Psycho-Pass 5: "No One Knows Your Face"
I feel like the last post turned into me narrating the episode, rather than analyzing it (or making fun of it). I’ll try to stay a little more focused, more like Episode 1, and just pull out the parts I have something to say about.
*watches Episode 5* Hm, yes, okay, yes, sure.
…I’m not taking many screencaps this time, am I. This is all going exactly as I’d expect.
I didn’t catch any major worldbuilding or character-building in the first part of the episode, so I’ll just zoom through it.
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Tsunemori meets with “Spooky Boogie” one more time, who tells her to get lost and then kicks her out of the chat room. Of course, we already know the real Spooky Boogie is dead, so…
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The crew decides that it makes the most sense if the killer was after Talisman’s Avatar, rather than anything about the real guy behind it.
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Kogami says it’s a waste of time to try to trace the login. Ginoza has Karanomori do it anyway.
Hm.
“But tell me, suppose you could craft any conditions you wished into the Mark, fading it or raising it as you wished. What would you do then?”
“Make it completely invisible at all times,” Harry said in tones of stating the obvious. “You don’t want there to be any detectable difference between a spy and a non-spy.”
“Suppose you are more cunning still,” Albus said. “You are a master of trickery, a master of deception, and you employ your abilities to the fullest.”
“Well -” The boy stopped, frowning.
(from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
Explosion. Ginoza gets his hand cut by shrapnel; adding insult to injury, Kagari and Kunizuka come out okay. Kogami calls Ginoza to say they’ve found Spooky Boogie’s remains, disposed of in the same way as before. Tsunemori feels guilty, and Kogami does the best he can to convince her it wasn’t her fault. I give him a 7/10 for the effort.
C-3PO In A Human Suit calls All-Grey Murderer to let him know what happened, and we get a name-drop for Big Bad Advent Child:
“Mr. Makishima”. This isn’t really a spoiler since Kogami says it in the special Episode 1 opening, but it’s good to have it confirmed.
Ginoza wonders how someone could take someone’s place on the nets with no one noticing. Kogami explains that it’s more of a character or role, really, and given that fans often know song lyrics better than the original artist I find this perfectly sensible. The show then reminds us that Spooky Boogie was introduced literally hanging from a noose.
…so, y’know, we should have seen this coming.
Ginoza, as usual, doesn’t like being explained to.
I’m starting to think it’s more than just antipathy or past history, and that it’s actually a self-esteem problem. He’d be a much happier person if he just admitted that his talents don’t lie in, um…
…what is he good at, exactly? If he doesn’t understand criminals, and he doesn’t understand Kids These Days, how did he get to the point of being Expert Professional Inspector?
In another show, Ginoza could be secretly afraid that the MXKCD will discover that all his successes are the results of his talented group of Enforcers, and that he has no particularly special skills of his own. I’m guessing that’s not where we’re headed, though.
(For what it’s worth, Masaoka also doesn’t understand Kids These Days, but that just means he and Tsunemori can have a nice conversation about it.)
Anyway, Kogami comes up with a clever idea: find out who stopped watching the streams after the accounts of Talisman, Spooky Boogie, and Definitely Not Mega Man were taken over. There’s only one person who matches, so I guess this one’s just going to be a two-parter.
The teams head out, and the exciting music starts. My musician side is pleased by the elevator lights going up in time with the beat.
Since the villains have already established control over holography systems, the killer sets off a program to hide himself, put furniture everywhere, and shade everyone in with pencil.
It’s a cool effect, but unfortunately it’s weak to water. Masaoka uses the power of Alcohol to set off the fire sprinklers and the holo system shuts off. Kogami gets in a shot which blows off the killer’s arm—the gun’s definitely going “Lethal Eliminator” for this one—so we know this chase is going to come to an end soon.
Panicking, the guy runs home, and we find out that he’s not a cold-blooded member of a secret society. He’s just obsessed with these characters, and so has claimed them for himself. He’ll both play them and be comforted by them.
Unfortunately, Advent Child has other ideas.
Turns out he was just using All-Grey, and he’s hardly going to be useful at this point. He uses the three stolen avatars to drive All-Grey over the edge of madness, and informs him the hunting dogs are here. Ginoza, Kagari, and Kunizuka rush in as the holo-system dies, and all three of them shoot. All-Grey doesn’t even try to run.
They did catch the end of the conversation, but possibly only the killer’s side—which means they don’t know about Makishima. For now, the hunt is over.
The episode saves a good several minutes for Ginoza to join Tsunemori on the MSNSD balcony. He gives her an actual compliment on her work today, though she still feels like Kogami did all the real work. My respect for Ginoza goes back up a little in seeing that he’s not holding their previous clashes against her, or at least not too strongly.
They continue talking, and Ginoza says that as an Inspector, she should “do the job of an Inspector”—advice that I find more suitable to Ginoza himself in the context of his earlier frustration. Tsunemori still won’t drop the idea that, y’know, maybe the Enforcers are human beings, and so Ginoza discloses that the policy of hard separation he espouses is specifically his policy, not an actual rule of the MSNBC. He decides to give her a massive piece of Plot as an email attachment, and walks away as she reads it:
Kogami used to be an Inspector. Huh, I thought for sure that was Masaoka’s backstory.
(roll credits)
During this episode, I realized Talisman’s voice sounded familiar. Turns out the same voice actor played Kiryuu Touga, from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Ah, that distinctive, deep voice.
This isn’t closely related, but I forgot last time to link to Stefan Gagne’s “Floating Point”, a recently-completed web serial about sentient programs that live in a virtual world. “Floating Point” explores the idea of a world like Psycho-Pass’s networks and interlinked forums much more broadly, and draws deliberate analogies with real-world events and online spaces. Check it out.