What They Say
The Metropolitan area is facing an unprecedented crisis. People wearing helmets are committing crimes without being caught by the street scanners. Citizens are also picking up weapons in the name of self-defense. What is Makishima trying to achieve?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
It’s a massively frustrating episode, as viewers are caught in transit from point A to point B. The helmets that prevent cymatic scans are given out by Makishima’s proxies, and crime is on the rise. Makishima’s man Choe spreads internet rumors, adding to the chaos because ordinary citizens are led to believe defending themselves will actually lower their criminal coefficient. But this was easy to predict from the last shot of episode 14. We knew a societal breakdown was coming, so this episode just lingers on the details.
And it’s just the kind of over the top stuff you’d expect. Baseball bats bent over people’s skulls, handsaws used to rob people, and one unlucky woman set on fire. All of the resentments between latent criminals and the mentally healthy go to a boil, and the Ministry of Welfare and Public Safety is unprepared to deal with the threat. There are too few officers, and not enough reliable alternatives to the Dominators. Officials are stuck with EMP grenades and stun batons.
But the episode closes on Makshima and Choe talking while en route to the Ministry tower where Sybil is housed. Choe tells Makishima that Sybil can’t possibly be a computer given current technology levels, and that he found that the tower’s power consumption levels were faked. So what is Sybil? We’ll have to wait until next week to find out. Now, all this slow-boiling suspense might work on DVD or Blu-ray, but week to week, this seems like just cruelly drawing things out.
The best scenes in this episode are between Makishima and Choe, fleshing out the two characters as they chat about books. In what seems a Proust reference, Makishima snacks on madeleines dipped in tea, while talking about his preference for printed books, the differences between Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep and Blade Runner, and growing up in a city that would develop the Sybil System. There’s a sad fatalism and almost a nobility to the speech he gives to his followers before heading off to confront Sybil, allowing us to believe he actually means to bring about societal change. He’s still a monster, of course, considering how he treated Yuki, but it’s nice to have a villain of some depth.
Sadly, we’ll have to wait a week before we get any new development. Let’s hope it passes quickly!
In Summary
Watching PSYCHO-PASS week to week, this episode feels almost like filler before the big showdown. Episode 16 is said to be Urobuchi’s masterpiece, so the wait is intolerable. This will surely play as a better episode if watched in a marathon, but for now, it merely serves as an obstacle between the start and conclusion of Makishima’s war on Sybil.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Funimation
Review Equipment:
Sony VAIO 17″ HD screen
