Psycho-Pass 2 - Episode 11 [END] Discussion / Poll

[Casshern]

Originally Posted by Piesum

So many things were confusing about that final.

-For starters, how did sibyl judge misako togane, if she’s supposed to be criminally asymptomatic, and if shes supposed to be part of their collective identity in the first place?

In essence that means Sibyl judged an individual within itself. (which it ended up doing later on in the episode, but it shouldn't have happened at that point)

How did sibyl judge itself as a collective whole, if everyone is criminally asymptomatic in sibyl?

I know it was touched on in another episode, but I don't really see the benefits of judging society as a collective whole either. Sure, that means sibyl can judge people like kirito, but in the end, why should it always be applied.
it's ether going to weed out the people with high crime coefficients (which is what it's doing right now anyway) or it's going to wipe out entire groups/ society as a whole, or the witch hunt thing that was mentioned.

I don't think there was any benefit in judging society as a collective. That's why Sibyl tells Tsunemori that she has basically opened pandora's box by enabling Sibyl to judge the collective society, and Tsunemori in turn maintains hope in people. However, the ability to judge a collective was necessary in order for Sibyl to be able to judge itself, kind of like a quality control measure. When it judged itself, it showed that its crime coefficient was indeed over 300. In other words, there were individuals in the system that were no longer criminally asymptomatic, and raised the collective CC to criminal levels. Sibyl purged the criminal entities by killing the specific brains and the updated CC of 0 indicates that the remaining brains are still criminally asymptomatic.

What is new for us as viewers is that being criminally asymptomatic isn't a permanent condition and may change. This is confirmed 3 times: 1st when Sakuya who was asymptomatic paints himself black by killing his mother, 2nd when Misako is judged as an individual by the rest of Sibyl and found to be no longer criminally asymptomatic, and 3rd when Sibyl judges itself and finds parts of itself corrupted.

Overall I liked the ending. My favourite parts were the one on one dialogues between Akane and each of the big players - Tougane, Kamui, Misako, Sibyl and her mind's Kougami (special bonus). I expected a bit more from Togane in terms of motives, and Akane is a bit of a Mary Sue at times with the way she sees through everything and never gets cloudy but overall ok. Pretty satisfied with how Mika ended up, glad that my expectation of her was wrong and looks like she might play a bigger part next season. Glad that Mizue didn't die. Looking forward to season 3 and Kougami's hopeful return.

For the season overall, I didn't start enjoying it until the last 4 episodes when Kamui's nature is discovered as well as Misako's past and role in the whole story. They really turned it around for me after that.

[DMurphy]

Regarding Sibyl being judge-able despite its brains being criminally asymptomatic, there was some pretty strong suggestion in the first series that one of the reasons Sibyl was composed of criminally asymptomatic people was because by taking in someone who was asymptomatic, they could then judge people from the viewpoint of that person, and thus narrow the pool of people they couldn't judge. Anyone else who was asymptomatic in the same manner as the new member would now no longer be asymptomatic.

So being criminally asymptomatic isn't just a non-permanent condition, the requirements for meeting it get more and more difficult to reach the more criminally asymptomatic people Sibyl takes into itself. Some of Sibyl's brains may just no longer be asymptomatic because the system had bettered itself over time and is now able to judge them.

[prototype_sky]

Wonder if there is a chance that some of the enforcers go back to normal now with the new judgement system

[tuckersister]

Akane is actually smoking at the last scene. I really hope the movie is worth wild.

[Jan-Poo]

Though this means several things.

The first is that criminally asymptomatic persons do not have a clear psycho pass, their psycho pass simply cannot be judged, but they might and be recognized as criminals if the Sybil system improves.

The second is that Sybil made a complete 180 degree turn on how to deal with asymptomatic criminals.

In the first season they wanted Makishima to be part of the system even though they were well aware that he was a criminal. So Sybil valued the addition of an asymptomatic brain to their collective more than maintaining their effective psycho pass clear.

Now the Sybil system clearly chose to do the opposite. They reduced the number of criminally asymptomatic brains in their collective, which technically should mean an increased chance that they won't be able to judge individuals, for the purpose of clearing its own psycho pass as a collective.

I'm not entirely sure I understand why Sybil had this change of mind, why suddenly efficiency was considered less important than maintaining internal purity, which it didn't seem to give a rat ass about before.

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by DMurphy

Regarding Sibyl being judge-able despite its brains being criminally asymptomatic, there was some pretty strong suggestion in the first series that one of the reasons Sibyl was composed of criminally asymptomatic people was because by taking in someone who was asymptomatic, they could then judge people from the viewpoint of that person, and thus narrow the pool of people they couldn't judge. Anyone else who was asymptomatic in the same manner as the new member would now no longer be asymptomatic.

