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Psycho-Pass (TV) (all seasons).


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Yttrbio
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Joined: 09 Jun 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:42 am Reply with quote
One-Eye wrote:
2. You just can't shoot them? Really they need spoiler[to balloon up and then explode?] Must be messy for the clean up crew, I hope they get paid extra.
More than just silly, it seems like seeing that is the kind of thing that causes screwed up psychological states. Wouldn't it be counterproductive?
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Mylene



Joined: 07 Feb 2006
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Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 10:21 am Reply with quote
Yttrbio wrote:
One-Eye wrote:
2. You just can't shoot them? Really they need spoiler[to balloon up and then explode?] Must be messy for the clean up crew, I hope they get paid extra.
More than just silly, it seems like seeing that is the kind of thing that causes screwed up psychological states. Wouldn't it be counterproductive?


I'm thinking that might be the point. It's like they're trying to find a new way to justify eugenics. Just make people think that these people are definitely going to hurt them in the future, and they're more than willing to let it happen. And certainly nothing is ever going to cause them to become like that. Not at all.
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Raftina



Joined: 15 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 11:48 pm Reply with quote
The first episode shows great promise in the even way it handled Akane's stance: spoiler[We see that her naivete about treating victims gave the victim enough time to work herself into euthanasia levels, and then we see her idealism give the victim enough time to drop back to capture levels. It's too often that a cynical story stops in the first stage, immediately labeling a character like Akane as a naive newbie. Such stories are misanthropic, cynical, and too predictable. It's also too often that a story skips the first stage, immediately labeling Akane to be some sort of lone crusader.] Neither extreme is interesting. Instead, the episode gives us a more neutral stance on the system that builds a good ground for an interesting treatment.

Speaking of the system, I see in this topic an all too ready assumption about setups like Psycho Pass that really isn't true here. I expect that the series will itself address this flawed assumption. You see in the episode that spoiler[the suspect assumes his life is ruined. And when the sibyl judges the suspects to be above a certain danger threshold, the enforcers are quite ready to shoot. This cold, point of no return system is not how Psycho Pass itself works: In the end, the Sibyl is quite ready to lower the crime index of the woman back to nonlethal levels. Contrast the instructions the dominator gives to the advice the old man gives: The dominator tells Akane that she is authorized to shoot and converts to the appropriate mode, but it doesn't tell her to shoot. The old man tells her to just shoot if the dominator authorizes it. The series places the flaw in how the enforcement uses the Psycho Pass system, not in the system itself--in stark contrast to how such systems are usually treated, and how some users here assumed the series is treating the problem.] The unusual approach the series takes promises to be quite interesting indeed.

jl07045 wrote:
Mad_Scientist wrote:
On the negative side, some of the exposition felt a little clunky, explaining things to newbie inspector that she should have already known and shouldn't really need reminding of. I wasn't a huge fan of the way they used her character either.


Yeah, she felt like a schoolgirl not a police academy graduate with top marks.

The department is called the Crime Investigation Unit. It uses cute little holographs with a young woman's voice to block an area. It's also short on manpower. The old man's banter criticizes the academy for its ivory tower approach. All these little cues suggest that the academy is likely guilty of glossing over the more unpleasant and rarer aspects of crime. For someone who was introduced to Psycho Pass like systems through Multivac rather than Voight-Kampff, I find Akane to be the most believable character out of the protagonists. And I suspect that the reason the department uses enforcers like Kogami is because they expect most of its regular members to have a mindset like Akane rather than Ginoza.
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 4:12 am Reply with quote
Raftina wrote:
jl07045 wrote:
Yeah, she felt like a schoolgirl not a police academy graduate with top marks.

The department is called the Crime Investigation Unit. It uses cute little holographs with a young woman's voice to block an area. It's also short on manpower. The old man's banter criticizes the academy for its ivory tower approach. All these little cues suggest that the academy is likely guilty of glossing over the more unpleasant and rarer aspects of crime. For someone who was introduced to Psycho Pass like systems through Multivac rather than Voight-Kampff, I find Akane to be the most believable character out of the protagonists. And I suspect that the reason the department uses enforcers like Kogami is because they expect most of its regular members to have a mindset like Akane rather than Ginoza.


