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I know I start off each of these posts with some sort of joke about how totally moe Psycho Pass is and all that, as a reference to the director’s statement that the word was banned in the office. But being serious for just a moment, Psycho Pass clearly isn’t moe. Oh sure, moe is a nebulous term that can be attached to anything based entirely on the viewers perspective, and pretending that the show isn’t trying to appeal to recent fan-pandering mindsets when you’ve brought on board the character designer of Hitman Reborn and has official art like this doesn’t ring entirely true. But moe? Hardly.
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This episode was the one to finally cement Akane as my favourite character in this show. Consider for a second how often she has acted pro-actively before now. There was the first episode where she shot Kougami instead of the rape victim, because a little bit of common sense is always nice. That was a sign that she was capable of not following the system to exactly what it says, which is precisely the sort of common sense the system requires in a police officer in the first place. Otherwise though, she’s been happy to go along with the flow. When she got a call from an old friend she found suspicious, she roped in Kougami to do the dirty work for her. After what happened to her in episode 11, she’s taken a far more proactive approach to policing, acting on her own strengths such as volunteering her mind for a fancy brain scan.
Although really, the Dominator should just have a friggen camera on the end whenever its picked up by a registered user. That would have saved a lot of trouble and avoided risking one of their most promising young police officers. Just more evidence that the police force in Psycho Pass aren’t the best equipped.
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I’m really interested in seeing what the planned arc for Akane’s character will be from here on in. They’re laying the foundation that she’s a tough nut to crack mentally. When other characters find themselves worried, it has a greater effect on them and causes their psycho pass number to rise. Admittedly Psycho Pass is cheating somewhat by showing the characters mental stress through actual numbers, but it does come across in their dialogue too. People like Kougami, Ginoza and Masaoka let their stresses work on their mind and consume them to various degrees. That certainly seems to be the path they’re implying Ginoza is on at the moment. Akane has numerous worries over the course of this show, from her initial uncertainty over becoming a police officer to her reaction after Makishima thoroughly messed with her head, but after a day or two of mulling it over, she makes her mind up on what to do and carries on with her life. Forcing her to re-live her memories had little lasting effect because she has already decided what it is she can do.
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It’s interesting that Sibyl picked her to be a police officer in the first place. Sibyl has to appear perfect to the population, otherwise they won’t accept its decisions. If there was any doubt, people would not blindly accept what it is Sibyl says. For example, why would you not take the job Sibyl hands you out when it is an undeniable fact that you would be worse and have a more miserable life in every other job out there. However they put Akane, a girl who very deliberately went against what Sibyl told her to do in the very first episode using her own judgement, in the police force. But when she wanted to go against Sibyl again in episode 11, the tools the police gave her wouldn’t allow her. Sibyl is flawed, but the policing system demands them to pretend it’s totally accurate. If Sibyl knows itself that there could be minor flaws, that could be the very reason it chose Akane to be a police officer in the first place. Sibyl itself is better at providing backup plans for its flaws than the people who run it, who deliberately under-equip their police officers to keep up the appearance that Sibyl is perfect. Admittedly I might be on totally the wrong track, but it’s an interesting idea.
The Cart Driver 
Maybe there is a “camera” on the dominator, but only works if the target’s crime coefficient is over 100. There is no need to record all the unimportant stuff.
Maybe, but wouldn’t it be important to record attempted uses? She wasn’t just carrying it around in a holster.
Go back to the previous episode where they had a log of attempted uses by non-registered user. You have your answer there.
Yup, so why no camera then? lol
Possibly because they got a “undoubtable” scanner and a “Dominator use-recording database” system. If people think that the Sybil System is perfect, these two is more than enough. Adding a camera would only prove how imperfect it is in the first place. On top of the fact that the PP was developed by Sybil System(not mentioned, thus my guess) to reduce crime rate and to promote a “safe” environment.
I had a big discussion with folks on twitter, and it came down to the idea that why would it need a camera when it’s supposed to be perfect? Why would it need a log of who it saw when they were either a perfect citizen or someone who would soon be either tranquillised or vaporised? They know there’s a flaw in the system, but it’s important to pretend there isn’t
I’m going to have to agree, willful ignorance by Sybil is the only plausible excuse (other than an oversight by the writers lol).