So being criminally asymptomatic isn't just a non-permanent condition, the requirements for meeting it get more and more difficult to reach the more criminally asymptomatic people Sibyl takes into itself. Some of Sibyl's brains may just no longer be asymptomatic because the system had bettered itself over time and is now able to judge them.

I was a little confused/surprised over how quickly Sybil was able to get over this gap just by quantifying Kamui's collective influence/value. I actually expected Kamui to become a part of Sybil before they were able to judge the criminally asymptomatic people. But with how it's portrayed in the anime, it almost seems like Sybil had the capability to overcome this hurdle for awhile but chose not to until Kamui acted as a catalyst. I suppose rather than being criminally asymptomatic being a collective entity was a bigger hurdle for their judgment.

That aside, this episode ended pretty much ended how I expected. I'm very happy to see Togane Misako got what was coming to her, though I expected to see her brain being ejected from the Sybil system, which might've happened - too bad they don't have labels - rather than Kamui getting approval to shoot her with a Dominator. It was a very satisfying shot. And while I very much enjoyed this season, there are a few spots I'm disappointed with.

Togane Sakuya was somewhat of a disappointment. I didn't really feel him being very effective in turning Akane towards the dark side until towards the end of the series. Given what Psycho-Pass was capable of with Makishima and Kogami, I think they could've handled Sith Lord Sakuya challenging Akane's values better.

Mika was a disappointment, but that's mostly because I don't feel her character was fully utilized. As a foil for Akane and a representative of individuals surrendering their will, she's effective, but I had higher hopes for her. Possibly, the writers are saving her inner conflict and representation of society for the movie. I actually was hoping she'd kill Sakuya but only to save Akane from him and come to some sort of clarity with Akane and the Sybil system, but she's still as broken and childishly irresponsible as ever.

My greatest disappointment though would have to be how little other characters were developed and how distant Akane seems to her coworkers/Enforcers. Maybe because the series was so short they didn't have time to fit it in, but would it kill them to have Akane discuss a case with Yayoi over lunch or Ginoza over coffee?

That said, I found the plot very interesting and Akane's development. As the show progressed, it became obvious to me that Akane wasn't going to rebel against the system but rather fix/adjust it. I'm really interested to see how this plays out in the movie, since I assume rebels/terrorists/criminals in the foreign country are against the Sybil system's implementation.

[Haruyasha]

Kirito, y u no use dual blades on Sybil?

[thundrakkon]

Originally Posted by Piesum

-For starters, how did sibyl judge misako togane, if she’s supposed to be criminally asymptomatic, and if shes supposed to be part of their collective identity in the first place?

At that moment as Kasei, she was the individual brain acting as the avatar in charge. Each brain can still be judged by the system since it is still an individual.

Also, keep in mind that not every brain in Sibyl are criminally asymptomatic. The original system had brilliant minds contributed to it, who were not criminals, probably mostly scientists. Asymptomatic criminal brains were added later on as they were found to "enhance" the system.

Originally Posted by Piesum

How did sibyl judge itself as a collective whole, if everyone is criminally asymptomatic in sibyl?

Not everyone is asymptomatic as stated before. Essentially, as more asymptomatic criminals are put into Sibyl, the more it has upgraded to the point that it can catch those types of criminals. If one of their brains now show up as criminal, it can be removed since another asymptomatic brain can detect it now or the system overall can detect it. Essentially, it removed all the criminally asymptomatic brains and kept all the ones it deems non-criminal (please note that this does not mean the brain aren't actually criminal, it is just that Sibyl judges the remaining as non-criminal under it's criteria). As a result, with it's new criteria, it can judge itself as a group, since no one in that group has broken the "rules" that Sibyl has used to judge.

The effect of all this, however, is that Sibyl now has less processing power, which it will need to replace eventually.

DMurphy makes a great point with it.

Originally Posted by Piesum

I know it was touched on in another episode, but I don't really see the benefits of judging society as a collective whole either. Sure, that means sibyl can judge people like kirito, but in the end, why should it always be applied.
it's ether going to weed out the people with high crime coefficients (which is what it's doing right now anyway) or it's going to wipe out entire groups/ society as a whole, or the witch hunt thing that was mentioned.

It makes it more efficient now. If Sibyl can judge a who society, it can eliminate large groups of people at once instead of going one at a time. Also, as mentioned in the episode, if the individuals in the group might be clear, but then the whole group acts in a way that is dangerous, the group can be judged now instead of individuals. Yes, it's dangerous to generalize like that, but that's the direction the story is heading. If it wants, it could judge another country as dangerous and send forces to destroy it, for example.

Originally Posted by prototype_sky

Wonder if there is a chance that some of the enforcers go back to normal now with the new judgement system

The old criteria still should apply in Sibyl, so I don't think it will change from the enforcers.

[Iron Maw]

Meh.

