyl system.

Originally Posted by Casshern

Drones can shoot anyone they want, and they're easier to hack than dominators.

That's the point. They are hacked, so yes, a hacked system can do whatever the hacker programs it to do.

Originally Posted by Casshern

Akane hasn't ordered Sybil through her dominator yet, which is like having a deus ex machina in your pocket and not pulling it out.

That was, so far, a one time thing, and it is totally up to Sibyl to decide if they will allow her to do so. They could say no, and Akane would be screwed to rely on that.

Originally Posted by Casshern

Akane just let Kamui escape, with a bunch of dominators, after he just committed mass murder.

Refer back to why she could not use the gun from above. If Sibyl won't allow it, she cannot do it.

Originally Posted by the one above all

Any specific reason as to why Akane stopped Togane?

Refer to above for explanation.

Originally Posted by the one above all

The problem really could be solved that easily. I know Kamui is trying to expose the systems's flaws but half of these weaknesses are because they system seems to have no common sense.

It's not common sense to us, but it is common sense to the world that is in the anime. It's also as Aniwatcher said... Sibyl wants to be portrayed as a perfect system; hence, any obvious changes would undermine that image.

Originally Posted by Aniwatcher

There are so many problems in the world, alot of it has easy fix and yet they are not fixed because overcoming powerful status quo is extremely difficult and time consuming.

All your points are spot on, especially this one.

[FlareKnight]

Certainly a messy episode with the body count.

Although despite all the chaos the key issue seems to be Sibyl. They can hunt down a hundred Kamui's and it doesn't really matter as long as that system is kept in place.

[Triple_R]

A character death doesn't have to be emotionally impacting in order to serve a legitimate purpose. Ideally, the death of an important named character will have some emotional impact, but not all character deaths are ones involving important named characters.

Sometimes character deaths can serve atmospheric, plot, and/or thematic goals.

The character deaths in this show happen because Kamui wants them to happen, period. That's the in-canon plot basis for the character deaths. Kamui wants to expose/discredit/weaken Sibyl as much as possible, and he's willing to have loads of people die for that purpose. And so people are dying, because Sibyl is simply unable to stop Kamui. So character deaths are happening here for much the same reason as they do in a Batman comic - to build up the rep of a notable antagonist.

There are pros and cons here.

The main pro is that we're seeing some creative and interesting scenarios play out. Duping people into thinking they're playing a harmless video game when they're actually controlling killing machines and killing people, is a very creative and interesting scenario, especially within the context of Sibyl Japan.

Kamui is a highly impressive antagonist so far, pulling off stunts that would make most comic book "evil geniuses" blush. Kamui seems to constantly be a step or two ahead of the protagonists. He seems almost totally unstoppable.

But then there is admittedly a con there - It does make Sibyl look extremely vulnerable, and even impotent in some ways. The issue isn't even so much their reliance on Dominators, but rather the fact that seemingly one lone guy is hacking them with contemptuous ease, in multiple different ways.

Sibyl clearly has incredibly poor security across the board. Without the courage and tenacity of Akane, and the brilliance of the Professor, Sibyl would be in alarmingly dire straits right now.

This makes Sibyl a strange entity - The governmental equivalent of a glass cannon. Very powerful and also ubiquitous, but also surprisingly fragile in many areas.


On the whole, I continue to find Psycho-Pass Season 2 a good and engaging watch. However, it is skirting a believability line for me. Sibyl could use a strong showing in the next two or three episodes.

[GDB]

By the way, anyone else notice Kamui's boat was named "What Color"?

[SJCrew]

You know, at least the deaths made sense to the plot in season one.

It feels like this season they're just piling on deaths just for shock value: 'LOOK AT HOW EDGY WE ARE THAT MOAR VIOLENCE IS GONNA HAPPEN! NOW WE GONNA KILL MOAR PEOPLE THAN GEORGE R MARTIN ON A BENDER'

How do Season 2's deaths not make sense to the plot...? The new antagonist is exposing the same flaws in the system that the first season revealed by committing mass murder without increasing his crime coefficient, leaving law enforcement powerless. This makes perfect sense to the plot.

