Blog 10- 2/7

Psycho-Pass is an interesting vision of a dystopian future in which technology, in its all glory of endless possibility, is utilized as a means of enrichment and oppression. Within the first episode, we see that the society is imbued with technology, and one aspect is the advent of the psycho-pass, a piece of equipment that analyzes one’s mental stability and likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. This serves as the basis for the rest of the show (or at least what we watched), in which individuals are stigmatized and punished as soon as they pinged for having an elevated psycho-rating. I believe that beyond the actual premise of Psycho-Pass,  this show provides insightful commentary on the potential of humanity's trajectory under the guidance of technology. This show was released in 2012, five years after the first iphone; a super computer held in the palm of your hand. When looking at the  technological boom from the early 2000’s to even the 90’s, it’s clear that there has been exponential growth within the sector, and technology is only going to become more advanced as time goes on. While amazing and necessary for the advancement of civilization, all of these breakthroughs and utilization has quickly made us reliant on technology. A comment made by Toyohisa Senguji (the cyborg in episode 9) touches upon this topic, in which he tells the reporter that her daily life is surrounded and catered by technology, that she couldn’t effectively operate without it, making her a “cyborg to a degree.” This is true in our current climate. As we reach the information age, wars are no longer simply fought physically, they are fought within the cyberspace too, and that's because if our nation’s infrastructure was compromised for even a minute, there would be billions of dollars worth of damages and countless lives ruined, from the leaking of critical information, to essential control systems shutting down, to traffic lights suddenly not working, and so on. On an individual level, we are also reliant as Toyohisa suggests, as we all rely on our smartphones to communicate and find information (same with our computers), and now entire homes and other appliances are fitted with systems connecting to the cloud. Now, while I doubt that our society would embody the one seen in Psycho-Pass, it’s important to understand that there are serious precautions to take as we approach (and if we ever achieve) Singularity (When AI can think for itself) and discover even more powerful uses of our technology along the way, before it can be used as a tool of total surveillance and control.

tell me why it took me ten years to understand the meaning behind this psycho-pass episode title 🤦🏽‍♀️

methuselah: that dude from the bible who lived forever->toyohisa senguji game: reference to the most dangerous game, which is what's going on down here in this subterranean warehouse

ro's clown moments on full display. i literally make jokes about this being the most dangerous game episode ALL THE TIME and didn't. put 2 and 2 together. how embarrassing

From Gakuen Psycho-Pass

psycho-pass (season1) thoughts: 

I’ve heard this op so many times before and know I finally can place it. 

canon wlw?? in my anime?? 

ahhhhhhh the dystopian world sets in. 

there’s so much to say about ethics of crime and judging human life and the validity of people making their own choices (and mistakes) but I’m sure the show deconstructs it better than I can. 

I feel like I’m on a Production IG binge going from Noblesse to Haikyuu, to Kuroko no basket, to Psycho-pass lol. 

you can’t name the weapons Dominators, I’m not mature enough for that. 

the technology is really cool, from the self upgrading guns to the concept of sibyl system analysis of literally everything. however, nothing compares to kogami’s detective skills. 

listen, this show made a character that if you remotely like (anime) men, you’re gonna be in love with kogami. 

funny how many division one hounds’ names start with K. 

ginoza looked less like a dick with shorter hair. 

YAYAOI WAS A MUSICIAN??!! that’s so cool. 

I do wish the show had better lighting, I would like to be able to see everything on the screen and not just reflections because it’s so dark. 

I feel like it would be more helpful to the makishima investigation if uhhhhhh the people were left alive to be questioned and not just blown up on the spot. 

also how do you miss makishima?? his design screams anime villain. 

he can’t be your father!! I didn’t actually see this one coming even though it probably was obvious. 

I have a bit of a thing for detective shows lol. 

woooo we reached the destruction of social order that was carefully orchestrated by the antagonist. 

kagari probably has my favorite character design. it’s a colorful and lively contrast to the rest of the enforcers and the environment in general. 

this anime feels so nostalgic to me. particularly the ops and eds. 

I personally am not a fan of name dropping authors and reciting quotes from memory, I’ve always found it more pretentious than classy, but if you do like that sort of thing I know just the anime guy for you. 

monocropping is bad and you shouldn’t do it. I learned that in high school, come on. 

the girls are fighting! and they have SWITCHBLADES! 

the ending coming full circle/paralleling the beginning had no right to hurt me that bad. 

overall: 

not bad. a little predictable but it is still a detective story so that is to be expected and the themes and message are powerful enough to balance out the predictability. 

not sure if I will watch the other seasons, this one kinda killed my favorite characters and idk if I have have the patience to deal with a new cast each season. 