I don't really mind the ending since the existence of the movie had already prepared me for it. All that was left was just how it would happen and the 2nd season has already been a disappointment for me at this point so it couldn't get much worse.

Still it's shame that most of this whole fiasco didn't amount to much both in terms of plot advancement and general growth amongst the cast. Mika was especially bad and she did nothing to justify her existence despite huge amount of screen time she got.

In anycase, I guess this sort of means that Sibyl is back to square one? Not that we really any of the effects of this at all yet.

Originally Posted by Miraluka

With a different writer I never had any hope for this season of PP.

It's not that simple. While Ubukata was the main writer, the plot wasn't done an vacuum as Urobutcher was also supervising script. Which means that he approved on how everything played out, hell it might his own ideas, so good or bad he shares some of the responsibility.

Originally Posted by DMurphy

Regarding Sibyl being judge-able despite its brains being criminally asymptomatic, there was some pretty strong suggestion in the first series that one of the reasons Sibyl was composed of criminally asymptomatic people was because by taking in someone who was asymptomatic, they could then judge people from the viewpoint of that person, and thus narrow the pool of people they couldn't judge. Anyone else who was asymptomatic in the same manner as the new member would now no longer be asymptomatic.

So being criminally asymptomatic isn't just a non-permanent condition, the requirements for meeting it get more and more difficult to reach the more criminally asymptomatic people Sibyl takes into itself. Some of Sibyl's brains may just no longer be asymptomatic because the system had bettered itself over time and is now able to judge them.

I thought obviously case by the end of S1. Otherwise Sibly wanting Makishima and the whole process doesn't make much sense.

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

My greatest disappointment though would have to be how little other characters were developed and how distant Akane seems to her coworkers/Enforcers. Maybe because the series was so short they didn't have time to fit it in, but would it kill them to have Akane discuss a case with Yayoi over lunch or Ginoza over coffee?

Yep. Episode count was definitely a problem on all levels which made this season hard for me to judge in comparison to the first. You can only really do some much with large cast and one cour.

[atua]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

Also, keep in mind that not every brain in Sibyl are criminally asymptomatic. The original system had brilliant minds contributed to it, who were not criminals, probably mostly scientists. Asymptomatic criminal brains were added later on as they were found to "enhance" the system.

Where is your source for this? As far as I can tell, we still know very little about how the Sibyl System came into being or how it works. We don't even have a consistent timeline as to when the system was first implemented.

[thundrakkon]

Originally Posted by atua

Where is your source for this? As far as I can tell, we still know very little about how the Sibyl System came into being or how it works. We don't even have a consistent timeline as to when the system was first implemented.

I thought I remembered it that way, but I could be wrong. First off, how can you have asymptomatic criminals without a Sibyl system to declare that? Hence, the original Sibyl system cannot have asymptomatic criminals.

In the end, though, Sibyl decides what it considers as a criminal, and it disposed of those brains which fit its criteria. The remaining brains could still be criminal, but just not with the criteria that Sibyl wrote for itself.

[revive4563]

If there was the collective Psycho-pass as the main theme of 2nd season only to defeat Sibyl, I have to say it is weak.
We all know Sibyl NEVER accept their defeat from the first place. Also Sibyl vs Kirito wasn't interesting since I don't know the concept that Frankenstein has multiple personality.

After all, this was an empty box except the minced meat. I think if Production I.G had no time to make the TV series because of the movie, 2nd season was unnecessary.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

It makes it more efficient now. If Sibyl can judge a who society, it can eliminate large groups of people at once instead of going one at a time. Also, as mentioned in the episode, if the individuals in the group might be clear, but then the whole group acts in a way that is dangerous, the group can be judged now instead of individuals. Yes, it's dangerous to generalize like that, but that's the direction the story is heading. If it wants, it could judge another country as dangerous and send forces to destroy it, for example.

The big question here is how is it going to do that.

So far we have always seen that the big limit of the Sybil System is that you need to point a psycho pass scanner to an individual before he can be evaluated.

How do you point a psycho pass scanner to a collective? It might be easy if the collective is all in the same place, such as in the case of Kamui or the Sybil System (somehow). But when you need to judge, say, a whole city, where do you point your scanner to?

The only thing that might work is a satellite, but we are not even sure if that would work from that distance, we have never really been told that an individual can be scanned from orbit did we?
We also have never seen psycho pass scanners working through walls, which means it should still be impossible to scan all of the citizens of an entire city at once.

[atua]

Originally Posted by thundrakkon

First off, how can you have asymptomatic criminals without a Sibyl system to declare that? Hence, the original Sibyl system cannot have asymptomatic criminals.