[Anh_Minh]

What Sibyl lacks, maybe, is a black ops squad. (Or at least, if they have one, they should have deployed it much earlier.) People (even some of the brains in artificial bodies, if they want to keep it close to the chest) who can deal with situations where the rules don't work, without letting people know such situations exist.

[Crontica]

What annoys me is that they appear to be pegging for a 3rd season, Kogami is nowhere to be found with sybil taking so many risks it's almost shocking.
And i must address the elephant in the room, will Akane be safe trusting an enforcer so easily especially since Togami seems to be mentally not well, she should be raising an eyebrow at a cc of 300 or does she have an clue?

1. Will the doc figure out that something is wrong with Togami before something bad happens or will Akane figure it out herself?

2. Does Akane have a glitch in her cell structure that doesn't get her cc recorded or does she come from a special family that is able to retrain their cc.

3. Maybe Akane's concept of despair is different from the normal person and will pull a Sinbad if Togami gets too cocky and is actually a Kogami in disguise that is pretending to be normal in order to live a quiet life, a queen in disguise.

4. Something about Sybil's warning disturbs me, they said "What will happen if Akane reacts to that?" are they saying that there is something so disturbing that will actually affect Akane's cc?

5. And finally is Kogami waiting for the right time to strike? Sybil is really taking so many risks that it's getting ridiculous.

[Arya]

i found this episode highly enjoyable to be honest. Not bothered at all by the limited number of shots of the Dominators news. I mean, it made sense that they could not have shot freely as much as they wanted.

In general surely I know that the thing that is getting in the way the most is the fact that PP universe has not the the same common sense as our world. So even if explained it's hard practically to make viewers be used to it, since, well, it's in its nature to be jarring, given how PP common sense sound stupid at times.
Still, personally, it's a sadly very plausible evolution of our society.

Speaking of Sybil so far my take is that is adopting an evolutionist approach to survive. That, if I have to say, should be the most effective in the long run.
So, from this angle why she should care about citizens lives? They are like cells, they will replicates.
It also works for the enforcers, there's no real reason for Sybil to have enforcers unable to handle not routine work. So again, it's an improvement for Sybil to get ridden of unskilled enforcers, that will give rooms for new ones to be tested. That's how it works.

To accomplish that Sybil has to let some room to Kamui to be a threat for the MWPSB, otherwise, if she stopped him all this process wouldn't have started.

The question is if Sybil will be able to handle Kamui or not, or if she will able to see when the point of no return will be crossed. But that's up to her.

In this context, where Akane stands? Is she her top player or just another anomaly?

That's as a general setting, in specific I'm curious to see what they want to do with Akane. Hints seem to lead to Akane being just another anomaly, but it's hard to say at this point.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

It's really becoming a case of show, not tell, in Psycho-Pass 2.

It's more like don't show, and don't tell. It's annoying when shit like all the world's robots being magically hacked by this one terrorist happens with no clues, buildup or explanation. The only one of Kamui's plots where the execution has been shown or the theory explained, has been how he mind controls people (he somehow repurposed those drugs that were developed to manage the psycho-pass)

Also annoying is how Sibyl apparently doesn't give a damn about him. Yeah okay, they want to capture rare individuals alive, but their primary motivation is supposed to be maintaining the appearance of utopia, and that's really falling apart right now. But while all that is happening, they seem to be more interested in observing unstable people like Mika and Togane in the force for the sake of some unexplained social experiment.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Also annoying is how Sibyl apparently doesn't give a damn about him. Yeah okay, they want to capture rare individuals alive, but their primary motivation is supposed to be maintaining the appearance of utopia, and that's really falling apart right now.

That's a core issue, yeah. I can see the people of Sibyl Japan bouncing back from one incident like the helmet riots of Season 1. In other words, I can see the people of Sibyl Japan eventually getting over it, with people once again being calm and stable and having faith in Sibyl.

