Psycho-Pass - 15

"The Town Where Sulfur Falls"

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Lord of the Flies meets dystopian literature.

I'm going to step back from anime for a moment to talk about something I despise about society. I'm a little bit of a pessimist when it comes to humanity, and one thing that has always stood out to me about how messed up we are is this, the copying and perpetuation of crimes. All it takes is one video, one news coverage or article, one story, and one disaster is suddenly finding itself repeated everywhere, as if the perpetrators were jealous little children trying to show that they can do the same and more. It's sickening that such human beings exist in the first place, and it's only more disgusting that there are those who emulate them, sometimes for far pettier reasons than the original. This is why I avoid watching the news like the plague; I may not be aware of current events, but it does me little psychological good to get more evidence that these type of people exist and are rampant everywhere.

What's happening in Psycho-Pass, however, is on a whole other level. This is a revolution, an overthrowing of the system, and it's far worse than anything the MWPSB could have imagined. The sparks have set off a fire, and now the helmets aren't the only way for people to commit atrocities on the streets. Those acting "in self-defense" have denounced the incompetence of the MWPSB to protect them from the Helmets, and have taken it upon themselves to kill anyone who they suspect has one. The droids are unable to help, partly because of the huge numbers of people rioting and partly because those who are killing Helmets are controlling their stress by reassuring themselves that they're doing the right thing. People are cowering in their homes, banding together on the streets to catch Helmets, spreading false information about the MWPSB, and the police can't do a thing about it. Apparently, since Sybil was supposed to remove the chance of riots ever happening, the MWPSB has no countermeasures prepared, and every Inspector and Enforcer is called in to attempt to regain control manually.

The problem, other than the insufficient man-power, is that with every officer out on the streets, there's no one keeping an eye out on home base, and that's precisely what Makishima had in mind when he orchestrated the whole thing. His revolution is certainly of interest to him, but ultimately he believes that Sybil must be taken down for any real change to occur, and what better timing to infiltrate and destroy the system than when every MWPSB officer is out of the way? I have to admit I've never read Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", but I can say that Makishima doesn't believe that humans under Sybil are humans at all; to him, the system is no better than a flesh and blood dictator, only just shy of the horror of Orwell's "1984", and humanity is better off without it. I can't say he's wrong either, but that's what makes psychopaths so dangerous, is it not?