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1'''Warning: unmarked spoilers.'''
2
3[[foldercontrol]]
4
5[[folder: Akane asymptomatic?]]
6* 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, whereas asymptomatic individuals don't seem to have fluctuations at all.
7** She's asymptomatic. Even if she's good at stress management it wouldn't explain how her Psycho Pass was clear when having a breakdown after seeing her friend die
8** She isn't, it's a false theory. Criminally asymptomatic people are always pure white, just as Makishima said. Meanwhile, Akane had colors like pale turquoise and powder blue.
9*** The very first time we see Makashima his CC isn't zero so clearly asymptomatic people don't have to have a constant value of zero.
10** 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 Sibyl to investigate if Akane is CA since being good at stress management is just an ideal trait for an Investigator.
11** Akane DID, however, threaten Sibyl 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 Sibyl 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.
12*** Akane didn't threaten to kill Makishima, she only explained that having her Dominator locked into paralyzer mode would be the best way to make sure she could take him in alive.
13[[/folder]]
14
15[[folder: Relays?]]
16* Relays. It is said that the block the perp ran off to in the first episode has no relays, thus the drones can't function there. However, the Dominators function just fine despite them being separated pretty far from their carrier drone. This collides with episode 3, where it is shown that they can't use both drone (specifically, the Dominator carrier ones) and Dominator because they have no network coverage (indirectly, relays) there. The building is just one rather small factory, though it is uncertain if they have signal jamming/scrambling going on (if they do, it must suck as ''it does not extend past their front door and to their parking lot''). Towards the end of the episode, the Dominators work fine in the vicinity of its carrier drone, implying that the drone is some sort of mini-relay a la [=WiFi=] routers.
17** This, furthermore, implies that the whole Sibyl System only works in [[CrapsaccharineWorld cities with good relay coverage]], and the countryside where there is no [=WiFi=] is [[CrapsackWorld effectively lawless]]...
18*** Later episodes indicate that nobody even lives in the countryside anymore, given that all agriculture has become automated.
19** Actually, it was explicitly said that Dominators didn't work on the factory grounds because all wireless communication from the outside was being actively blocked to prevent drones from being remotely cracked, not because there was no coverage. They worked in the vicinity of the police drone because they were connected to it by cables, and the drone was in turn cabled to the access point in the police car, just outside the factory.
20** The antenna at the top of Nona Tower looks like a longer wave (VHF?) long distance transceiver. It can cover an entire city without using relays, except it won't penetrate closed metal spaces or underground. But it has very limited bandwidth. Over-the-air TV and radio work like that. First mobile phone systems used these waves too, but capacity quickly became a problem, which is why they use higher frequencies and loads of smaller transceivers covering limited areas now. It is quite possible that Dominators can communicate with the Nona Tower antennas directly, but drones can not.
21[[/folder]]
22
23[[folder: Masaoka & Internet communities]]
24* Masaoka seemed surprised at the idea of Internet communities. But the story is set in the future, and he's not that old -- he would have grown up with Internet being at least as ubiquitous as nowadays. [=CommuFields=] aren't really that different from present community forums in their principle, just in technology used.
25** It's possible he just never really bothered with it when he was young. We still don't really know much about his past.
26[[/folder]]
27
28[[folder: Episode 1 victim]]
29* 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?
30** 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 Sibyl system had reclassified her to a target for non-lethal paralysis.
31*** Then why does Masaoka say that they're going to put her to sleep and take her into custody? He doesn't strike me as the type to lie about something like that, especially since Akane just checked her own Dominator and saw the reading.
32*** 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 Sibyl 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.
33*** So it wasn't okay to paralyze her initially, when she's in a state of panic and on the verge of doing something drastic, which nearly results in disaster, but Akane's fine with Ginoza doing so now that the victim is calm and danger has been averted?
34*** I'm pretty sure she ''isn't'' fine with it. However, unlike the two enforcers, Ginoza is entirely beyond her control - in fact their huge difference in experience at the time made him her de facto superior. She only started demanding that he treat her as an equal and criticizing his conduct in episode 9; in episodes 1 and 2 all she could do was try to justify her own.
35*** The Dominators were definitely in lethal mode until she put down the lighter.
