Psycho-Pass - 10

"Methusela's Game"

Thank goodness for the end of finals. Today's Psycho-Pass was a good treat for a tired student looking forward to Winter Break, though Ginoza always seems to get under my skin somewhat.

I have to apologize for any mistakes regarding content I may make in this post; I actually watched the episode right before my Calculus final, so my mind wasn't quite where it should have been, and my notes are scrawled from the rush in trying to finish before I had to run to campus.

On to business. It seems that Makishima has made good on the interest he showed in Kougami last week, and I have to say I'm rather surprised he acted on it so quickly. To be honest, it seemed to me like Makishima was only indexing Kougami as his potential prey and that it was going to be a while before he actually acted. However, considering what actually transpires (I'll get to that in a moment), I also get the impression that perhaps Makishima is testing both Kougami and Akane, like a cat playing with his food before he eats it. In any case, this week's episode begins with a text message from Akane's friend Yuki Funahara (Kotori Koiwai), which mysteriously insists that they must speak and that she's waiting in a rather strange location. Guessing that something is off, Akane is unable to contact her or find out from anyone else where she's been, so she asks Kougami to accompany her to the meeting place. Finding an abandoned block and no sign of Yuki, Kougami sets off to investigate while Akane calls for backup. I thought it was interesting to note that Enforcers require Inspector approval before being able to carry weapons; it adds to that sense of inequality between them and implies that the system deems Enforcers too dangerous to be trusted to keep weapons on themselves despite the requirements of their job.

Of course the entire setup turns out to be a trap, as Kougami is fooled by a synthesized imitation of Akane's voice and led to a subway which should be out of order but carries him away before Akane has quite figured out what's happened with her maps and radio. On board the train, Kougami finds Yuki bound and almost unconscious, and she tells him that she has no clue how it is she's ended up there. While they're spirited away to an unknown destination, Akane is reprimanded harshly by Ginoza, who not only blames Akane for her lack of responsibility and "poor supervision", but also assumes that Kougami has run away, and that she was a fool for trusting what was "obviously" his plan in order to do so.

Here's where I know this series is doing a good job. While I personally clenched my teeth in anger for the immediate accusation, I can also understand exactly why it is that Ginoza jumped to this conclusion and why he's intent on making Kougami the bad guy. Ginoza is afraid of becoming his father, whom we already know succumbed to the abyss, and he's trying to justify his fear against latent criminals by being as extreme as possible against them. His sense of superiority towards them is what he feels keeps them at a distance, and he doesn't want there to be any chance of contamination. Then there's also the fact that Ginoza probably feels that his father "betrayed" him by becoming contaminated himself, and that he now sees all latent criminals as capable of such betrayal. Regardless of how much I can understand that, however, I still loved seeing Masaoka pick him up and throw him like the child he's behaving as, and I'm beginning to see reason in the theory that perhaps Masaoka is Ginoza's father after all.

Meanwhile, Kougami and Yuki are dropped off at some sort of abandoned underground facility, where they're immediately attacked by Senguji Toyohisa's cyborg hounds (this man terrifies me, he's the exact definition of the Uncanny Valley Effect) and chased to the sewers. Senguji's comment about "smarter prey makes a better hunt" chills the blood, but it's the conversation between Kougami and Yuki as they try to escape that really strikes me as important.

When Yuki asks Kougami what Akane's job is like and how she's faring in it, Kougami says that "she has faith/belief," and that society was in need of people like her. What's being alluded to here is that Akane firmly believes in the potential for good in people, and that she is working hard to protect that. Kougami seems to think that his world is lacking in people who believe in that sort of noble ideal, and perhaps it's the Sibyl system itself that makes this happen. As Yuki wonders, "are all people with clear Psycho-Passes so capable?"

The conversation is cut short when the pair come across several traps ("Even their traps are anachronistic") and Yuki foolishly falls for one of them, causing the Cyborg himself to begin hunting them down. After successfully destroying one of the cyborg hounds, Kougami stops to finally piece together something he'd already been thinking about; how did Makishima know that Kougami would be the one to look for Yuki, rather than Akane, and why keep her hostage when all they needed was her text message to act as a lure?

The fact that this is all happening while Ginoza gives out the order to shoot Kougami on sight ("if he hasn't escaped, his Psycho-Pass won't have changed and it will only paralyze him") makes this revelation feel highly ominous. Surely Yuki's Psycho-Pass (and possibly Kougami's) will have been raised by all the stress from being hunted down like foxes, and it's unlikely that Makishima didn't somehow factor this all in. I can't help but wonder whether Makishima is also interested in Akane, since it was her friend he chose to kidnap and it is also she who will be most affected if Kougami is killed or wounded in the upcoming operation.