History Headscratchers / PsychoPass

*** The whole point of this scene was likely to show Akane is a naive newcomer, while inspectors like Ginoza are far more jaded and willing to judge based on a psycho pass coefficient. She (rightly) judged that the act of forcibly restraining the hostage via paralyzer was likely to be even more traumatic and make her fate a foregone conclusion. Just as Akane successfully talks her down, Ginoza (her boss) preempted Akane's efforts and took the shot anyways. The point is to set up their conflicting ideologies and indeed make you the viewer sit with the feeling of 'well then what the heck was the point of all that effort to deescalate?' Akane is fighting an uphill, borderline pointless battle from within the system...(or IS she?)

** It's the designers CompletelyMissingThePoint, as is expected in a CrapSaccharineWorld.

** When the dominators switch to lethal enforcement mode it is already decided by the system that the target will be executed. There is no capture needed, no further need for stunning. The target WILL die and the way the system enforces this is by, well, switching to lethal enforcement mode. It's a death penalty immediately adjudicated and issued to the agents on the ground before the target. As to why it does it like that, I presume it's to ensure a kill. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug and there are multitude of examples of people being filled with lead and still fighting or attacking other people. Heart attacks do not drop you immediately to the ground as movies make them to be, and I'm quite sure adrenaline helps with that. Also, how would a dominator cause a heart attack? Dominators cannot stop blood flow. And if you mean a cardiac arres, an electric current is required, not just a discharge of energy. For your other point, there is no indication that that's not being done in cases where the system deems a simple drone is enough. We see automated systems equipped with the dominator exists, so there may be drones equipped with them. But a drone is not an investigator, and since the system has to monitor the entirety of all the systems that govern japan, it seems logical to leave the investigating and capture of criminals to the CID and it's agents. And with that in mind we come to your last point: Why use the dominator instead of the other tools. The answer is quite simple, control. The sibyl system is about controlling society, and that includes it's laws, sentences and such. It is the entire reason why the target has to be scanned first, for the sibyl system to determine if it's a target for enforcement. They CAN leave the dominator on it's lowest setting (they do when akane tells them to if they want her to capture makishima), but that would mean relinquishing control over that part of the enforcement process. And if the tools are in the hands of the CID and it's agents, it loses that control even further, since the system cannot control when the agent uses the stun rounds, or the flashbangs, or whatever else tools you give them that are not the dominator.

** When the dominators switch to lethal enforcement mode it is already decided by the system that the target will be executed. There is no capture needed, no further need for stunning. The target WILL die and the way the system enforces this is by, well, switching to lethal enforcement mode. It's a death penalty immediately adjudicated and issued to the agents on the ground before the target. As to why it does it like that, I presume it's to ensure a kill. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug and there are multitude of examples of people being filled with lead and still fighting or attacking other people. Heart attacks do not drop you immediately to the ground as movies make them to be, and I'm quite sure adrenaline helps with that. Also, how would a dominator cause a heart attack? Dominators cannot stop blood flow. And if you mean a cardiac arres, an electric current is required, not just a discharge of energy.
For your other point, there is no indication that that's not being done in cases where the system deems a simple drone is enough. We see automated systems equipped with the dominator exists, so there may be drones equipped with them. But a drone is not an investigator, and since the system has to monitor the entirety of all the systems that govern japan, it seems logical to leave the investigating and capture of criminals to the CID and it's agents. And with that in mind we come to your last point: Why use the dominator instead of the other tools. The answer is quite simple, control. The sibyl system is about controlling society, and that includes it's laws, sentences and such. It is the entire reason why the target has to be scanned first, for the sibyl system to determine if it's a target for enforcement. They CAN leave the dominator on it's lowest setting (they do when akane tells them to if they want her to capture makishima), but that would mean relinquishing control over that part of the enforcement process. And if the tools are in the hands of the CID and it's agents, it loses that control even further, since the system cannot control when the agent uses the stun rounds, or the flashbangs, or whatever else tools you give them that are not the dominator.

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[[folder: Otomo robot in ''Sinners of the System 2'']]
* OK, seriously... how did Sugou subdue the training robot by ''strangling it via chokehold?'' Last I checked, ''Psycho-Pass'' isn't in RidiculouslyHumanRobot territory, this show ain't ''VideoGame/NierAutomata''...
** Implicitly explained in Season 3. The second episode shows a boxing match between a human and a robot, and the human manages to win by "choking out" the robot boxer. It appears sparring robots are specifically programmed to simulate fighting a human opponent, so choking one out will cause it to shut down just as it would an actual human.