Old men at Psycho-Pass are badass.

psycho-pass Happy Birthday Senguji toyohisa 12.25 2019

If Psycho-Pass characters had favorite Christmas songs

1. Kamui: I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

Kamui wants everyone to have a white Psycho-Pass like his.

2. Kogami: All I Want For Christmas Is You

Kogami thinks he’s being so smooth, singing this to Akane. Despite Kogami being a bad singer, Akane does end up cuddling with him.

3. Makishima: Let It Snow

Anyone remember the scene after Yuki dies and Makishima just walks off as it snows? Me too.

4. Akane: Dashing Through The Snow

As long as we are keeping the imagery of “snow = bad guys”, Akane can totally kick their butts.

5. Kagari: Jingle Bells

There’s another fun variant of this song and I like to think Kagari can come up with a whole lot more.

6. Mika: We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Traditional, simple, and short, so she doesn’t have to sing it for that long and go back and do her actual work.

7. Sho: Frosty the Snowman

He’s like a kid and he seems like the type to like snowman.

8. Senguji: Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

Half his scenes involves him being near a fireplace. Clearly he likes fireplaces.

9. Masaoka: Deck the halls

A good drunk song.

10. Yayoi: Silent Night

Yayoi likes a good silent night.

11. Chief Kasei: Santa Claus is Coming To Town

“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”

Sibyl really identifies with this song. For some reason.

Toyohisa Senguji (PSYCHO-PASS)  » December 25

Shinya Kogami x  Toyohisa Senguji

I have regrets.

I like that Makishima’s “amusement” has to be pointed out to him by another because it highlights that while Makishima usually treats others with a slight air of indifference, when it comes to Kogami, he expresses emotions - so much so that it can be seen clearly upon his face.

ANIME: PSYCHO-PASS( cyberpunk, crime fiction,psychological thriller)

This is one of my top favorite anime of all time.

“Beautiful flowers, too, eventually wither and fall. That’s the fate of all living beings.” – Shogo Makishima

“I wonder what sort of criteria you use to divide people into good and evil.” – Shogo Makishima

“Society doesn’t always do what’s right. That’s exactly why we ourselves must live virtuous lives.” – Akane Tsunemori

“Books are not something that you just read words in. They’re also a tool to adjust your senses.” – Shogo Makishima

“Isn’t using the net just like using knives for cooking or using paper to write things down? It has nothing to do with good or bad. It’s like, it’s there, so we accept and use it.” – Akane Tsunemori

“A perfect plan doesn’t mean having everything go within expectations. A perfect plan is achieved when it has the plasticity needed to flexibly deal with troubles.” – Shogo Makishima

“They say that fools learn from their experiences, while the wise learn from history. I hope you’re not a fool.” – Nobuchika Ginoza

“In order to measure a person’s worth, you must do more than push them. The real way to test their worth is to give them power. When they gain the freedom to act outside the boundaries of law and ethics, you can sometimes see their souls.” – Shogo Makishima

“Everyone here is the same. They don’t notice anything. They don’t say anything. And they don’t think anything. They are merely a shell of their former selves and soon they will disappear like the melting snow. This epidemic leads innocent people to their deaths, and yet, it’s pathogen will never be eradicated. This is a disease called serenity – a form of death that people have wished for.” – Oryou Rikako

 “I just long for a world in which ordinary things are done in an ordinary way.” – Shogo Makishima

“It’s not the final judgement of “good” and “evil” that’s important. What matters is that you come to that decision yourself. That you agonize over it and eventually accept it.” – Akane Tsunemori

“I think the only time people really have value is when they act according to their own will.” – Shogo Makishima

“What are humans desires? What I think the most troublesome desire is the desire for attention. It’s the source of jealousy and relationship problems, too.” – Shogo Makishima

“When you entrust so much of your everyday life to those electronic devices, the argument that you arent a cyborg isn’t very convincing.” – Toyohisa Senguji

'' you look away and just turn your back on those you don’t understand, you’ll regret it someday. Accept what’s happening before your eyes as a fact. That’s a shortcut to becoming an adult.” – Nobuchika Ginoza

Psycho-Pass 3 - Episode 8 review [SPOILERS]

After going through all the stages of grief yesterday, here are my thoughts on episode 8 of Psycho-Pass 3 and of this season overall if anyone cares to read. If you have been reading my other reviews, you have an idea of what this will be, so read at your own discretion. This last episode manifests the vision for the whole season and what they tried to accomplish and how they failed in doing so. I tried summarizing the episode, but got bored, considering the first 20 minutes or so are random clips thrown together with no coherent transitions between them, so I’ll just deal with the aspects that interest me. 