36[[/folder]]
37
38[[folder: Enforcers as latent criminals]]
39* I'm only on Episode 7 (11 have aired by the time I'm writing this) but something seems to keep going over my head (among a lot of other things). The Enforcers are labeled as "latent criminals", but only Kogami has ever really been known to have done anything that psychotic or harmful, and that was in a flashback. The rest of them just sort of have these labels and it's really hard to tell the difference between them any "normal" characters. Obviously the bad guys are all super crazy, but the Enforcers themselves don't really represent themselves as people with the potential to go nuts like that. Also the fact that none of the Unit One characters besides Kogami and Tsunemori have gotten ANY development. We get a look back at Ginoza's past relationship with Kogami, but that's about it. Am I missing something here?
40** Thats sorta the point, society has deemed them criminals, without them even doing anything. If anything the stress of being labelled a latent criminal causes the crime coefficient to go up more than them just being left on their own
41*** Then isn't that only an [[InformedFlaw Informed Flaw]]? Shouldn't it be more played up?
42*** Its subtle, but its still there. The whole first episode has the bad guy ranting about it, as well as the incident with his victim. Then we have Kagari saying he was diagnosed when he was a kid. We also have Makishima being a prime example of why the system is flawed. We don't really get someone explicitly saying the system is flawed till episode 13. It may have simply been subtly building up till the second half of the series, but if you pay attention its clear that the system isn't exactly flawless
43*** I never said it was flawless, just that the Enforcers' status as latent criminals has yet to show any sign of inconvenience for them. Yeah, Kagari said that he was diagnosed as a kid, but we have no indication that this made his life more difficult in any way. And besides Kogami's standard "cop who gets obsessed with certain cases" cliche, none of them really seem to do anything that would imply that the title of latent criminal fits them at all because none of them get any character development. Yayoi gets an episode of backstory, but it's not exactly pushing her character forward.
44*** 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.
45[[/folder]]
46
47[[folder: Kawaii disguises]]
48* Those HUGE SMILEY FACED security disguises. Wouldn't they be more likely to disturb rather than pacify?
49** It's the designers missing the point, as is expected in a CrapSaccharineWorld.
50** It's also part of the series' overall critique of modern Japanese society: See the page image for {{UsefulNotes/Kawaisa}}. Possibly related to Sibyl as an extreme nanny-state, with its pacified/easily-amused citizens/children.
51[[/folder]]
52
53[[folder: Dominator safeguards]]
54* Considering the utter disregard for ethics, human life, and sanity concerning deploying Dominators around civilian populations, why didn’t the agencies include more safeguards such as remote detonation?
55[[/folder]]
56
57[[folder: Usage of Dominators]]
58* 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 kill. 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.
59** 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.
60** 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.
61[[/folder]]
62
63[[folder: Overkill much?]]
64* 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]]? Not to mention that the Sibyl System has caused its own society to become completely paranoid about mental state. With 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??
65** RuleOfCool. Plus it also allows Enforcers to engage armored targets like rogue drones.
66** The Lethal Eliminator mode is a much more reliable means of killing targets than conventional guns. From what it looks like, that mode fires a microwave pulse that causes the body's fluids to immediately start boiling and then burst (similar to how the Cyclops system worked in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED''). And it barely has any recoil (only Decomposer Mode seems to have recoil). An untrained person can quickly adjust to a Dominator much faster than a normal gun. The shot is practically guaranteed to be a one-hit kill unless it hits a limb (Mido from season 1 was the only person who survived getting hit by an Eliminator in his arm), but even then the victim will probably still die from massive blood loss (like Hasuike in season 2 did after his leg blew up).
67[[/folder]]
68
69[[folder: Advantages of the Sibyl System]]
70* What advantages has the Sibyl System given the main characters that this universe's law system wouldn't have given them? It seems like the system is only in the story to be a hinderance. If you're going to put a radically different law system into a story, shouldn't you try to give the audience an example of how it would be BETTER to have the new system BEFORE deconstructing it?
71** It allows them to identify criminals and potential criminals without letting them commit a crime. It also allows them to take action against them without needing a warrant. Also since they use dominators they can restrain or kill criminals based on how badly they have deteriorated psychologically. While it does deconstruct aspects of the system, its shown that the world has become peaceful and less stressful for everyday people.