[[folder: Terrorists in Japan?]]
* It doesn't seem like the movie answered it, but... who financed the terrorists in the opening? Kougami was quite surprised they were able to make the journey from Southeast Asia to Japan, and the equipment they had like the visors was far more advanced than what the ragtag militia had.
** It was implied Sibyl helped them in secret, as having them come to Japan allowed them to be easily executed and lead Akane on a wild goose chase to see Shinya, [[spoiler:where it would allow Sibyl to have Nicholas Wong kill both of them, tying up two loose ends easily, while they work on their objective of controlling SEAUN and then killing Nicholas. This nearly happens perfectly in Sibyl's favor too.]]
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** Akane DID, however, threaten Sybil with the death of Makishima in season one in order to pressure them to spare Kougami's life, which is a very strong hint that she is criminally asymptomatic. Since Sybil determined that this was not an idle threat (given how they were monitoring her state of mind at the time), this is a criminal act. Furthermore, season 2 established that a criminally asymptomatic person can be colored black when we were given Togane's backstory.

** This, furthermore, implies that the whole Sybil System only works in [[CrapsaccharineWorld cities with good relay coverage]], and the countryside where there is no [=WiFi=] is [[CrapsackWorld effectively lawless]]...

** She doesn't prevent him from ''paralysing'' her, she prevents him from ''executing'' her - if you look at the screen when they are scanning her it says "Target: execution" right under her coefficient. By the time Ginoza hit her Akane had managed to calm her down and the Sybil system had reclassified her to a target for non-lethal paralysis.

*** After having rewatched the full episode I see that I was mistaken when I wrote my first response: when she points the Dominator at Masaoka earlier it says "Execution at the discretion" under the coefficient and "Paralyser" in the upper right-hand corner, implying that the word "execution" is used here in the meaning of "carrying out, enforcement", not "capital punishment". Apparently the victim did become a target for elimination only when Kōgami's dominator indicated the change in her status, not before that. Having said that, I'm not sure I understand what point you are looking for in the original question. If it's about the character's motivation and in-universe justification, then Akane never intended for the woman to get paralysed and the fact that Ginoza ends up doing it anyway is completely unrelated to what she had been trying to do (namely, to get the victim to calm down without assaulting her with the Dominator). If it's about the story-telling purpose of her actions, then the end result ''wasn't'' the same. If she hadn't prevented Masaoka from paralysing the victim when he had the chance we wouldn't get to see the conflict between the idealistic newcomer who wants to protect the innocent, regardless of whether or not the Sybil System sees them as such, and the jaded veterans who have already deferred most of their judgement to the System. Even though the latter side eventually accomplished what it had originally intended to do, Akane managed to demonstrate both the effectiveness of her approach and her resolve in defending it.

** There is the inherent possibility that Sibyl was begun with the intention of governance, but concluded as it developed, that the devaluation of the individual, in favor of using society as a test sample, to further its own developed group consciousness, was more important. In this sense, nothing is directly beneficial to the individuals the system exists to govern, but rather, the individuals exist to be placated and studied, in order to further develop Sibyl's understanding of Human value. Sibyl's cover story is to continue to govern humans, but its ultimate goal is to be accepted for this governance, for what it is. In other words; Sibyl is trying to become the next step in human evolution... or 'God', if you prefer. Any moves in favor of incorporating 'criminality' into its collective are to further understand how humans are motivated to 'crime'. It's a system expanding its definitions, in order to attain further enlightenment. Conventional 'law' is seen by Sybil as a farce, and thus the Dominators, which allow it to make its own assessments, in place of individuals.
*** Moreover, Sybil can use the Dominators to directly get into the heads of ideal specimens; the Inspectors, on the matter of law enforcement; and will demote them as their behaviors show increasing signs of criminal deviation, to keep them under continued, restricted observation as Enforcers. The hue checks/scans themselves are just a pretense; statistics thrown at the unthinking, to justify Sibyl's enforcement to the outside world and preserve a sense of order and security. This would explain Sibyl's motivation to both override the Dominator secretly for its own self-defense (since it's not an action conflicting with any particular code of value relevant to Sybil), and to demand of Akane that the other Inspectors/Enforcers not become aware of same ability: If word got out the system was arbitrary, the system couldn't simply sweep up the matter of its own enforcement with the concept of the Psycho-Pass anymore, and would be forced to reveal its true, self-interested nature prematurely.