But what Kamui has done now seems to be rising to the level of the helmet riots (and in some ways, it's arguably worse than the helmet riots). So that's now two majorly bad incidents in only two or three years, and that's not even including a variety of more minor incidents over the last two years that nonetheless may have raised some eyebrows. It's getting harder and harder for me to think that the public wouldn't start asking some serious questions about Sibyl and its efficiency (or lack thereof).

So unless Sibyl has the Japanese media and politicians completely under control, it's hard to see this not resulting in a much more skeptical public with calls for reform to the Sibyl system (and politicians likely wanting to go along with those calls, if not leading those calls themselves).

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

So unless Sibyl has the Japanese media and politicians completely under control...

Heh... Once again, it's really hard for me not to see Sibyl Japan as reflecting the logical extreme of Japan today. You'd be surprised at how much the media seems to be controlled here; or how 'someone' seems to decide which politicians stay and which ones go. At least, that's what I keep hearing from people who study Japanese politics: it's not something that I'd have any hope of verifying, given the nature of the anecdotes and rumours that are related to me...

Perhaps this will sum it up: though the majority of Japanese citizens pay little attention, everyone I know who studies Japanese politics has made a comment to the effect of "Japan today is not a democracy." In other words, the attitudes and behaviour of the target audience of PP are probably farther from those of Western peoples than many of you might believe. I think that it is really important to keep this in mind when watching the show.

[Five_Overs]

I'm glad they replaced urobochi. Season 2 have a very different feel from the first season, and I love it. The new writers certainly knows how to go wild with their ideas without letting realism constraints or viewer hand-holding hold them back. These writers have potential, I look forward to their future works.

Sibyl's flaws are a result of the system itself. The system assumes that irregulars like Kamui and makishima don't exist to cause trouble to begin with. That's why the security force is so small compared to what we have today, and security is all around weak. I don't think Sibyl even cares if such incidences happen. A few deaths can be replaced, and life will continue as usual a few days later.

As long as they themselves are not targeted or questioned by the people, they will probably never care.

[Geburah]

Originally Posted by Five_Overs

Sibyl's flaws are a result of the system itself. The system assumes that irregulars like Kamui and makishima don't exist to cause trouble to begin with. That's why the security force is so small compared to what we have today, and security is all around weak. I don't think Sibyl even cares if such incidences happen. A few deaths can be replaced, and life will continue as usual a few days later.

I think its the oposite: Sibyl know that they are far from perfect and those irregularities help them to improve akin to today : The best way to improve something is to let people try to crack it/mess it on any way.

The security force is small because the crime rate is very low compared to our world. You dont need 10000 policemen when theres barely a few crimes per week on a entire city. Remember that most of the time they appear working on the office which means their field work is ocassional not constant.

[Casshern]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

It's really becoming a case of show, not tell, in Psycho-Pass 2. Sometimes a story takes your hand and walks you through every detail, which gets boring and tedious fast. Psycho-Pass is not one of those shows. People have to actually put themselves into that world and pick up the clues that are given.



This is getting repetitive. People in Psycho-Pass cannot use handguns since

1) it raises their CC through the roof since they are using it as an intent to kill, and
2) it undermines the dominators and the Sibyl system itself.

Dominators are used as judge and executioner. Nothing else is allowed, or it worsens the CC. Akane stopped Tougane because she did not want a repeat of what happened to Kougami when he shot Makishima. Akane cannot shoot the gun herself since it will mean she finally makes an effort to kill someone, and again, it will undermine the Sibyl system.



That's the point. They are hacked, so yes, a hacked system can do whatever the hacker programs it to do.



That was, so far, a one time thing, and it is totally up to Sibyl to decide if they will allow her to do so. They could say no, and Akane would be screwed to rely on that.



Refer back to why she could not use the gun from above. If Sibyl won't allow it, she cannot do it.



Refer to above for explanation.



It's not common sense to us, but it is common sense to the world that is in the anime. It's also as Aniwatcher said... Sibyl wants to be portrayed as a perfect system; hence, any obvious changes would undermine that image.



All your points are spot on, especially this one.

