Psycho-Pass 13: "Invitation from the Abyss"
We return to the present to find Ginoza talking to his psychiatrist. He’s…not doing well. The psychiatrist recommends a “simpler” solution than what he’s been doing, and I think it’s going to be drugs, but no, he just wants Ginoza to talk to someone. Too bad there’s no one in his life to talk to. *cough cough*
Meanwhile, though, there’s someone he has to talk to: Chief Judi-Dench-as-M.
After trying to subtly hint to Ginoza that it would be better to throw Tsunemori under the bus, M sighs (mentally) and explains how the system works. Sibyl has to be perfect in order to provide a sense of security, but of course Sibyl, being a program, is not perfect. The MBLAQ exists to shore up the weak points—the safety net, the human element that can deal with unexpected situations.
(She also calls him “Ginoza-kun”, which I wouldn’t have expected. I don’t think there’s anything here besides corporate senior/junior plus a difference in age, but it does remind me that Ginoza’s probably not that old.)
There is a hole in this logic, which is that the system doesn’t have to be perfect to be better than any humans. It sounds like we’re still veering away from that route, though. All my speculation about AIs making interesting decisions in the course of optimization seems for naught—it’s just plain old humans after all.
M then gets to specifics, because the alternative would be letting Ginoza and co continue following their current line of thought. She admits that there are people whose scans don’t give them an accurate reading, maybe one in every million people. (The term they’ve used is “criminally asymptomatic person”, which I first read as “asymptotic”.) M specifically knows this because they found one of them before—the suspect in the “Specimen Case” from three years ago.
The camera angle here is unusual, and really the only conclusion I can come to is that they’re saying Ginoza’s world is shaken. He’s keeping it bottled up more than Tsunemori would, but he’s gotten an abstract and a concrete mental punch to the gut in the last few minutes, so I don’t blame him.
M exhorts Ginoza to keep this under wraps, as they did three years ago. People might criticize the system, but they don’t see all the places where it’s working. Ginoza finally agrees. His team isn’t allowed to know.
This would normally be a completely innocuous sentence, but given the Episode 1 special opening where we see him in the MRTFM penthouse pavilion it comes off as suspicious.
Also, if there are humans in charge of the Dominator…
Kogami is reading Heart of Darkness.
The show-writers would like you to know that they’ve got their Western dystopia references on lock.
Tsunemori comes to visit Kogami in the hospital. Conversation is awkward at first, but Makishima’s name breaks the ice. Kogami begins speculating as usual, and we get this from Tsunemori:
There’s a bittersweet tone in it. I’d translate it slightly differently, closer to “Just like usual, eh?”, but the important point is the connection between them and the sadder-but-possibly-more-mature cast to Tsunemori. Kogami notices this too, and Tsunemori responds that it’s more important to move on so they can capture Makishima. As she gets ready to go, she comments that at least one good thing came out of all this: everyone now believes Makishima exists.
By the way, the music is doing an amazing job here. It’s a bit clunky in the description of Yuki’s funeral, but after that it adds that depressed cast to even the positive things the two of them are saying. I mostly haven’t noticed the music being anything special, but this one deserves note. (No pun intended.)
Anyway, the music’s running in full-on sad mode as we cut to Dexter’s Karanomori’s lab. Even Ginoza’s concerned about Tsunemori, although we can’t be sure some of the concern doesn’t stem from his secret orders. Still,
Oh good, she’s not perfect.
Back in Episode 6, the show insinuated that Tsunemori may end up following the same path as Kogami. I just didn’t expect it to be so abrupt.
That, at least, causes Ginoza’s calm to crack. He knows what that means. He knows all too well what that means. Meanwhile Tsunemori, for all that she too is an Inspector, may not really have a good handle on “the rest of her life”. Who can picture the rest of their life at, what, 22?
(But note that she does assume she’ll get to stay on as an Enforcer. The thought of being banished all the way to prison doesn’t cross her mind.)
Tsunemori tries to reassure Ginoza. “My only strength is that my Psycho-Pass doesn’t get clouded easily,” she says, taking Kogami’s words from Episode 9 and attempting a smile. It’s unlikely that she really believes that, but that’s not really the point.