Sure you can. A small scale Sibyl system could've been built initially using mechanical parts during development. When it was discovered that existing technology could not provide enough computational power to run this new system for the whole country, this nascent system could've been used to scan a limited test group, for example the prison population, to acquire the necessary asymptomatic brains. That's just one possible scenario, but it's really all speculation because as I said before the show itself provides few details.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

We also have never seen psycho pass scanners working through walls, which means it should still be impossible to scan all of the citizens of an entire city at once.

The new assault dominators can scan and fire through walls.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 11 (End):

I knew this new season doesn't end up near as great as season one as many of my hopes got destroyed so hard, as I initially expected that this season would explore on Sibyl's positive points rather than what we got. I mean, it starts promising, don't get me wrong and a couple of the episodes halfway are interesting and even then, something is missing really.

Tougane and Shou really shows so much promise but damn, Tow Ubukata isn't very interested at giving them some development. I can understand some people not liking Mika, though I admit she shows potential too. It's a shame she gets development so late.

I have heard on some blogs that Shougo is represented as an angel while Kirito is a demon, that's a rather interesting ideology, though I feel even Kirito's backstory isn't very well explained at all.

The finale seems anticlimactic as a whole and seems similar to the season's finale, but then again there's plenty of scenes in this season that are no more than just rehashed and/or coincidential moments that are simply there to give some fanservice to the series' established fanbase.

At least I'm glad some of my beloved characters are making a comeback and Akane slightly developped into a badass tomboy Inspector. I like the premise centered around on how Kirito questions his hue choice and how Kasei is connected to many important events. What's severe is that the pacing is extremely rushed, condensed into 11 episodes written by someone who just entered into the P-Pverse and doesn't seem very familiar with Urobuchi's own story aside from a few key elements, that might explain why certain parts of this season are done with shameful writing that will anger some viewers.

At least the animation is decent I admit, I don't see a lot of cons in it and the music can be impactful sometimes. There's plenty of questions that unfortunately remains unanswered because of the reasons above (different writers + time constraint) and even then, being a cash grab aside, is very entertaining in my part otherwise, a bit similar to what Bones did in their anime originals' equally as disappointing (story-wise) sequels.

I very much hope the movie is slightly better, glad to see Urobuchi making a comeback!

[Kanon]

Not as many deaths as I expected. They still managed to make this season pointless by having everything go back to square one. Sybil decided to follow Akane's suggestion, but since they lost too much brains, they can't even do that yet. The system didn't change at all in the end. It works the same way as before.

Mika decided -just like me- to pretend the events of this season never happened, making her character arc pointless unless her crime is addressed in the movie. And I doubt they'll have time to cover this in the movie especially given how irrelevant it is in the grand scheme of things (Akane's loss of her grandmother affected her for a total of 5 seconds). Why did they waste time with this subplot if it was never going to go anywhere?

If they make another season after the movie with Ubukata as the writer again, you can count me out. I love the setting and the characters from S1, but I can't suffer through such terrible writing again.

[Cloudedmind]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

The big question here is how is it going to do that.

So far we have always seen that the big limit of the Sybil System is that you need to point a psycho pass scanner to an individual before he can be evaluated.

How do you point a psycho pass scanner to a collective? It might be easy if the collective is all in the same place, such as in the case of Kamui or the Sybil System (somehow). But when you need to judge, say, a whole city, where do you point your scanner to?

The only thing that might work is a satellite, but we are not even sure if that would work from that distance, we have never really been told that an individual can be scanned from orbit did we?
We also have never seen psycho pass scanners working through walls, which means it should still be impossible to scan all of the citizens of an entire city at once.

You basically have it scan an area and everyone in the area, much like Chiaka's locator spell with her gundo in Coffin Princess. And as atua mentioned the new assault types can already scan and fire through walls. It's really just a matter of Sybil devising a more large scan system, which probably isn't impossible for their particular society. The could probably do it now with the robots they have running around just make it so that they send out a wide scanning pulse or whatever, it's just that right now Sybil doesn't have enough processing power.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Cloudedmind

it's just that right now Sybil doesn't have enough processing power.

That's quite a big issue I think, especially when episode 10 told us that the Sybil System can go in overload just with a few dozen dominators scanning at the same time.

The first season also showed that it was possible for several persons (including a high school girl) to elude psycho pass checks for a very long time, which means that Sybil was far from being an all-seeing surveillance system until now.

[Anh_Minh]

I wonder what that scene with Yayoi and Mika meant? Is Yayoi onto Mika?

[Jagger]

This show had so much potential. There were plot holes in season 1, but it was possible to overlook them. But in season 2, the plot holes just got bigger, the universe coherence feels very flimsy. To boot the season wasn't fun in general. The characters we knew and loved from season 1 hardly got any airtime. Even Akane seemed like she was along for the ride rather than acting like a protagonist. They wasted all the airtime on these uninteresting new characters that don't matter or were going to die anyway. Togane was interesting though, I like the idea of a hue pervert, but they squandered his character too in the end.