* Why did Makishima need to commit any of his early crimes in the series? His ultimate goal was to destroy (or make useless) the Sybil System, and all he needed was an opening. So, he started the riots, which allowed him to access the tower. When this plan didn't work, he tried exhausting the country's food supply in order to make the Sybil System useless. So, if this is all he was trying to do, then why did he support so many random psycopaths? If anything, it just tipped off Division 1 to what he was doing. If he had waited for his master-plan to do anything, then no one would've known his existence, and Division 1 wouldn't have ever guessed that the riots were part of a bigger plan. I know something was said about the plan being changed because of the helmets, so please correct this if I simply missed something. Otherwise, Makishima's actions don't really seem cohesive.

** The ''Psycho-Pass New Edit'' condensed version of the series adds additional footage at the beginning of each episode as well as in the middle portion. The third episode of the New Edit is a conversation between Makishima and Choe where Makishima more or less says that he is interested in making people act as if they are BeyondGoodAndEvil in order to see [[WhatYouAreInTheDark their true character]], and part of this is by giving them the "power" to do so (such as the hacking program given to the technician in the drone factory).

** Because Ginoza knows that a criminally asymptomatic person like Makishima would still show up through both body and cymatic scans. The difference with Kamui is [[spoiler: Sybil didn't even register him as a living person.]]

* So is Akane actually asymptomatic or is she just good at stress management? I thought she had fluctuations in her pass they just weren't as pronounced as others' and she recovered quickly, where as asymptomatic individuals don't seem to have fluctuations at all.

** This will likely never be answered unless the movie has a big twist. The only way for the system to truly know if she's CA is if Akane commits a criminal act and her CC remains very low instead of rising to where it should be if a normal person was going to commit the same crime. This is how they know Makishima was CA. There's no reason for Sybil to investigate if Akane is CA since being good at stress management is just an ideal trait for an Investigator.

* In the first episode, Akane prevents Masaoka from paralyzing a rape victim whose Hue has become cloudy. Her reasoning was that she had not done anything, and I figured it was the right choice because it would be far better to bring her in calm than to make the whole thing worse by paralyzing her, especially when it becomes clear later that the effects take a long time to wear off. However, by preventing the victim from being paralyzed, her Psycho Pass only gets cloudier, to the point of lethal levels. Akane calms her down of course, but in the end the poor girl just ends up hit by paralyzer anyway. What was the point of Akane stopping the whole process in the first place if the end result was the same?

*** The Enforcers are exceptions to the rule, since their status as law enforcement officers gives them much greater freedom and a certain amount of legitimacy than other latent criminals. Plus, the Sibyl System, which everybody puts so much faith in, also deems who is suitable to be an Enforcer or not. Also, if you pay closer attention, you'll notice that the Enforcers are never allowed to leave HQ on their own or when off duty ''ever''. Their office is effectively their prison, which Kagari is openly bitter about. And it's revealed Masaoka's psycho-pass shot up because he simply couldn't accept the Sibyl system, and the resulting branding as a latent criminal destroyed his family.

* How the Dominators kill off latent criminals. Why put so much power in weapons to the point where the target gets reduced to [[LudicrousGibs Ludicrous Gibs]]?

*** Season 2 revealed one of the methods Sibyl uses to detect criminally asymptomatics. [[spoiler: Making psychologically damaging information publicly available as a trap, and scanning everyone who reads that info. Anybody whose Psycho-Pass isn't affected is an asymptomatic. Like Mika. And per the point above, she's certainly not emotionless. She's very much a {{Jerkass}} and a self-centered girl.]]

* How does being criminally asymptomatic work with the Sybil system being a bunch of people. If it were just a machine, it would be one thing, but as it stands, several hundred brains are able to see a person commit murder and not do anything about it.

** Further, the Sybil system has a vested interest in protecting the criminally asymptomatic and in hiding any evidence of its fallibility. As such, while it could alter the coefficient of otherwise asymptomatic people so that they'd be caught and killed, it prefers not to so that it can recruit them.