72*** And that's fine to reduces stress, but it seems like it's at the cost of their lives, seeing as most of the cases we've seen are of people who relieve their stress by KILLING OTHER PEOPLE, thus covering up their trail and leaving tons of bodies. Yes, they are eventually stopped by the Enforcers, but when the system can prevent muggings and public drama but NOT dozens of murders, it seems like something the makers (or at least current handlers, depending on how long this system has been implemented) would have noticed this glaring flaw.
73*** They did, and they had tried to prevent the society at large from noticing it too as Chief Kasei reveals in episode 13: the problem is not how to create a perfect system, but how to make everyone implementing the system convinced that it is perfect. It seems to work fine as even when Makishima finally blows the cover with his Masked Men scheme most people still convince themselves that it is not the system which is at fault.
74*** The system also seems to be flawed with how it chooses career paths for the populace, as seen with the latent criminals with the Psycho Pass manipulating helmets in episode 15. Why bother to get immersed in a career when it is pre-determined by a machine and kills one's drive to better themselves for anything better if the society is completely dependent on the Sibyl System?
75*** The System gives choices of career for people to pursue, for sexample: Akane has been given some other choices of profession before choosing to join CID, not just giving ultimate decision. Besides, most people would actually rather choose a career that suits them the most instead of one which provides more challenges.
76*** Except the System determines those career options by evaluating aspects of a person's character that it feels would be beneficial to society at large instead of the individual. You might have noticed in episode 15 that the helmeted folks were attacking a university and it was implied that they were pre-determined by the Sibyl System to be more beneficial to society if they went on the work force right away instead of attending university. And the bettering part I mentioned has more to do with wanting to get a better career option than what one has now. Any person with the drive to want to have a better paying career than they have would naturally want to go after it if they have the opportunity. If the Sibyl System tells you that you are better off stuck in a low-paying job, then it's obviously gonna tick people off.
77*** And of course, some people have an idea of "what suits them" that differs from the opinions of others, so if you wanted to be a writer or artist but Sibyl says you'd do better in recording-keeping, you can be just as pissed about it as someone who wants a better-paying or more prestigious job but gets stuck overseeing an assembly-line. And, as mentioned, if you wanted to attend university because you have an interest in learning, but Sibyl says "Nope, we need more laborers," you're not gonna be satisfied, even if you don't have any other choice but to accept it.
78*** No one is forced to do everything the Sibyl System tells you to do. In the movie, Akane's friend talks about meeting her new fiance through the system, but they indicate that it's not mandatory. The CommuField celebrities are technically unemployed but they make a living by being popular. The Sibyl System wouldn't tell Spooky Boogie that she should be an anarchistic internet celebrity. That's something she wanted to do on her own.
79*** I think people forget {{Totalitarian Utilitarian}}ism. 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.
80** Plus literally ''everything'' in the modern areas of the city actively checks your psycho-pass in real time, and many buildings will lock you out if your hue is too cloudy. A latent criminal will literally be unable to blend into society and would be forced to go off the grid.
81[[/folder]]
82
83[[folder: The truth of the System]]
84* The recent revelations about the truth behind the Sibyl System. How exactly is it beneficial for a HiveMind of sociopaths immune to Psycho Pass scans to judge Japanese society at large when the public assumes it's an unbiased computer system?
85** Interactions between the Sibyl System and Akane in the last couple of episodes shows that the Sibyl System's goal is indeed a long-therm prosperity of society as a whole, it lies about its nature, not about its intent. Its benefits are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin - it is an unbiased system motivated by logic instead of hatred, greed or fear.
86** That's the point, there's nothing beneficial about the system. The general populace doesn't even know about the true nature of the Sibyl System, and most of them [[BystanderSyndrome don't want to ask too many questions about it anyways.]]
87*** This, many times over. There is nothing in the least bit admirable or meritable about the Sibyl System. The show makes it very clear that Sibyl is a horrible conspiracy which exists for its own sake, capriciously ruins or simply ends untold thousands of lives, relies on a legion of mindless shoot-to-kill robots to maintain order, and would be burned to ashes if the public were to learn of the unholy abomination micromanaging their lives. Given the true nature of the System and the fact that every almost every protagonist in the show independently comes to the conclusion that it is fundamentally flawed ''at best'', it is probably safe to state the Sibyl is outright Evil, self-serving claim to the public good notwithstanding.
88** My question has more to do with why the parties responsible for it thought it was such a good idea?
