The similarities between PSYCHO-PASS and Minority Report are unmistakable. They even raise the same question: what if a person only becomes a criminal because they’ve been given no other choice. Nobuo Okura claims to have lived an earnest life, but then goes off the deep end just because the PSYCHO-PASS system said he was about to commit a crime. There’s no getting around the fact that he beat and raped a woman. But at that point in time, did he have any reasons to lie? He wasn’t really speaking to anyone in particular. Maybe he did live an honest, moral life. In other words, the PSYCHO-PASS system precipitated the entire chain of events. I suspect, however, that the people in charge of the PSYCHO-PASS system aren’t about to put themselves on trial.
On the other hand, he saw his own “future,” so to speak. Nobuo Okura had some sort of device that could measure his own propensity to commit crime. With that in mind, you could definitely argue that he could’ve done something about it. But is there any room in PSYCHO-PASS‘s world for rehabilitators? The episode gives us a suggestion that one’s fate isn’t entirely doomed just because of a bad reading: a security droid offered Nobuo Okura a chance at therapy, which he unfortunately refused. Of course, you have to question the effectiveness of said therapy. Even if the therapy did succeed, would you forever be a marked man? Does the bad PSYCHO-PASS reading stay on some sort of permanent record? Our criminal surely felt that way: “Now that it’s come to this, it’s all over. Employment, marriage… they’re all impossible now.”
Another point to consider: Inspector Ginoza calls his and Akane’s target a “latent criminal.” In Minority Report, pre-cogs flagged would-be criminals because they could predict the future based upon a set of conditions. As such, you actually had knowledge that a crime would be committed:
John Anderton: Why’d you catch that?
Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.
John Anderton: You’re certain?
Danny Witwer: Yeah.
John Anderton: But it didn’t fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.
The movie’s premise is simple: assuming a deterministic world, given a set of conditions, one could possibly predict that a murder will occur. Of course, there’s plenty here to contend with, but I don’t want to turn this post into a discussion about Minority Report so we’ll just leave it at that. Back to PSYCHO-PASS, a “latent criminal,” on the other hand, suggests to me that there’s only going to be a chance that a crime will be committed, even if said chance is high. Probability is merely probability, i.e. it is not sufficient knowledge to say that a crime will occur. To a certain point, people have been convicted for having an intent to murder even if no murder has occurred, but inclination is different. Nobuo Okura probably didn’t have an intent to rape just because his inclination for violence was high. Therein lies the subtle difference between the anime and Minority Report.
Anyway, I don’t want to speculate too much since we’ve only seen a single episode. I think PSYCHO-PASS has one hell of a juicy premise, and I’m definitely interested in not just seeing how everything unfolds, but how the show will distinguish itself from Minority Report. I feel the comparisons are inevitable.
Notes:
• I’m inclined to say that the setting appears very Blade Runner-ish from the start, but then again, Blade Runner and a lot of cyberpunk stories were inspired by Tokyo. Look at the similarities between the two screenshots:
William Gibson himself remarked that Tokyo embodied the essence of cyberpunk: “Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of information—said, ‘You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.’ And it was. It so evidently was.”
• To be quite frank, I think the insert song here blows.
• I see we’re bringing mullets back.
• For whatever reason, I also feel like saying that the opening sequence resembles Spike’s final mission.
• The cute robots serving as a police force is hardly an anime thing. I think I’ve written elsewhere on this blog on how cuteness can be used to distort perceptions: “Authority cuteness attempts to make power relations invisible by infantilizing the image of a company, government agency, and similar institutions.”
On another level, what we see here is another instance of cyberpunk, i.e. the overlapping of high tech and modern pop culture. Man, this is going to be easy if the post is just going to write itself thanks to my past three years of research!
• A cool shot I feel like pointing out: Akane’s superior tells her that he can’t treat her like a newbie. The anime zooms into her eyes, and a rain drop presumably drips from her hair. Then again, she has to be nervous about her new assignment, so the rain drop doubles as a sweat drop. No, it’s not a super meaningful shot or anything. I just like how visual media can convey information so succinctly.