A 0.22 caliber can easily incapacitate someone without killing them with a few shots. A bigger caliber can drop them without killing them as long as they don't hit any vital area. Having no weapon whatsoever other than a dominator, and being a sitting duck when it doesn't work, at this point doesn't make any sense storywise or any other way. It hasn't even occurred to an enforcer to secretly take a hidden carry so he wont be defenceless.

The fact that crime is occurring is already undermining the Sibyl system. It means that a high psychopass has slipped through the system undetected or that a low psychopass is committing crimes without increasing their crime coefficient. That was the whole point of imprisoning latent criminals - to prevent crime before it happens. The system is already a failure. That civilians aren't questioning Sibyl already is a plothole in itself.

Akane is a threat to the Sibyl system since she knows the truth. Taking her out of the way can mean the truth gets leaked out to the world. This hasn't changed since last season. Akane has Sibyl by the balls. There's no reason why she doesn't order Sibyl to disable or forcefully activate any dominator she wants.

It doesn't make sense that she didn't shoot him on the boat. So what if Tougane's or her coefficient increase or their hue changes colour? Kamui just manipulated civilians to commit mass murder, killed a bunch of enforcers himself, he's using a former inspector as his puppet and they just escaped with a bag of dominators. Akane managed to recover after shooting her own friend, there is absolutely no reason at all not to shoot Kamui in that scene, unless Akane is a psycho and secretly wants to see what he's planning.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 6:

This season was kinda sad really, only because the story isn't really as great. Even if the writers (Tow Ubukata & Jun Kumagai) behind this one are capable at doing stuff properly, they surely did a bad job at accomplishing anything in this case. I mean, sure Kirito does have his own distinctive manners, but I feel like he's trying way too hard to follow Shougo's footsteps done differently. Mizue looked like the girl that can help Akane and friends during the pre-hype, I was proven wrong when she got used as a mere bait for Kirito's goal and instead fall into the sudden Stockholm Syndrome.

I also find it pretty bad when the writer kills police officers for no reason other than shock value too, not to mention the newly introduced characters this season, while seemed interesting, are very underdevelopped and I really wish they would have given themselves a bit more screentime. Mika isn't still getting character development as usual and we're already halfway, might as well keep saying to myself that she'll get better each new episode.

The rest of the episode was okay, Shion is a kickass when hacking stuff, I hoped she would get more development since she's supposed to be one of the main characters of the series. How the way Kirito turned Hungry Chicken into a deadly game is a bit descriptive dialogue-wise and I'm so glad Shinya reappeared as an hallucination to Tougane's shooting moves in the last minute was simply exciting to watch.

About the questions that need to be answered before the season ends: will Rina (Yayoi's friend) gets mentionned again? what's happening in one of Akane's remaining college friends? How will the police officers use something other than Dominator to defeat something with high crime coefficient? Will the creators explore more into Dominator's backstory? Or better yet will Mika learn positive things into herself before she gets "eaten alive" while the creators explain more things to Tougane? If most of these got answered this season, I'll be pretty happy.

[Kanon]

This is getting dumber by the episode. The writers seem to only care about the cool factor and shock value, disregarding everything else.

Why weren't Shisui and Ayonagi's dominators disabled as soon they realized they were missing? This should be standard protocol. It's already standard protocol everywhere in real life. If you lose an access card, the first thing IT does is to disable it. Happened to a colleague of mine this very week. It makes no sense to leave stolen dominators live.

Why couldn't they locate the stolen dominators before and find Kamui ridiculously easily? They clearly appeared on the map in this episode, and they could track down their movements in real time. They could have followed the boat, too. Assuming they only appear when they're in use (which would be dumb), then they should have been able to find Kamui's hideout earlier since he activated Shisui's dominator before.

Why didn't they revoke Shisui's rights to use a dominator as soon as they realized she was working against them? The one-sided slaughters of enforcers could have been adverted, and it would have foiled Kamui's plan which seem to heavily rely on dominators. I'd say it's because they didn't have time, but I bet they aren't even going to do that next week. The only reason Kamui is a threat at all is because the Sibyl system is completely retarded and/or inflexible.