89** Because they know best what type of people will commit crimes. Look how easily Makishma found people willing to commit crimes. Also the people part of the System see themselves as gods, or at the very least above ordinary people. This keeps them in check so that they can be used of the benefit of humanity.
90*** Except sociopaths are incapable of empathizing with others and realizing the flaws to their immoral behavior, only seeing themselves above others due to their lack of comprehension on human morality. Allowing such a system like this to exist has likely led to other crimes to take place in this society because of the Sibyl System either adding more people like Makishima to their HiveMind system or having people like Kogami be labeled a "latent criminal" just because the system has failed at keeping criminals like Makishima from being properly judged as a criminal and having the mentioned "latent criminal" feeling forced to take matters in their own hands as a result.
91*** The HiveMind of the Sibyl System is meant to be an extreme take on the "group over individual" mentality that is a component of Japanese society. To those that created the system, the brains of sociopaths would be perfect in governing society at large since they are seen to be rational in the decisions they make without emotions influencing them due to their lack of ability to empathize with people on an individual basis.
92** 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 Sibyl as a farce, and thus the Dominators, which allow it to make its own assessments, in place of individuals.
93*** Moreover, Sibyl 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 Sibyl), 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.
94** Technically, we don't know that all 437 brains are sociopaths; being criminally asymptomatic just means you're one of a small percentage of people who are immune or resistant to Sibyl's scans, and Akane's displayed similarly-low Coefficients while being an idealistic and compassionate person. As well, while Touma/Kasei is explaining the System, it's implied that the original think-tank wasn't comprised of asymptomatic brains, but that those were added later to increase efficiency and aid in predicting the actions of future asymptomatics. Whether some outside agency or the System itself decided on this isn't clear, but it does seem that "sociopath brains" were not an initial part of the Sibyl System. Granted, after Makishima's rejection, it does seem that Sibyl isn't actually all that good at predicting the actions of such people...
95*** It's strongly implied that the criminally asymptomatic folks in the world of Psycho Pass are sociopaths considering their biological readings can't be properly scanned with Dominators or other devices that measure Psycho Passes and that the few seen in the show don't believe their criminal activity to be wrong, the latter a common trait found with sociopaths.
96*** We've only seen "a few" - which is what, ''two whole people?'' - who are both confirmed 'sociopaths' and naturally asymptomatic. That doesn't change the fact that we have no idea if the others in the collective, or potential candidates for the collective, are also sociopaths. That's all actually beside the point, since the question above was "Why would whoever put the Sibyl System in place think that sociopath brains are the way to go?" and the response was/is "Pretty sure that sociopath brains weren't part of the original System, but were added later by the System itself to help quantify anomalies - criminal asymptomatics - that the then-existing System couldn't get a grasp on."
97*** When the Sibyl System reveals its true self to Akane in episode 20, it admits that many of the individual brains among its HiveMind have committed worst crimes than Makishima has and the qualifications of being among its "components" are that you need to be "criminally asymptomatic" and not empathize with society at large when making decisions. These elements still strongly hint at the entirety of the Sibyl System consisting of sociopaths.
98*** Given that being asymptomatic seems to be something hardwired into your brain and not just your personality it might be that the Sibyl system only needs their brains in order to do it computations and not their personalities.
99*** Think about it. How do you find out that someone is "criminally asymptomatic"? Simple. You watch them commit a crime and if their Psycho Pass stays clear, then they are. However, this means that the only way for such an individual to be detected is if they're a criminal. Even if an asymptomatic person who is innocent existed, they would be indistinguishable from a normal good citizen and pass under the Sibyl System's radar. It follows that regardless of whether all criminally asymptomatic people are criminals or not, all the ones actually incorporated in the System almost certainly are.
100*** Another problem is the fact that just because sociopaths have no regard for the feelings and lives of others does not correlate to them being {{Straw Vulcan}}s. In fact, sociopaths can be just as emotional/irrational, if not even more so. Contrary to people like Makishima or Hannibal Lecter, most sociopaths tend to be extremely impulsive, engaging in potentially self-destructive behaviors like alcoholism and drug abuse. Heck, it was shown the brains running the system have already developed delusions of godhood. Obviously there must be some sort of {{Restraining Bolt}} in place to keep them from going off the sidelines.
101*** Season 2 revealed one of the methods Sibyl uses to detect criminally asymptomatic people. [[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.]]