• So from what I can gather, there are numerous street scanners littered about the city, and they constantly check the mental states of passersby, a.k.a. a Hue Check. If the scanner flags you for any reason, a security droid will immediately show up to offer you therapy. First thought: that’s a really questionable system even if we assume that the science is legit. You certainly have to hope that (1) not only is the scanner reliable and isn’t prone to false positives but (2) also that the system is being run and maintained by those you can rely on. The latter is the most troubling aspect of it all. I’m not typically a “Down with the government!” sort of guy, but I think I would draw the line at Big Brother’s ability to assess not just whether or not I’m guilty, but my propensity to commit crime.
• I can’t help but predict that the entire system will be dismantled by the end of the series.
• Akane looks as though she’s always sleepy.
• Bizarrely enough, a few latent criminals are being employed as a part of the police task force, i.e. “Enforcers.” Ginoza refers to them as animals, but there’s nothing to suggest this besides their supposedly high PSYCHO-PASS Crime Coefficient. The more troubling inclination here is that they haven’t actually done anything wrong. At first, I wondered why the police would entrust someone they deemed as dangerous with a gun, but then I realized it’s not exactly like giving Charles Manson a gun, is it? Rather, you’re giving a gun to a person who hasn’t committed any crime whatsoever, and telling them that if he or she doesn’t comply, it’s off to prison.
• Akane is taught how to use a Dominator, which is an automated gun but automated in a different sense. It only fires when it supposedly has a latent criminal in its cross hairs, but again, how much can we really trust the system, blah blah blah.
• What is all the HUD (heads-up display) that Akane sees when she picks up the gun? Is it holographic information from the gun itself? Or rather, does she have some sort of cybernetic implants? I can’t really tell here.
• The target, Nobuo Okura, has a disheveled looking woman before him. She’s down to her negligee, so I assume he’s already raped her at least once. I then half-expected someone to save the poor woman from further abuse. Welp, I guess I have been watching too much nonsense. Other than the abject brutality of his actions, we also learn that much like UN-GO, another cyberpunk-esque anime series, the world of PSYCHO-PASS has virtual women for people to have sex with.
• More examples of the cyberpunk setting:
I previously wrote, “Cyberpunk landscapes tend to bombard and overload the senses, rendering its populace comfortably numb to the real horror lurking underneath the glitz and glamour of the neon lights.” Here’s another shot that I like:
This screencap suggests that it isn’t just the ground level that is a sprawling, maze-like mess. The problem goes all the way to the top.
• How does a girl like Akane find herself in this line of work?
• Tomomi, the old man, rants about the injustices of the system. He decries the “theories and logic” that the PSYCHO-PASS system seems to be based upon.
• Despite being automated, the Dominator looks to be way too slow to get any actual work done. Each time it switches modes, it has to transform itself? By then, the hostage is likely already dead.
• It’s a little silly to do potentially dangerous fieldwork in a skirt, isn’t it? C’mon Akane, dress for the job.
• In its lethal mode, the Dominator causes its targets to explode. That’s brutal. An allusion to Akira, perhaps?
Addendum: “An allusion” does not imply that what we see here and what we see in Akira are one and the same. Also, I am merely asking a question; I am not making a declaration of fact or even posing much of an argument.
• So now the victim finds herself under the scrutiny of the PSYCHO-PASS system. It has got to suck to go from being attacked and raped to finding your supposed saviors aiming their guns at you. Such is a world where a system can supposedly determine instantaneously whether you’re a human or another wretched animal. Does it say anything that the only person to sympathize with the woman is another woman? It’s too early to draw any conclusions, but it’s worth keeping this thought in mind as we watch the series develop.
im realy not liking the “appeal to as much people as possible” approach all these high concept shows are taking, like K, why is there need to have a harem of handsome guys!?
…what exactly do you want though? A harem of ugly guys? When’s the last time you saw an “ugly” girl in an anime that wasn’t north of 50 years of age?
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I didn’t understand what the old man said about Psycho-Pass being contagious. Was it because people that are violated or sees acts of violence are more likely to behave like that afterwards?
Yeah, I think that’s the implication. Stress makes you unstable, and you’re thus more likely to snap and become degenerate.
Interesting post.
There are a few things I’d like to mention… I’m not good at writing things into a coherent paragraph so I’ll use bullet points like you.