1. Kei breaking bad and the ills of tokenism

Mao confesses her “sins” to Kei which include a lukewarm sense of revenge and a lack of reasonable online practice (such as not trusting people online.) Her story is clumsily connected to the incident where a PSB inspector died and the other one was institutionalized. It would’ve been mildly interesting if Mao had been the active agent in informing Asuzawa of the investigation because of rightful anger at a perceived injustice, causing the death of someone in Division 1 (Irie, for example) and then having a redemption arc where she helps bring the sucker down. But no, we get the story of a coward who got involved with bad people, got scared, and hasn’t followed any of their instructions since, hoping that they’ll forget about her. 

So the writers have her telling this story to Kei, just so that they can justify his ambivalence later in the episode. What if, he too, could get what he wanted? So many ways to plant the seeds of this internal conflict that we now have to explain to ourselves because the writers didn’t have the time for it. Instead Kei frowns, grunts and punches so that we, the viewers, can see he’s upset. But where’s the chipping away at an inherent sense of morality and at his psyche to the point where he’s abating a congressman in his escape? What’s the switch?  Some people say it’s Maiko, even though just one episode before Kei was telling her that they should believe in Sibyl and that her hue will recover. So which is it? Does he trust the system or does he not? Why do we have to guess? Where was all this ambivalence throughout the season? The writers could’ve set up his internal conflict so much better, tie it with the corrupt ideals of the terrorists, show him tempted to go down that path. He’s the immigrant, he’s the one who can offer the point of view that’s so muddled and lazily written for the other immigrants.  

Time to start cooking meth, Kei. 

To add insult to injury, Kei becomes a Fox not because of a deliberate, motivated decision, but because, like Mao, he clicked the wrong link and now he owes them a favor. What if they hand’t spent the whole season demeaning the power of Sibyl, putting it in the background as an inconvenience, instead of a real system of control with real consequences (the, ummm, whole premise of Psycho-Pass)? Just how the whole terrorist plot was rationalized as a way to make Sibyl “pay for its crimes against immigrants,” even though we don’t see what actual crimes Sibyl committed, why it committed them, we don’t even know what Sibyl’s stance is in regards discrimination and xenophobia. Crap on a cracker, we don’t even know why Sibyl deemed that allowing immigrants in was a good idea. They could’ve set up Maiko and Kei as protagonists of this season, giving us their point of view as conflicted immigrants who survived war and famine, who have to dye their hair, answer “yes ma’am,” endure xenophobic insults and be powerless in order to keep each other. Have them lose each other, their own values, their own morality as power appears in the form of an invitation to be a fox and get back at the system. Have Maiko be deemed a latent criminal who’s beyond all recovery be the switch, but that would only work if Sibyl is still the big, bad guy and Bifrost appears as the preferable bad guy in the eyes of Kei.  Give us flashbacks of Maiko and Kei’s traumas together, show us why he’d make the decision to flip to have her back with him. A reason doesn't not equal a motivation. The latter suggest a process, an acquiring of a view through experience, a lie that the character believes or a truth that they hold. “Maiko’s been in jail for a day, so I accidentally became a fox” would be laughable (and believable) if one didn’t care an ounce for this show. 

It seems like the writers wanted the world of Psycho-Pass to be relevant to today’s issues and so they used the topic of immigration to signal that. It worked in the PP Movie (warlords, refugees, etc) because they had kept the same philosophical thread about human will, power and systems of authority since Season 1. The complexities of that dialogue are lost in this season. They wanted to make some characters neutral, such as Karina or Venerable Auma, or the sister or O’Bryan, have them pass as misunderstood or misjudged and have the whole conflict of immigration be a problem that could be resolved if all these people just got together and sang Kumbaya. 

2. Arata is Jesus and Asuzawa is a troll

When you need other characters to remind you of the importance of the protagonist or the villain, it’s perhaps because those characters are poorly written and can’t stand out on their own. When Toyohisa Senguji smokes from a pipe made from the bones of Rikako Oryo, you know the man is the most sinister psychopath that was spawned upon the earth. You don’t need anyone to tell you that. 

Arata seems to have a destiny imprinted on him that he is special, or so we’re told. Sybil wants to integrate him, Mika wants him to stay a detective, the Bifrost is interested in him, his father appeared to be an important dude, yet I can’t think of a single thing he’s done that’s special or unique. He could’ve also have much more of an internal conflict, but we only get hints (yes, even in the last episode) that his dad was a complete prick. It’s never clear beyond “curiosity for humans” what his deal with Karina is and why he gives her a pass, to the point of snubbing Kei, even when Karina is a total hypocrite who fired her immigrant secretary. Yes, the one who threw herself in front of her kidnappers to protect her. 