102*** And the finale of Season 2 [[spoiler: had Kamui using the Sibyl system's logic against itself, and the only way for Kamui to be scanned and subject to Enforcement is for Sibyl to modify its Psycho-Pass scans to measure collective groups instead of individuals. The first victim? ''Sibyl itself''.]]
103[[/folder]]
104
105[[folder: Makishima's crimes]]
106* Why did Makishima need to commit any of his early crimes in the series? His ultimate goal was to destroy (or make useless) the Sibyl 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 Sibyl 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.
107** Making people give into their worst desires and impulses is basically Makishima's hobby. He smiles ''a lot'' as he helps guide people into becoming evil and hurting society. It's one of the few times his facial expression changes and Makishima also is implied to identify more with criminals as defined by the Sibyl System.
108** 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 AboveGoodAndEvil 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).
109-->'''Makishima''': "When the weak become strong... when the citizen is free to engage in violence... I'm interested to see what the outcome of that is."
110** Makishima was ''very'' good at not getting caught by the police, it took Division 1 years to even acknowledge his existence. He was pretty confident that they wouldn't know of his involvement with said random psychopaths.
111[[/folder]]
112
113[[folder: Makishima & Akane in season 1 finale]]
114* Why did Shogo Makishima not kill Akane in the last episode? He could very well do it even without the revolver.
115** Probably too weak from blood loss and still too rattled from the truck crash for him to kill her with just his bare hands. It took all of his energy just to run across the grain field and he had to stop and catch his breath a few times. Plus Kougami was coming too.
116** It's actually more complicated than that; a dramatic reading done by the voice actors shortly before the season 2 premiere [[http://kumapillow.tumblr.com/post/99308039931/psycho-fes-live-reading-drama-scene-3-last revealed that Makishima made a conscious decision not to kill her even though he could have.]] He wanted her to live as a witness who saw the end of the feud between himself and Kougami.
117[[/folder]]
118
119[[folder: How does Sibyl work]]
120* How does being criminally asymptomatic work with the Sibyl 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.
121** Those [[BrainInAJar people]] determine hue and Psycho Pass from scans of biometric data (like brain activity), not video of the crimes.
122** Further, the Sibyl 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.
123** Why don't they set Crime Coefficient to 100 as a default for criminally asymptomatic people? It's enough to trigger Paralyzer mode, and allow them to capture and recruit them immediately, without bothering with this roundabout way of doing things.
124*** It might be able to do that after a criminally asymptomatic person has been identified, which given the secrecy surrounding them is not likely, but short of eyewitness observation (like Akane) or active surveillance of them committing an obvious crime (with an accompanying psycho pass raise around them) the system has no way of determining if they are asymptomatic or not. Both Makashima and Touma were both clever enough to avoid drawing attention to themselves for long periods of time.
125[[/folder]]
126
127[[folder: Creation of Sibyl]]
128* 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 is already in place]].
129** In episode 17, while "Kasei" explains the origins of the system it seems as though she's saying the original "prototype" or so to speak wasn't comprised of asymptomatic brains. They were only implemented into the system later on in what appears to be an "if you can't beat them, join them" sort of thing to maintain a government in a world that otherwise has no order (she reveals that because of the system, Japan is the only country with a stable government). Their efficiency, ability to realize that someone else is like them, and logical, unbiased views likely made the system more effective and it may have just spiraled from there.
130** This is answered in Season 2, albeit indirectly. The technological breakthrough that Tougane Misako achieved was to make the brain removal process completely automated. She then used herself as the first brain in Sibyl. Nobody knows that Sibyl is now a self-sustaining machine that can keep going indefinitely because the drones handle everything.
131[[/folder]]
132
133[[folder: Helmets]]
134* I recall that those helmets are supposed to operate by copying the lowest crime coefficient in the area. So when they're chasing that one guy, Kougami and Masaoka have to leave Akane behind or they wouldn't actually be able to shoot him. This turns out to be a really neat way to show how far gone Kougami's become. Thing is, I want to be sure about the helmet seeks the LOWEST crime coefficient. Because if so, Masaoka's crime coefficient must be higher than 280-ish for the helmet to not have targeted him. He'd be a few numbers away from being eliminated.
135** This is actually pretty disturbing, because Masaoka's number in the first episode was only 127 (as seen when Akane experimentally points her Dominator at his back). That means it shot up like a rocket during the events of the first season.
136** It's more of a PlotHole rather than a hint to anything.