Tsunemori activates Mega-Man mode
and searches through her mixed-up memories. Because they’re past moments in the show, we actually see Tsunemori herself in some of them, but whatever. More disturbing is the moment where she remembers Makishima’s speech and it momentarily syncs up with Yuki talking.
The process is almost complete when she remembers the moment of the murder. Karanomori hits “Cancel”, but…
Man. I haven’t seen that face since Higurashi. In a show with Pyscho-Pass’s levels of grue, traumatic sessions like this aren’t the most disturbing thing around, but it’s still up there.
Ginoza brings her out of it with a slap. Tsunemori’s not feeling great, but she made it. They got the information they needed, and her Psycho-Pass, amazingly, has survived. I remain suspicious about Tsunemori’s Psycho-Pass, but for now, it’s a victory for the heroes.
But we’re not done. Ginoza is taking his psychiatrist’s advice…and talking to Masaoka.
(can I say it yet?)
He asks about Tsunemori. How is she able to keep her Psycho-Pass so clear? Masaoka answers that she’s not worried about her Crime Coefficient, and that
I’m not sure I would quite put it the same way. Tsunemori isn’t afraid of her Psycho-Pass to be sure, and she’s not obsessing about the number. She also doesn’t usually stress about the path laid out for her. That said, I don’t think she just accepts things. She feels very strongly about justice on large and small scales, even if some of the smaller scale things haven’t hit her yet.
(Or maybe I’m stretching a single sentence too far.)
At the same time, Tsunemori’s always had a good Psycho-Pass score, so it’s possible that she’s not worried about it in the same way that people born upper-middle class don’t worry about money. *cough*
Masaoka continues, guessing that Tsunemori understands and believes in the role of a detective. (He does say “detective” here, not “inspector”.)
OMG IT’S THE COMET
Masaoka says he might have once been like Tsunemori. Ginoza smiles.
…that looks weird on him.
Masaoka says he might have once been like Tsunemori, but then Sibyl came along and made him into an automaton—point and shoot where the gun tells you. His unhappiness here just made his Psycho-Pass get worse and worse.
…not explicit confirmation, but I’m going to count it! Let me finish the scene, and then I’ll talk about it.
This is how an automated system that optimizes for happiness works—it makes life harder for those who go against the grain. It’s also how authoritarian governments work. (Masaoka even says that once he started accepting the new era, his Crime Coefficient stopped rising. That also makes sense in the automated system—the longer someone denies the system, the more dangerous they are.) It’s not totally unreasonable, but…
Masaoka ends the scene with some good life advice about jobs in general:
If you’re not happy in your current job and are able to make a change, start thinking about it. Otherwise, things aren’t going to go well for you anyway.
So, Masaoka is Ginoza’s dad. This has been hinted at a few times, but as I mentioned earlier I accidentally spoiled this for myself. In the end, it’s actually not such a big issue. Yes, there’s extra tension between them, and yes, it’s weird to have your dad as your subordinate, especially a neglectful dad whose latent-criminal ways got you and your mom into hard times. But by this point, it’s over and done—it’s just part of the package of Ginoza neuroses, a part of his backstory that also happens to still be around, staring him in the face. (As if Kogami wasn’t enough.) Oh, and some expected lessons about Sibyl and the transition thereto.
I guess I don’t actually have that much to say here, and I don’t expect it to come up much later. At most, there’ll be an awkward moment where Tsunemori finds out…or possibly more cleverly, she’ll mention that she already knows and wasn’t going to say anything.
I stick around through the new credits, as I always do. This time they’re just over the cityscape, rather than the cast naked (yes, this happened in Episode 12). Maybe they got bad feedback about that? It’s not particularly interesting, until…
WHAT
WHAT
Has M been collaborating with Makishima all along?
We just saw that Masaoka is Ginoza’s dad. Is M Makishima’s mom?
…grandma?
Is this why he’s in the MUSBC building in the Episode 1 intro?
Is there a secret Sibyl cabal after all?
(Later I thought of another theory, which is that M is just being as predatory about this capture as Kogami was in Episode 3. She’s just calling out that Makishima is a worthy adversary, but they’ve finally got him.「後がないよ。」But she calls him “Shogo-kun”—not “Makishima-kun”. To me that implies a closer relationship.)
WHAAAAAT
(see you next time)