Yes, it's best to NOT do your uttermost to prepare a newbie, which results in her disobeying a direct order. Nor was the newbie apparently interested enough to find out how things happen in real life. She's like that because Urobuchi chose a pretty standard way to handle exposition. Good enough for you, boring for me. Of course we don't really know anything about this world yet, so my opinion may change.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:13 am Reply with quote
Just spit balling, but maybe the big show off explosion is actually of the mind of scaring anyone who views it from commiting crimes. Or, since as we saw the mind not react properly, it creates a general fear criminals as being monsters that spread their madness, keeping the population under control.
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One-Eye



Joined: 08 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:41 am Reply with quote
To be fair its still the first episode, so we will have to see how they go about explaining certain things in the story.

DuskyPredator wrote:
Just spit balling, but maybe the big show off explosion is actually of the mind of scaring anyone who views it from commiting crimes.
On the other hand, big bloody messes could traumatize people making them more unstable, like the victim, which doesn't contribute to keeping order.

Quote:
Or, since as we saw the mind not react properly, it creates a general fear criminals as being monsters that spread their madness, keeping the population under control.
This implies a sinister and calculating regime that wishes to keep the population under control. However, I'm not sure that jives with the potential inept Police Academy that spits out frightened at her shadow newbies who scream don't shoot! If anything shouldn't the police force be the enforcing arm of the state? If they have devices that can analyze a person's psychological state and their propensity for criminal behavior, why can't they choose people for the police force with other psychological qualities. For example, those that are more Lawful Neutral or more inclined to follow strict interpretations of the law and therefore less likely to challenge orders (more likely to shoot first).

Again, none of this might be relevant as it is still the first episode and everything might be clearly explained in the following episodes (or not). I hope they do, if anything its making want to watch more to see if they can deliver in fleshing out some of these questions.
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dan7el



Joined: 09 Sep 2010
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Location: Albany, NY
PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 11:05 am Reply with quote
There's this show, with really cool guns that talk, and they tell you how they work. Also, in this show, we will tell you how they work. So, you can see how the guns work and then also, the characters in the show will tell you how the guns work as well. There's no reason to not understand how the guns work, because we both showed you and told you. New both show and tell paradigm at work here.

Also, gasoline vapors rise and are ignitable/flammable at about 12-feet away from the source. When the girl pulled out the lighter, I was expecting a giant fireball. This show lost all credibility when she fired up the lighter right next to the cans of spilled gasoline and nothing happened.
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Raftina



Joined: 15 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 11:44 am Reply with quote
jl07045 wrote:
Yes, it's best to NOT do your uttermost to prepare a newbie, which results in her disobeying a direct order. Nor was the newbie apparently interested enough to find out how things happen in real life. She's like that because Urobuchi chose a pretty standard way to handle exposition. Good enough for you, boring for me. Of course we don't really know anything about this world yet, so my opinion may change.

We know quite a bit about the world already. Let's look at some of the facts that have been dropped in this episode:

spoiler[1. Ginoza to Akane: "The CID is short on manpower..."
2. Ginoza to Akane: "...so I can't treat you like a newbie."
3. Masaoka to Akane: "I'm sorry your first assignment is so unpleasant."
4. The threshold for nonlethal enforcement is 60. A drunk guy in the district has an index of 57.
5. There's a general crime investigations department.
6. Drones could not be used because the block the criminal hid in was special.]


All these facts suggest a process that's primarily interested in quantity of output--for things like breaking up brawls or overseeing a drone group for routine capture--, leaving it to the veteran officers to select and train new graduates for the more gruesome aspects.

One-Eye wrote:
If they have devices that can analyze a person's psychological state and their propensity for criminal behavior, why can't they choose people for the police force with other psychological qualities. For example, those that are more Lawful Neutral or more inclined to follow strict interpretations of the law and therefore less likely to challenge orders (more likely to shoot first).