First: The system and the criminal (Okura). We know what the Psycho-pass, is supposed to measure but it was also shown how how quickly does this hight risk number can change in a person, as we saw in the victim.
Okura was flagged and he ran away, meaning he had a high criminal risk, but in theory anybody could become a criminal if they get influenced into becoming one. He did mention he had a normal life so it was in his nature to eventually become a criminal? He himself said he didn’t wanted to become one but once he was flagged by the P-P, in his words ” I’ve restrained myself all this time so now I’ll just do whatever I want…” In this case wasn’t the P-P who actually triggered his prone to crime state of mind into a real criminal. We are clearly shown how the system doesn’t actually work as it was intended.
Also, would it be possible to cheat this system, I mean, if this guy was only recently flagged but by his speech is understood that’s what he always wanted, does this mean there is a possibility to hide your mental health even from the machines? This hasn’t been explained in the show so I’m only speculating, but if, for example, this system was based on existing criminals and their brains, (if I remember correctly, and please correct me if I’m wrong) are different from average people (a.k.a non violent prone or criminals) and the system is designed to detect that, wouldn’t that mean that the system can only detect possible criminals when they are in that stage already?
But this is just stupid speculation
Second: The crime prone officers and the rookie girl (Akane). In the real work there have been several examples of police officer using excessive use of violence or acting in more violent manner than the criminal themselves.
Here at least we have an explanation, they are actually latent criminals and yet they are allowed to work for the police. Why would they accept to work for the police? Even though they are treated like criminals they still have privileges, not only that, they are given an excuse to harm people, they are given a gun who can only shoot at criminals and yet they pointed it at the victim because her P-P reading was too high as well.
Akane had the normal reaction, she understood the shock she had been through and tried to protect the victim, yet the other two officers didn’t they only fund said reading as a reason (excuse) to eliminate her, Akane tried to help her, possible what this system was designed for, prevent her from losing herself and becoming a criminal.
Another side of the cyber-punk scenery is how this people have come to “trust” this system blindly, in an almost religious manner, “If the P-P says you are a criminal you are one even if you haven’t committed a crime yet” and take it as a green flag to dispose of them. Normal people on the other hand fear to even get flagged, the victim girl ran away from the police, blah blah blah we know the story, that just shows how messed up the system actually is.
The glasses guy (can’t be bother to look up his name) also has this attitude against the victim, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out criminal too, though what is more likely is that he might have a tragic pass when a victim he saved turned criminal and killed a bunch of people (extra tragic points if a relative or girlfriend d was killed too).
Also I don’t think we were shown that man exploding just for the sake of gore, if there was a serial killed who enjoyed killing his victims in a very gruesome manner, wouldn’t he love that gun? And yet for what we know, the people who use it are criminals in theory?
This turned out as a pretty long comment, ‘d make it a post instead but nobody would read it anyway, so I’m sorry E-minor you get the shorter stick
P.S. Regarding the “friendly” robots; apparently in India they prefer officers with moustache because they appear more friendly and approachable than officers without moustache, how much of this is actually true is beyond me but sounds like an interesting fact.
I thought about this, but when Akane was examining the victim, the Dominator stayed in non-lethal mode. When we later hear about the Dominator updating its assessment, it continued to be in non-lethal mode. I wonder then if very much changed at all… or if Akane simply heard Ginoza’s gun assessing a new target.
Yeah, I think this will be the crux of the entire series.
Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, we don’t know yet how accurate the system really is. Does it flag only serious crimes or does it run the gamut of crimes? Can it detect when someone’s about to steal a car? Now, stealing a car is a major crime, but I doubt a person who commits grand theft auto has a significantly different brain make-up than the rest of us. But I know what you’re getting at… there have been studies that suggest serial killers’ brains may operate differently than the rest of us.
Still, Okura isn’t a serial killer. He feels trapped, and when a lot of people feel as though they’ve been cornered, they will lash out. Of course, that doesn’t abdicate responsibility for what he did to the victim, but I don’t feel as though he’s been hiding his horrible tendencies the entire time. If anything, the anime seems to want to suggest that any of us can snap given the right set of conditions.