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

This is getting repetitive. People in Psycho-Pass cannot use handguns since

1) it raises their CC through the roof since they are using it as an intent to kill, and
2) it undermines the dominators and the Sibyl system itself.

Dominators are used as judge and executioner. Nothing else is allowed, or it worsens the CC. Akane stopped Tougane because she did not want a repeat of what happened to Kougami when he shot Makishima. Akane cannot shoot the gun herself since it will mean she finally makes an effort to kill someone, and again, it will undermine the Sibyl system.

1) That's why they have enforcers. As Togane said, they're there to get their hands dirty to keep the inspectors clean. Their CC are already high, it doesn't matter if it gets higher. Actually, I think it did matter in S1, but clearly not anymore. All of the enforcers in this episode had a CC above 300 just so there would be more bodies exploding.
2) I agree with this. But there are situations where they could be allowed to use it so long as nobody knows. The one in this episode was such a situation.

The reason Akane stopped Togane isn't that she was afraid of his CC rising, or because she was afraid he would be punished. He already has the highest CC ever recorded, and Sibyl never ordered them to bring Kamui back alive so killing him wouldn't have made Togane a criminal. It was simple sentimentality that made her stop him. He reminded her of Kogami at that moment and her failure to save him.

The really obvious solution to all of this is simply for Sibyl to allow inspectors to use paralyzer mode at their own discretion. It wouldn't worsen their CC since they wouldn't kill, it wouldn't undermine the system since nobody would be none the wiser if they saw somebody shoot with a dominator, and finally, it would allow them to easily bring in asymptomatic criminal that can then be added to Sibyl's collection. It's a win on every account.

That was, so far, a one time thing, and it is totally up to Sibyl to decide if they will allow her to do so. They could say no, and Akane would be screwed to rely on that.

It wouldn't hurt to ask. She can think of a plan B afterwards if they say no, instead of going in with no plan at all. If she hadn't found that machine gun, what would she have found? Stood there while Togane and Gino get killed?

[Five_Overs]

Originally Posted by Kanon

This is getting dumber by the episode. The writers seem to only care about the cool factor and shock value, disregarding everything else.

Why weren't Shisui and Ayonagi's dominators disabled as soon they realized they were missing? This should be standard protocol. It's already standard protocol everywhere in real life. If you lose an access card, the first thing IT does is to disable it. Happened to a colleague of mine this very week. It makes no sense to leave stolen dominators live.

Why couldn't they locate the stolen dominators before and find Kamui ridiculously easily? They clearly appeared on the map in this episode, and they could track down their movements in real time. They could have followed the boat, too. Assuming they only appear when they're in use (which would be dumb), then they should have been able to find Kamui's hideout earlier since he activated Shisui's dominator before.

Why didn't they revoke Shisui's rights to use a dominator as soon as they realized she was working against them? The one-sided slaughters of enforcers could have been adverted, and it would have foiled Kamui's plan which seem to heavily rely on dominators. I'd say it's because they didn't have time, but I bet they aren't even going to do that next week. The only reason Kamui is a threat at all is because the Sibyl system is completely retarded and/or inflexible.

Your first three points are addressed in episode 2, the conversation between akane and aoyanagi. Only sibyl have the right to disable dominators.

Um, the whole point of only allowing enforcers to use dominators is because they're latent criminals? They're presumed to cause harm if given any other weapon.

If inspectors are allowed to shoot paralyzer at will, it defeats the whole purpose of the sibyl system and would give an inspector too much power. That's against what the sibyl system is all about.

[Geburah]

Also remember that in combat situations almost everyone CC goes up, so its not surprising that most enforcers who already have a high base CC surpass the 300 limit in a life or death situation.

Kamui was counting on it to kill, or at the very least, disable any surviving enforcers they met, and they knew that the number of inspector on ANY case is quite low which they would be the only ones on which Dominators wouldnt work as long as they werent under heavy stress/pressure (like it happened to Aoyanagi a perfectly normal inspector)