Psycho-pass

[Itoukaiji01]

The gun seems to be

connected to a greater network that is active all over the town. The mental state of the people are constantly being monitored which I think makes the concept a little less intangible. I think it is connected to a data base and it's comparing the waves to what was seen before because the criminal was able to check his own reading as well as his victims and they mentioned having sensors around town. The exact mechanics of how it works haven't been shown, but it would be a bit silly to just have the gun itself making the decisions. Instead the greater network is constantly monitoring for changes in people which is how they find the criminals in the first place. They can see changes in the patterns, which doesn't just effect the latent criminal but the people around them.

And I think there is supposed to be a hint of an inherent irrationality about the system, which is going to be explored through the eyes of the rookie, who is the eyes of the audience. She seems to be the only one that sees how insane this situation can be, while everyone else just sees it as routine.

And of course that's what makes the series interesting to me. I want to know exactly what the system is monitoring to make these determinations and of course what kagarus mentioned, intent isn't the same thing as actually having done something but if you get marked as a latent criminal your life is basically fucked, no job, no relationship, nothing. Maybe just some kind of rehabilitation and even after that you're probably marked for life. I would think constant fear of being monitored like that, especially if you don't know the exact mechanics of what is being looked at would be stressful and push some people to the breaking point.

It's interesting with this advanced system they seem to be so overworked that they had to send a rookie on a dangerous assignment. It might come to the fact that the system is causing a lot of the problems they are seeing.

[roriconfan]

Doesn't it all boil down to "follow orders or not"? The system tells you what to do, you do it or get that last scene where the other police officer is questioning the rookie for her behavior.

[NicoNicoDesu]

Episode 1

Gantz gun? After rapist dude's arm blew up, I thought of this.
Plus, why oh why did they have to make the girl a Mary Sue. Dammit, that was so disappointing.
And I was not expecting Togami-the-Badass to die like that.

[valondar]

Originally Posted by NicoNicoDesu

Gantz gun? After rapist dude's arm blew up, I thought of this.
Plus, why oh why did they have to make the girl a Mary Sue.

I wouldn't agree with your use of Mary Sue there, to be honest. I mean Mary Sue really means a variation of this.

She's a rookie who scored well in the academy but is naive and (compared to her colleagues) more idealistic; she's not portayed as particularly or even unusually competent. I can get people not liking the character - nothing about Psycho-pass' characterisation so far is great, tbh - but to call her a Mary Sue sort of pushes it.

[Itoukaiji01]

Given the events of the first episode I thought she

came across as very human. She was thrown into a crazy situation that the rest of the team was treating as normal. If anything though I'd say she was the opposite of a Mary Sue. She handled the situation very poorly, to the point of where she actually made things worse before making a last minute save by actually treating the victim as a human and getting her criminal latency to go down but it's not like she knew that would work. She was reacting purely on emotion at that point. Her actions didn't show any special insight or anything, she just kind of fell ass backwards into the right answer. I'd say it was as much luck as anything else, but as Valondar pointed out it's not like anyone really got any special characterization in the episode as it was more about introducing us into this new world of the future.

[Reat]

The understanding of psychology in this anime is pretty lacking. People don't become more likely to commit crimes because they've been the victims of one, in fact it has the opposite effect. Those with a strong sense of justice, when faced with injustice, gain a greater resolve, not less. If anything, being raped would case post-traumatic stress disorder and androphobia. And how does the desire to commit suicide by self-immolation translate to a lethal threat? Someone did not think these things through...

But the gore was nice, so I'm sure it'll be popular.

[Itoukaiji01]

^ Or is that a part of the shows premise? We don't know exactly what is being measured when they are identifying criminal latency. For all we know all the things you just pointed out are going to be exposed as flaws of this system. We don't know enough about this world yet to make any of the assumptions you are. There is no doubt that the system they are using is flawed. Maybe the desire to commit suicide is read the same as the desire to commit violence against others. There are still a lot of possibilities of what could really be going on in this society. Maybe AI that is responsible for reading people doesn't do what people think it does and instead is just being used as a means for control of the population. We've seen one very small scenario play out in this town so far.

[valondar]

I think the series wasn't particularly subtle about the problems of its own justice system. When the example used is 'in this system we might kill potential rape victims because they're suffering mental stress', it's kind of stacking the deck against finding this at all acceptable or palatable or even - as Reat pointed out - obeying basic pscyhology.

Whether or not the series can address that with any subtelty is an open question (possibly not, going for a rape victim and EXPLODING BODY PARTS does seem a bit cheap and sensationalistic), but it's definitely portraying a vaguely dystopian crime system.

[roriconfan]

Originally Posted by valondar

going for a rape victim and EXPLODING BODY PARTS does seem a bit cheap and sensationalistic

Remember who is the scriptwriter

[valondar]

Originally Posted by roriconfan

Remember who is the scriptwriter

I actually didn't know who was, so I went and looked it up. Gen Urobuchi, also responsible for Blassreiter (which I haven't seen) and Puella Magi Madoka Magica (which I have). The latter actually I thought was really great and one of the best anime of 2011, so there's that.