We also don’t really know how the PSYCHO-PASS goes about quantifying brain states, and we’ll probably never know. But let’s say Okura really does have a brain different from ours, wouldn’t this change how we deal with them? Our law and order is pretty much based upon culpability, and if someone’s brain is really screwed up, it’d be really hard to pin any serious charges on them. Then again, the authorities in the anime may not really care one way or another about that.
Okura acted as though his life was over. I’d imagine that these latent criminals working for the police just want some sense of normality, so they’ve taken the job. If they obey, they get to be like a pet on a leash. It’s still a shitty situation, but it probably beats just being holed up in some prison (or even worse — we don’t know yet how criminals are punished).
Well, I think it’s meant to subdue both criminals and would-be criminals. The Sibyl or whatever probably felt the victim is now a would-be criminal, though I’m not exactly sure how the show thinks a rape victim would act out. When have there been examples of rape victims becoming criminals? This is a potentially troubling implication of the anime. There are cases of child abuse victims becoming adults and victimizing their own children, but I don’t know about adult cases….
Again, I’m not sure about that. The old man ranted quite a bit about the unreasonable nature of the system. On a deeper level, I think he’s referring to how those like Inspector Ginoza rely on their numbers and science to determine a person’s guilt without considering their humanity. And like always, Japanese stories tend to have this “beware the dangers of technology” theme. If we relinquish too much of our responsibilities to the machines, this show seems to be the very cynical result of what could happen.
100 years late, but there have been cases (as far as I know in the United States) that some rape victims actually have been arrested because they’ve reported what had happened to them. As such, there was a case in Turkey where a woman not only stabbed and murdered her rapist – but she decapitated him and placed his head in the town’s square and yelled out, “This is the man who took away my honor!”
To be honest, I can see how they could easily thought the rape victim would be a criminal because of what I mentioned earlier. I thought it was interesting to see that and not only that – Akane wanted to help her. Maybe it’s a sign of her being a newbie or a decent person but as someone who was at the top of her class and wrote a thesis on Psycho-Pass, it seems that the system that she studied at school certainly may be glorified and makes things more black and white vs the gray it actually is. /ramble.
Considering what has happened to her, that hardly makes it a crime where lethal punishment is necessary. And that’s what we have in the show. The rape victim would’ve been killed without Akane’s intervention. And violence against the rapist is one thing. It just doesn’t seem very intuitive that a victim becomes violent to everyone else.
I think we’ve actually already been shown this in a subtle way. If you notice, during the fight at the very beginning Shinya tries to shoot the helmeted chainsaw-wielding guy at point blank range, but his gun won’t fire. There’s a cut to him grimacing when nothing happens. It’s only after he tosses the guy through the wall and breaks off one of the tubes jutting out of his head that he’s properly able to turn him a goresplosion with a shot from the thing.
I’d imagine that this means it’s possible to sedate or brainwash people in such a way that they can commit crimes without realizing it, or in a way completely disassociated from their psyche that the system isn’t able to track. Of course, it could just be a boring old jamming helmet, but with the themes the series is going for I think the former is more likely.
For the moment, I’d lean towards this. Or perhaps the tower he’s in had some sort of Dominator-neutralizing effect. He’s fighting a guy who wants to kill him, so it would make little sense that the weapon wouldn’t fire.
My comment vanished after I finished writing and my connection cut… I can’t remember everything I said and now I’m mad… anyway perhaps it was meant to never be known. Perhaps is a lie that E-minor likes long comments and that’s why it happened.
Anyway, in short I shouldn’t look at the officers with such back or white lenses, they do have their grey moments…
wait a second I used magic…and it worked . E-minor likes long comments after all
What I know regarding the different state of mind serial killers have, it was how committing acts of violence against people, was what aroused them, in case of serial rapist and so on. They become the kind of people who get a kick out harming other people. Volunteers in the experiment (ex-convicts) used drugs and other more practical means of castration to get their urges under control and prevent them from committing more crimes.
About victims of acts of violence becoming criminals themselves, or psycho-hazard as the show described, yes it happens sometime with people who were abused during their infancy becoming the abuser when they grow up, but there is also they “humans are shaped by their environment” and how the old man said how young people are not tolerant against stress and how affected they are by violent urges and so on, I found this argument similar to that of how video-games make teenagers act violent ….so yeah I’m assuming he is referring to that.