I think it’s pretty clear by now that Akane has the same sort of “übermensch psyche” as Makishima, that she can’t be judged by the Sibyl at all, not even if she herself is challenging Sibyl’s judgements.
I considered that, but as of now she fits quite well into the ‘perfect citizen’ model. Someone doesn’t get marked down by Sibyl for not doing what Sibyl tells them to.
I hate to be a spoil sport and normally i wouldn’t nit pick but since it is such an important part of your commentary i would like to point out that Sybil didn’t choose Akane for police officer. She was one of the rare individuals whose psychopass allowed her a wide variety of possible jobs. It was she who deliberately chose to be an officer because she thought this was the profession in which she could make a difference.
Damn it. I was about to point this out. Sibyl gave her lot of different choices and out of those choices she chose police officer. That’s why the orange haired guy got mad at her. She could have chosen easier/better jobs.
Stop poking holes in my theories!
It still gave her the option of being a police officer. She didn’t get every job ever, but she did get a few options. God only knows what she would have done in the other careers, although I’d be totally down with an anime about Akane revolutionising the music industry or cleaning up the education profession. Great Teacher Akane
But Akane is moe 😦
Yes. The Moest thing since sliced cake.
You’ve reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s short story The Evitable Conflict. (Plot spoilers follow.) In it a few advanced Machines now command the world’s economy more efficiently than a free market or human central planner could, and yet there are apparent instabilities. An initial hypothesis is that anti-Machine people are disobeying the Machines’ recommendations, but it turns out that the Machines are taking their tendency toward disobedience into account, and are subtly redirecting them into less influential jobs, sacrificing short-term efficiency for long-term benefit to humanity. The Sibyl system might be doing the same thing: it realizes that people who trust its decisions blindly will be irresponsible and not take initiative, so it chose Akane, knowing she would use her own judgement and improve the police system in the long run. Sibyl might even believe that its own existence is making humanity too complacent, and wants Akane to reform or dismantle itself.
Oh maaaaan, that last line of yours. That would be a fucking awesome direction for the series to go.
Didn’t think I’d be this sad to see the end of the Akane is moé joke(s) but in the end it/they really grew on me. Also props to this episode for getting Scamp to write something with some semblance of serieusness. And to the one before this one for making me reallise that I’ve not only come to love Akane as a joke but also as a character.
I’ll still lead off each post with moe moe Akane, but now it’s because she’s mai waifu
Maybe they just didn’t have room for a camera next to the over-the-top-flesh-explosion-ray.
Explosion rays do take up a lot of room, it’s a well known fact
They gotta find a way to make the plot work.
Stahp calling out what Urobochi is going to do!!! It makes the suspense less fun, just like how the hints in Saya no Uta made the true end less fun for me. But then again, all of these are logical, smart reasoning, and it’s fun reading all of it.
Talking about character though, IMO it’s a goddamn relief to have a female lead that’s as strongly portrayed as Akane. I don’t remember when’s the last time I rooted for a fictional character (that’s a lie obviously) let alone a female character (that’s a lie too).
And that small bit at the end after the ED. OMG the next episode should be great(er).
Just watched this episode second time. Masaoka is Gin’s father. How did I miss that when I watched this episode the first time. That’s kind of big thing yet you didn’t even mention it in the post. Now that you know that the scenes where they interact with eachother are basically totally different. I LOVED that revelation. I don’t know about others.
You know what I realized? ‘Sybil’ in wapanese is ‘shibiru’ right? That sounds a lot like the japanese pronunciation of the word ‘civil’ doesn’t it? Civil System!
and Psycho Pass sounds a lot like Psychopath! and Gosick is a lot like Gothic! wait that last one has nothing to do with anything
Anything make by humans (who are flawed) is also flawed. In my opinion Sybil is just one super fancy lie detector.
I’m going with the theory that Akane is a special body like Shougo, just that instead of a mind that wants to watch people like shougo, or a mind that wants to see people get their just deserts like that other dude, akane has one that puts her on the side of justice or some such.
In which akane goes rogue to catch makishima, and when the police force, which has now become a third party, have to shoot her, they can’t.
Just when Scamp tries to tell us that Psycho Pass is not moe, Production I.G shows us the new ending cinematic with Akane being really Moe half of the credits! Seriously Episode 14 ending is really cute…