New Anime Series! Psycho-Pass episode 1

Hello there my lovely readers! My to do list is shrinking by the minute! Maybe by this Sunday I will be totally caught up? I am a dreamer. I do have most of Thanksgiving week off so maybe everything will be totally done and caught up with. Or I can decorate my house for Christmas before my brother leaves for Japan. And since I have a million trees that might take all week. XD

Ah starting with the end of the series first I see.

Up now....a new anime series?!? Because I decided I wanted to see just how far behind I can get on things XD. Psycho-Pass episode 1 reporting for duty. Spoilers for avoiding any crazy Tom Cruise look alikes.

Thanks for making me scared out of my mind?

Episode Summary: Sometime in the future Shinya fights his way to the top of a tall building in Tokyo. He is injured yet manages to blow some masked dude away with his special little gun. A man named Shougo walks down the stairs and a voice over says that these two were always destined to meet and fight. Back at the beginning of this series a young new recruit of the Criminal Investigation Division Akane arrives at a crime scene. This is her first day on the job and her superior Ginoza gives her the rundown of what is going on. On a routine hue check suspect Nobuo refused therapy when it was determined his psycho-pass was too cloudy. He ran and his status as a latent criminal increased. Matters were not helped when he took a hostage and ran into a district where things are not easily patrolled. Now it is up to the CID to go in there and bring him in. Ginoza warns Akane the people they are about to work with are latent criminals themselves that the department uses to help catch other latent criminals. A truck pulls up carrying latent criminals Shinya, Tomomi, Shusei, and Yayoi for Ginoza and Akane to work with. Shusei and Yayoi head off with Ginoza while Akane is in charge of Shinya and Tomomi. Shinya quickly goes off on his own when he realizes what a newbie Akane is so Tomomi stays by Akane’s side to help her out. Meanwhile the suspect Nobuo grows more and more agitated which causes his pyscho-pass to cloud even more. He decides if he is beyond saving he might as well rape his hostage which causes her distress.

Good thing Tomomi is trustworthy...yes?

Tomomi shows Akane how to use the gun and how Sybil, the computer in charge, tells the Dominators, the guns, what should be fired. The lower the risk the greater survival rate and retaliation. Tomomi also jokes that the weapons can be used on the latent criminal Enforcers by the Inspectors. Akane scans Tomomi with the gun and sees that he is really a latent criminal. Tomomi talks more about the whole system, how Nobuo was probably taking drugs and if the hostage isn’t rescued soon she might become a latent criminal too as the condition becomes contagious in dire situations. Shusei ends up finding Nobuo and uses the paralyzing gun on him. Turns out Tomomi was right and Nobuo was on drugs so the paralyzing doesn’t work. Everyone starts to pursue the suspect with Akane and Tomomi finding him first. Nobuo forces them to give up their guns but is unable to use them himself. Turns out that Shinya was behind the suspect and was using the other two as bait. He fires at Nobuo and he explodes into a giant pile of mush. He turns his gun on the hostage who has become unstable. Akane decides that the gun is way too violent and wants to talk her down. When Shinya doesn’t drop his weapon Akane fires a paralyzing bullet at him. The hostage escapes and decides if she is captured she rather set the entire building on fire. Akane does her very best to calm down the hostage which ends in her being paralyzed instead of killed. Ginoza is not pleased with these results and Akane sits alone, wondering what the hell she got herself into. THE END!

So very, very harsh. X___X

Well then….I guess….the future is bleak for Japan. Minority Report indeed folks! Forgetting hiding your kids and wives, hide your emotions!

Bright eye and ready to have her hopes and dreams smashed.

This entire premise is very interesting indeed. Especially given the country it takes place in. Japan has a relatively low crime rate to begin with. Maybe this is a satire piece, saying how much Japan polices its citizens already and this is sticking it to the man. Or maybe this is a warning, that people need to get along or things might have to go down this path. Either way I would probably be in serious trouble in this situation. America could probably use the CID more than Japan. Every day I threaten to chop someone’s head off or something. Poor me, the latent criminal!