I realize how wrong of me it was to see all of the police force all black or white instead of looking at the grey, yet I also find fascinating.. Actually scary might be a better word, how they’ve become so insensitive.. (I’m sure there is a better word), like you mentioned in the first episode of bottom… btoom, the normal reaction to killing someone… and their reaction, like grabbing the gun covered in blood with the hand still holding it…
Anyway first episode so there is plenty of room for us all to speculate
Yeah, but I just don’t think our criminal here fits that profile. I have no reason to believe he was ever a twisted guy holding back just because of the system. I think the system put him in that situation.
The fear with video games is that young people are impressionable, and you run the risk of desensitizing them to violence. I’m not sure how this would apply to the one example of the contagion in the episode, i.e. the victim. Let’s say she gets the therapy she needs and deserves… can any of us see her committing crimes? It’ll be interesting to see how the psycho-hazard thing plays out, because right now, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Well, the mind of the girl could just crack by the stress and pressure, she could not be cure by therapy because the shock was too big, she would only be a danger for society and letting her live in a mental hospital wouldn’t be very human either… just a n example but I do understand what you mean, this is just my speculation and it can be easily refuted.
Also, props for finding the word I was thinking of, “desensitizing” .. I better remember that or I’ll be coming to this post every time I forget it.
Just to expand my own knowledge a bit, I looked up rape trauma syndrome. If anything, they run the risk of becoming withdrawn from the rest of society. I just don’t think rape victims are more prone to violence, which makes the show’s attitude towards the victim even more egregious. Since it has only been a single episode though, I’ll wait and see what the show will do from here.
Well she wasn’t just raped, she witnessed a man explode in from of her, had a gun pointed at her… more than once and she feel from the stairs… actually that scene of her falling from the stairs really disturbed me, even more than the rape (since was mostly censored).
That’s all I’ll say before the second episode
I just think there has to be a flaw with the psycho-hazard theory, and I get the feeling that we’ll see a bit of this play out in the next few episodes. But yeah, let’s just wait and see.
Couldn’t Akane have just ordered the criminal-guys to stand down, instead of being overtly dramatic?
I guess it makes sense seeing how she’s right out of police academy, but then you just wonder why they would even have her supervise the criminals.
Well, I think it’s a combination of two things. First, Akane is, as you say, unaccustomed to field work. As such, it’s not a part of her nature to subdue her subordinates with the gun. She pretty much had to force herself to shoot Shinya. Secondly, she very much embodies innocence in the anime. I know this makes her depiction a little less than realistic, but what you see as overtly dramatic, I see as… I don’t know… archetypal?
It is pretty archetypal, now that you mention it; I think it stood out as overtly-dramatic because of how much it contrasted with the all the cynicism and realism in the rest of the episode.
Akane’s reactions when actually on the case (to the violence and to the victim), maybe these were believable – but I didn’t really feel like her character was. She is in law enforcement, and she even notes herself that she wrote a thesis on psycho pass contagion yet she has no idea that the safety bureau uses the guns, how they operate, seemingly no real understanding of psycho pass contagion given how surprised she is when it happens, or that the bureau has this team of latent criminals? I understand they are giving us all this exposition about the world for our benefit, but it makes this girl seem like an absolute flake – when in reality it appears she been employed in quite a serious position.
Am I really to believe she didn’t understand how the guns and the psycho pass system work? Or should I be taking it that she is just so gosh darned overwhelmed that she can’t react properly to any part of the situation.
I’d just chalk it up to bad writing, but to address your points individually…
I did not take the contagion to be a literal thing. I interpreted it more as an effect rather than there being some sort of biological vector being transmitted from person to person. So anyway, one of the many contrasts that the episode was trying to draw was the distinction between theory and practice. Yes, she wrote about a thesis about the theory of psycho-hazard, but to see it in action is another thing entirely. This might explain her reaction to seeing it occur between the criminal and the victim, but yeah, I’ll concede that it doesn’t excuse the old man’s unnatural exposition.