It happened right after she donated her kidney to me, true, but she did always put too much sugar in my coffee. I can’t have someone like that in my team! 

With Asuzawa something similar happens. He’s called “clever” and “cunning” and we’re meant to believe it. He’s supposed to be deft, predicting the next bend of the road, being two steps ahead of everyone, but that takes time to write, so instead let’s make both the MWPSB and MOFA look incompetent and let’s have Asuzawa be called a “mastermind” just because. The whole mission to capture him is ridiculous. Asuzawa meets the congressman, says he’s going for smokes and never comes back. Kei meets him, helps him escape. Kogami and Ginoza let the pathfinders escape again. The only new revelation we have about him is that he’s an ex-enforcer who was tortured by Arata’s dad. According to Asuzawa’s secretary, Shindo senior used to manipulate people with his powers. 

Who you callin’ Spookie Boogie? I’m known in the commufield as Growly Grumpy. Credit to @azweidos​ 

3. Locking horns for incompetence

Finally the MOFA and the MWPSB meet to share intel on the Bifrost and they know as much as we know, but this meeting was needed because otherwise they couldn’t have inserted Kogami and Gino in the whole mission to tackle Asuzawa. Mika and Frederica are still competing to see which one of them is more obnoxious, while Asuzawa leaves through the front door of the building as if he hadn’t caused 95 of the 100 traffic accidents in Tokyo that year. 

Well, so much for carrying a gun! Not an obstacle for this octogenarian. 

4. In defense of criticism

There’s this general feeling nowadays that criticizing something means you’re spreading negativity, like we’re supposed to be part of a like-minded cult or a mental hive like Sibyl that’s perpetually content, even when given a mediocre product. The problem with this season is precisely that: it’s not bad. It’s perfectly mediocre. And it’s not because the old Division 1 isn’t there. It’s not because Akane is in jail (and we still don’t know why). It’s because they couldn’t deal with the elements that they themselves created for this season. The idea of the world of Psycho-Pass spreading is brilliant, the idea of an elite that’s exempt from Sibyl's judgement is brilliant, the idea of an outsider point of view is brilliant, but they overestimated their own abilities and underestimated their viewers. There’s only so much disbelief and rationale we can suspend before we realize they’re playing us like a fiddle. There’s only so much a villain can grin to hint at us that they knew what they were doing all along. 

Some argue that this is because the creators want to make Psycho-Pass into a franchise as if that means everything and anything is justified to the point of bastardizing the ideas of the show and reaching the point of absurdity where it parodies itself (you think I didn’t notice those Madeleines?) Is the hope of the creators to bury Psycho-Pass into the ground while they laugh their way to the bank? Why should I care about their money, or how much money they hope to make? I care about the end product and that’s what I base my judgement on. 

5. The Shinkane reunion 

See, the creators aren't dumb. They knew they had to bait us somehow because this season alone won’t stand. Not only that, but they know us so well they saved their budget to keep the best quality for this scene. I’ll just paste what I said about it yesterday.

I thought it was sweet how Akane backpedals against the door with a tinge of pleasure on her face, like she wants to hear his voice and feel that he’s on the other side. I loved the smiles they gave to each other and how he comforts her. I think it’s evident this is not the first time he visits her. 

It was lovely. It would’ve been lovelier if it had been tied to the overarching plot of this season, but that plot barely held itself together. So let’s bask on those few seconds we got until they bait us again to watch the 2020 movie. 

We are now capable of caring for ourselves to the point that we actually regress as living beings. We are killing ourselves with good intentions. In this era, everything that could be called a true reason for living has been methodically removed. No one tries to talk seriously about what life should be anymore, it's not a part of our culture.

Toyohisa Senguji (Psycho-Pass)

Yesterday I discovered an incredible event that made me move from the game of shometsu toshi, a collaboration directly from pysho pass with the characters of the series, makishima shogo that I could expect (beautiful) but then I saw her😍 I was moved. rikako ouryou and still in people's hearts, I can't believe it and beautiful, this art deserves it all who knows maybe one day they will also introduce choe-gu sung and senguji toyohisa ehehe.

When you entrust so much of your everyday life to those electronic devices, the argument that you aren't a cyborg isn't very convincing.- Toyohisa Senguji

3D by @altitxde7 https://damascusapparel.com