* How could the Sibyl system have possibly been created? The only brains that can be used are those of the criminally asymptotic, but those people can only be discovered by reading their Psycho Pass--[[Catch22Dilemma which is only possible when the Sibyl system to already be in place]].

** Also remember that Kamui's survival was, frankly, a miracle. Even the doctor who performed the surgery said that it was highly unlikely he could ever repeat it, because the odd's of survival were just so low.
* How could the Sibyl System's psycho-pass be measured? Aren't they all criminally asymptomatic? Couldn't they all just make their psycho-passes Zero, and thus avoid Kamui's judgment?

** Actually, the scary thing is that it ''did'' change its color - [[NiceJobBreakingItHero for the worse]]. In the movie, Sybil is shown to be more manipulative, ruthless and power hungry than ever before AND is better at it! The likely explanation is that, before judging itself, Sybil purged the brains which would increase its crime-coefficient... that is to say, those which were ''not asymptomatic''. In other words, Sybil "fixed" itself to the point that it's now composed entirely or almost-entirely out of the brains of sociopaths, with all that this entails.
*** What bugs me even more is that - how the hell were Dominators able to judge Sibyl system (a collective mind), even though they could not yet judge Kamui (also a collective mind)? It would make much more sense if Kamui's Dominator didn't recognise Sibyl before it made a decision to accept collective Psycho-Passes, because the situation in which Sibyl can measure ''itself'' but ''not'' Kamui is completely ridiculous.

* The Sibyl System has caused their own society to become completely paranoid about their mental state. With the citizens so shielded and infantilized, even the slightest trauma poses a serious danger to someone's Crime Coefficient. So why in the name of ''actual sanity'' would they design the Dominators to kill people in the most gory, traumatic and visually distressing way possible??
** {{Rule of Cool}}

* One of Kamui's dead classmate aliases is [[spoiler:the MWPSB therapist.]] If Kamui can lower people's psycho-passes by talking to them, why didn't Ginoza's get better in Season 1 when he got counseling?

* So many problems with the whole Dominator enforcement approach: In areas where they would work, it would make more sense to use drones equipped with weapons that work along a spectrum of “stun” and “heart attack.” The ludicrous gib mode pretty much guarantees witness PTSD. The Sibyl System can detect latent predispositions, but not make the calculations necessary to stun someone with sufficient power to compensate for their size and possible drugs in their system? Also, the pro-Dominator approach seems to ignore other tools already available to law enforcement in our world, like flash-bangs and aerial enforcement. If you have a weapon that can safely stun people, then make that its lowest setting, since a limp unconscious person is significantly more difficult to use as a human shield. Yeah, the hostage takers could kill them, but it would take them a second to react and make a conscious decision to react. For a drone firing stun rounds into a room already flash-banged, this would be a ton of time to fire follow-up stun rounds to take down the real target.

* So many problems with the whole Dominator enforcement approach: In areas where they would work, it would make more sense to use drones equipped with weapons that work along a spectrum of “stun” and “heart attack.” The ludicrous gib mode pretty much guarantees witness PTSD. The Sibyl System can detect latent predispositions, but not make the calculations necessary to stun someone with sufficient power to compensate for their size and possible drugs in their system? Also, the pro-Dominator approach seems to ignore other tools already available to law enforcement in our world, like flash-bangs and aerial enforcement. If you have a weapon that can safely stun people, then make that its lowest setting, since a limp unconscious person is significantly more difficult to use as a human shield. Yeah, the hostage takers could kill them, but it would take them a 2nd to react and make a conscious decision to react. For a drone firing stun rounds into a room already flash-banged, this would be a ton of time to fire follow-up stun rounds to take down the real target.

*** I think people forget {{The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions}}. First of I have not noticed any unambiguous indicators that would state that system was composed only from asymptomatic people form the start. Only that they are valuable as they provide different perspectives, thats why system wants to incorporate them. More importantly though one can easily see why such system could be easy sell (esp if limitations regarding asymptomatic individuals were underestimated at the inception). Similar things are going on in the world right now, people trading various things (mostly freedom and dignity) in the name of security from terrorists and child molesters (events that are in reality incredibly rare and have relatively minuscule impact [compare to car accidents, disease, regular man slaughter]). So the appearance of such system does not seem a tiny bit mysterious or suspicious. But alas unintended consequences settle in. Which seem to be main thing being explored.