She did tell the guy that she had received training on how to use the Dominators, but he went on to explain how to use the guns anyway. I see it as some parts bad writing, some parts chauvinism.
She never said she didn’t know anything about the latent criminals. Again, Ginoza just decided to feed us exposition anyway.
To be honest, this is the first rape-centric situation in an anime for a long while where the rape is actually threatening and non-consensual from start to end. Iunno, I have seen so much anime where rape ends up being more of a fetish. I can also kind of see where the “contagious” parts came in: Woman got brutally raped and abused to shreds and eventually seeing the rapist die in the most… goriest of ways so far also does not make any situation better. Most likely from the people who are supposed to protect her.
I think Akane is also the perfect example of that type of person who is fresh graduated from college all gung-ho and knowing everything because he learned everything from the magical world of higher education…until the person steps into the real world and shows how not that magical that place is. That “She REALLY must be new here” character. No matter how much you learn and absorb from “training mode”, nothing beats experience when it comes to the real world. But here is to seeing her develop and become someone intriguing in future episodes.
So far, the entire thing had an interesting idea. I’m actually looking forward to it.
Uh, I guess I can’t really dispute you there. Other than this season full of rape scenarios, the most recent show I can recall that involves rape is Kamisama Dolls.
But how does that make her more inclined to commit crimes though?
Yeah, I agree. I mentioned in another post that she’s somewhat archetypal, and she’s meant to draw a contrast between theory and practice, one of the actual themes of the episode.
But how does that make her more inclined to commit crimes though?
She was about to make one from the looks of it with the gasoline pouring about and a lighter in her hand . The “lethal” part of the Pass might also involve large-scale crimes that have yet to be created.
A rape victim finds herself at the wrong end of a few Dominator guns. Even after she fell down a flight of stairs, one of the agents continued to pursue her. Considering her state of mind, you can’t help but imagine that she feels very, very threatened. Like the criminal, the PSYCHO-PASS system basically forced her hand. This is pretty much entrapment.
Pretty much. It was indeed not a great day for the victim.
My money is on the Enforcers being former police officers – the conversation in the elevator seemed to hint at that. If this is true then the government wouldn’t have hired criminals, they just would have not fire them.
I dunno. Maybe.
Regarding the cyberpunk setting, I also noticed that in the opening sequence a number of buildings were sunk underwater, which is reminiscent of the imagery found in Madoka Magica’s tenth episode. I wonder if that has anything to do with how and why the Psycho Pass system was established.
And — we also learn that much like UN-GO, another cyberpunk-esque anime series, the world of PSYCHO-PASS has virtual women for people to have sex with.
I wonder why though? I wouldn’t be surprised if they discouraged sex just to keep the population in check. Oh my, the theories.
How dare you bring that into my house!
You can’t repress sex. People will find way to fulfill their urges. I’d speculate that at least with sanctioned virtual sex, you can regulate it.
How dare you bring that into my house!
Not a big fan either, but I just thought it was interesting, considering the same guy who wrote Madoka is writing this. Maybe he just likes his cities sunk. It does explain how the city is structured though. I’m very much infatuated with this show’s background art because the cyberpunk influences are there.
I’d speculate that at least with sanctioned virtual sex, you can regulate it.
Not sure if I phrased that correctly, I think it was more like the system doesn’t approve of people reproducing rather than simply having sex hence the virtual alternative.
Cyberpunk interests me, but I’m not an expert of it by any means. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any connection between cyberpunk and sunken cities, but maybe someone else can provide a compelling analysis in that regard.
Ah, okay, I get what you’re saying now. But cities don’t tend to have positive population growth. We don’t really have virtual sex now, but we’re not exactly worried about our cities filling up with people. Population growth is more of a concern for underdeveloped areas of the world where birth control and sex education isn’t readily available. In any case, it’s an interesting thought, but I don’t think virtual sex would have much of an effect in keeping down the birth rate. I’m willing to bet the people in the anime would have no problem buying a condom.
I hope that Akane chick fucking dies! If she keeps acting like that she’ll ruin the series. Since she didn’t want to shoot the victim immediately the status changed to terminate for a while and the victim could have been killed. Stupid like that grates on my nerves.