My question is: Do they want to choose police officers who are likely to shoot immediately when the dominator allows? Recall that spoiler[Masaoka mentions young people are susceptible to crime contagion.] With the presence of drones and enforcers as measures to isolate police officers from doing actual violence, I am more inclined to suspect that the police academies deliberately recruit people who do not like to shoot at the first opportunity.
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
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Location: Riga, Latvia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 12:36 pm Reply with quote
Raftina wrote:
All these facts suggest a process that's primarily interested in quantity of output--for things like breaking up brawls or overseeing a drone group for routine capture--, leaving it to the veteran officers to select and train new graduates for the more gruesome aspects.


Unless it is shown that this academy she's gone through is a complete joke or that there is some major info blackout about how those cops do things, I'll still think that her behaviour was a rather lazy excuse for exposition and bonus edginess. In any way, I don't like speculating, let's see the second episode.
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Raftina



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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 12:44 pm Reply with quote
jl07045 wrote:
Unless it is shown that this academy she's gone through is a complete joke or that there is some major info blackout about how those cops do things, I'll still think that her behaviour was a rather lazy excuse for exposition and bonus edginess.

The academy does not have an information blackout, because she was taught about how the dominators work. Of course, there's a vast difference between being trained in the use of firearms and taught lethal procedures and being mentally conditioned to shoot other people--not having the latter in the training program is a great distinction between the police and military. I would rather praise the series for not falling into the trap of mistaking a police officer for a soldier.
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underlock



Joined: 08 Apr 2011
Posts: 247
PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 1:49 pm Reply with quote
What's a little girl in mind and body doing at the crime scene chasing dangerous criminals? Oh wait, she's meant to be the boss.

I don't even care about the other details. This is such a nuisance.

Oh, we forbid moe, and we want something out of the trend, but look at our freaking main character. Ugh.


And look at that bloody gun. I bet they spend more money on cleaning than security. Quite frankly, if that computer system really existed it would have blown the entire city long ago.
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 3:01 pm Reply with quote
No moe, and yet the girl is moe as hell and voiced by Kana Hana? Someone sure is full of shit. I can already tell where this series is going and what it wants to be, and I'll dislike all of the men intensely. I think I will just watch it for the city and the bloodsplosions.

If I wanted a modern look at the old idea of megacities, rampant crime, and the police given the ability to splatter anyone they want, I'd stick with Dredd.
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Raftina



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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 5:48 pm Reply with quote
No discussion of moe. It is rather naive to believe that not being able to discuss moe or using an oppressive cyberpunk setting is going to prevent moe from entering the title.

An interesting speculation on the subject of the police training: Recall the discussion between Masaoka and Akane about contagion: spoiler["It can happen to all of us. The reason we're enforcers in the first place..."] At this point, he cuts off, so we don't know what the reason is, but one strong possibility, which the first part indicates, is that spoiler[they were police officers who got too close to violent crimes too frequently. That would certainly explain why the police uses drones and enforcers, and why Akane is so uncomfortable with the idea of shooting people.]
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jl07045



Joined: 30 Aug 2011
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Location: Riga, Latvia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 6:39 pm Reply with quote
Raftina wrote:
The academy does not have an information blackout, because she was taught about how the dominators work. Of course, there's a vast difference between being trained in the use of firearms and taught lethal procedures and being mentally conditioned to shoot other people--not having the latter in the training program is a great distinction between the police and military. I would rather praise the series for not falling into the trap of mistaking a police officer for a soldier.


This does not seem to be the brightest world possible and it's reasonable to think that cops would actually get tougher training. Especially considering that justice apparently consists of shooting traumatized people that currently are no threat to others.
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Raftina



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PostPosted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:27 pm Reply with quote
jl07045 wrote:
This does not seem to be the brightest world possible and it's reasonable to think that cops would actually get tougher training. Especially considering that justice apparently consists of shooting traumatized people that currently are no threat to others.

The system of justice, as episode 1 shows us:

spoiler[1. Scanner flags an individual as a latent criminal.
2. A drone informs the individual of his status and directs him to therapy.
3. If the individual refuses, then drones are sent to collect him.
4. If drones are not available, then enforcers are sent to subdue the latent criminal.
5. If enforcers fail, are not in time, or act out of line, then the police shoots the enforcer and/or the latent criminal.]


There are a lot of steps in here that come between the police officer and her having to shoot someone, which, of course, reduce the need to train the police officer to shoot--certainly reduce the need to condition the police officer to become accustomed to killing.
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