137[[/folder]]
138
139[[folder: Doubting Kamui's existence]]
140* It's understandable to see Shimotsuki doubting the existence of Kamui, but it's quite irritating to see that Ginoza does so as well. Ginoza really should know better, considering he doubted the existence of Makishima for three years until the Ouryou Rikako case proved him wrong. The ''New Edit'' even had a scene where he outright apologized to Kougami for doubting in him. Considering all the things he and Akane have seen together, why would he be so quick to buy into the rather far-out theory that she somehow carved a WC? onto her wall in an amnesiac insane state?
141** Because the odds of two people appearing one after another like that are extremely low. It's reasonable doubt. Akane is also known to be an oddity where her Psycho-Pass very rarely goes above 30 so it's reasonable to think one day she may snap.
142** 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: Sibyl didn't even register him as a living person.]]
143[[/folder]]
144
145[[folder: Kamui and [[spoiler: 184 organs]]]]
146* Someone want to explain how the hell Kamui [[spoiler: can have 184 organs jammed into him without him instantly dying from organ rejection?]]
147** It was never stated that he has [[spoiler: 184 ''separate'' organs in his body. The doctor outright said his brain is pieced together from 7 others. With that in mind, that means he actually has parts of other people's organs instead of actually having 184 wholly different organs in his body. The largest organ a human has is skin. I'm sure that the majority of the 184 parts in him are actually skin grafts to reconstruct his body. After being in a plane crash, I'm pretty sure he may have been burned badly and thus the doctor had to source undamaged skin from most of the other bodies. That being said, it is pretty certain that his major organs (like heart, lungs, liver, etc.) probably are donors as well. For the organ rejection question: the procedure used on Kamui was a very experimental process that certainly would have taken that into account. Considering that Makishima said in the first season that Japan has some of the most advanced medical technology in the world, it can be inferred that anti-rejection medicine is good enough that Kamui could plausibly survive that many transplants.]]
148** 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 odds of survival were just so low.
149[[/folder]]
150
151[[folder: Sibyl's Psycho-Pass]]
152* 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?
153** They are not asymptomatic as a collective - the collective Psycho-Pass measurement can judge Sibyl as a whole. That doesn't explain how it could tell which brains it needed to purge, though - judging by TheMovie, of course, it ''didn't'' actually change its stripes when it purged the corrupt brains and cleared its hue, so it may just have been a random reshuffle.
154** Actually, the scary thing is that it ''did'' change its color - [[NiceJobBreakingItHero for the worse]]. In the movie, Sibyl 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, Sibyl purged the brains which would increase its crime-coefficient... that is to say, those which were ''not asymptomatic''. In other words, Sibyl "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.
155*** What bugs me even more is that - how the hell were Dominators able to judge the 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.
156[[/folder]]
157
158[[folder: Killing Makishima]]
159* Why wouldn't the Sibyl System seek to exterminate Makishima after finding out he's not on board with being part of the Hive Mind? Wouldn't the risk of revealing the System's true nature outweigh the need to add him to the collective?
160** Kasei reaches for the Dominator presumably to paralyze Makishima but he already resists and escapes. There is nothing mentioning that the brain transfer must be voluntary so Makishima's brain is still valuable to Sibyl. Sibyl's revised plan now is possibly to capture Makishima once more and skip negotiation to go straight to extracting his brain. To accomplish this, Akane's Dominator is locked to paralyzer mode to capture Makishima alive. It is easier to shoot Makishima with a Dominator than to find another way to kill him. So Sibyl isn't taking on any additional risk by arranging for a capture instead of extermination.
161[[/folder]]
162
163[[folder: Kamui and season 1]]
164* 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?
165** Kamui's method of clearing people's Hues and lowering their Crime Coefficients also relies on a specific cocktail of drugs and medication that he cooks up. While talking alone may work in some cases, there are others where it's not enough on its own.
166[[/folder]]
167
168[[folder: Why did Kunizuka become an Enforcer?]]
169* I get why she accepted the offer initially. She was pretty desperate to get out of that prison, and wanted to see what happened to her favorite band. What I don't quite get is why, during the face-down with her old bandmate, did she not take the "join our movement" offer? It doesn't seem like she believes in the system, and she didn't make any "your anarchy is going to hurt people" appeal to morality, she just seemed to decide to be an Enforcer.

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