I would feel weird being exposed like that. Oh and I would be in jail always.

That was the entire foundation behind the Minority Report, a movie starring Tom Cruise before he lost his mind. Basically three people with visions of the future would predict when people would commit crimes, violent ones I believe. Those people were then rounded up and taken to pods to serve out either life sentences or really long ones. I believe people were taken into custody most of the time and not killed although that did happen. In the end Tom Cruises realizes the flaw in the system when he himself is targeted and proves the system wrong.

Mental health is serious business now.

Psycho-Pass takes Minority Report one step further. Maybe many steps further. People aren’t being convicted of crimes. They are being detained and questioned/policed based on their emotions and thoughts. Everything inside a human that can’t be explained has been and computers assign numbers/values to past experiences and current thoughts. So if someone is thinking about how they would like to kill their boss….you are a latent criminal unless you get therapy. Therapy was not explained in this episode. I am sure it is something like brain washing/memory erasing/pill taking. The more out of control POTENTIALLY a person becomes the more of a danger they become to society. So with Nobuo he was having a bad day and using drugs. This lead him to run from a scanner and make totally bad decisions when left alone I am sure he would have done nothing.

WEEE! Now everything can be explained to us.

All of this is explained because a typical scenario took place. A newbie on the job and needs all of this explained to her. Akane may have been at the top of her class but clearly she was not ready for real world applications. Thus the explanations. Even the Dominators had to be explained to her. Ah the people guarding the city and having total control of life and death. Well I guess the gun made the decision and just needed someone to carry it around. I call it a gun but did you see what happened to Nobuo later?

Ginoza doesn't seem to be that concerned with knowing the Enforcers that well.

Hopefully as the series goes along the Enforcers will be explained. Two of them went off camera with Ginoza so we don’t know much about them. Tomomi seems like a nice guy while Shinya is pretty cut and dry, following the guidelines and not letting emotions get in the way. Given what happened to Nobuo it is hard to say if these people really are dangerous. Seems like something big is going down. This super computer controlling all the humans and their emotions. Or maybe one person controlling the entire system. But I am not going to blindly think these people are criminals. Maybe a dad was beating on mom and the son tried to stop it. A guy walked in on his wife cheating. An abusive boyfriend went unchecked and someone fought back. All of these things are pretty possible and like what happened with the hostage today can turn victims into criminals.

Pretty nice that he knows she aimed the gun at him and didn't say anything.

I think Akane was pretty lucky in the Tomomi was helping her so much. Maybe if he works hard enough he can be released? But his number was pretty high when Akane checked so maybe that is not possible. He has reached the place of no return? Shinya didn’t help and used Akane as bait. Then didn’t listen to her because her actions nearly killed the victim. The result of what happened to the hostage was the same so Akane caused a lot of unnecessary drama. Akane is lucky things only ended halfway special.

And then he exploded.

So this show is slick and futuristic. A lot seems to be going on but most things were explained in such a way it was easy to follow. Maybe some would say that is the easy way out and that things were dumbed down for viewers. Well I like not being confused. And there are still things left unexplained. Mainly why society let this happened, who is running the system, and how people get selected to be an Inspector.

But she's the victim!

I am interested in the hue checkers and how people act in everyday life. Are people more like robots? Because if they have been conditioned all this time to be careful with their thoughts people must act even MORE Japanese, trying to be alike and not cause problems. All we saw was the seedy looking district with the rebels. So it will be interesting to see how this all turns out.

You should feel bad!!!

I think I am forgetting a lot of things I wanted to talk about. X___X The hostage almost being killed was awful. Maybe people take tons of drugs in the future like Nobuo to keep their emotions even more in check. Look what happens if you follow the rules and something bad happens to you? Obviously your emotions are going to go crazy and you are going think MAN I wish this guy was dead. What a scary place to live in…well on to episode 2!