Psycho-Pass 7: "Symbolism of Bletilla Striata"

The title for Episode 7 literally has the word “symbolism” in it. Someone at Production I.G. is laughing at me.

(I also didn’t know what “bletilla striata” was; apparently it’s an orchid used to treat ulcers. The Japanese title uses 花言薬はなげんくすり, which just means “floral medicine” and has a bit more pun value.)

Oryo Rikako is now a recurring character, so I can’t just keep referring to her as “the killer with my coworker’s haircut”. The episode starts with her going to visit her parents in the hospital, and she takes her dad out to a park made of hollow cubes.

They stop by the lake. Her dad is in a wheelchair.

Rikako muses about people with her parents’ disease, informally termed “serenity”. At this point I’m not sure how literal she’s being, and still wondering if she herself put her parents into their comas. As it turns out, she’s actually being quite straightforward.

Meanwhile, the MSSBM crew discover her latest victim.


I said last time that I felt the episode was jumping around from place to place. I realize now that that’s because it had no investigation—for a change of pace, we got to see what a downtime day looks like at the MMORPG. That includes plenty of the sections I like, showing that the characters have real lives…although there was a fridge moment when I wondered exactly how Kagari gets his worldly experience when he’s supposed to be confined to the MLKJR building.

*cough* Anyway…

Last time we had Tsunemori surreptitiously gather information about Kogami’s cold case, only to have Kogami talk about it in front of everyone soon after. Today Tsunemori blurts out that the new murders might not be connected to the old ones before realizing that that’s as good as admitting she went and looked all this up. Kogami and Ginoza look at her in unison.

(Tsunemori has her hands over her mouth.)

Ginoza takes Kogami off the case. Kogami doesn’t protest. Ginoza’s giant shoulders

(were they always that big?)

assign Tsunemori to keep an eye on Kogami, which is as good as taking her off the case. I can’t tell if this is just a punishment for her or just Ginoza being careful with Kogami; perhaps it’s a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of deal.

Back at the MMBOP, the team discusses the murders. Masaoka muses that the murderer’s come back “after three years”. I take this as a clue—what motivation would there be to wait for three years?—before remembering that we already know who the murderer is, and it’s unlikely it was her three years ago. Her dad, maybe?

Given that the method of killing seems very similar, Kagari asks Ginoza if it really made sense to take Kogami off the case. He also calls him “Ko-chan”, which I wouldn’t have expected—Kogami’s still older than Kagari. (Honorific-less “Ko”, sure—multiple characters have done that by now. But “Ko-chan” is a bit much.)

Tsunemori goes to check up on Kogami and finds him sparring against a Level 9. We then get a glimpse of the elusive Female Gaze in filmmaking:

(Stupid sexy Ko-chan!)

Notice how the sparring pants he’s wearing are low enough that you can see the curve of his hips. Mm, yes.

Kogami goes to get a cigarette. Tsunemori stares at his abs.

Oh, yeah.

She may not be in love with him, but that has very little to do with this.

Abs aside (even the background music is amused), they have an interesting exchange here, which I’ll reproduce here even though I don’t have anything to say about it:

  • Tsunemori’s amazed that Kogami can beat a Level 9, and jokes that he must not be human. Kogami answers flatly that he’s as human as they come when shot by a Dominator. *cough cough*

  • Tsunemori asks why Kogami bothers sparring when he has a Dominator. Kogami answers that if he can kill someone with a gun, he wants to take it seriously, as if he had to kill with his fists. (More practically, they do lose the guns sometimes? But I’m not sure practicality is on his mind right now.)

  • Tsunemori asks if this is a lesson for her, who’s presumably a moderate sparrer at best. Kogami answers that he “doesn’t want to be in a situation where [she] has to fire the Dominator”.

Now I want to see Tsunemori sparring.

They retire to a conference room with giant chairs, and Tsunemori apologizes for snooping. Kogami doesn’t seem to care—it’s not a secret. If there’s any problem, it’s that the killer got away.

(Hm. I think it’s a conference room and not Kogami’s quarters. It doesn’t look like the area we saw in Episode 3.)

Tsunemori and Kogami both seem to think there’s at least a connection with the old case. Kogami, however, isn’t going to hold this one against Ginoza. Instead, he’s just going to wait until they get asked back onto the case (possibly doing a bit more research in the mean time). Managing up, yo.

We find out that, interestingly, Sasayama—the subordinate of Kogami’s who got killed—was a jerk. (Kogami actually uses the word くそやろう, which they translate first as “piece of work” (heh) and later as “bastard” (close enough).) Kogami was amused by him, too, which isn’t exactly a point in Kogami’s favor. Still, he didn’t deserve to die, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be tortured to death.

Kogami drops one last bit of info to go with the theme of the episode: Sasayama was found beneath an advertisement for anti-stress pharmaceuticals.


Back at the school, one of the girls is playing Nancy Drew.

"The body was Satsuki Kuzuhara's", a fellow student who was missing.

This cannot end well. iPad Girl is genre-savvy enough to know this, but not enough to suspect Rikako, even though she doesn’t like her. Instead she makes everything worse by suggesting Rikako as a possible safe source of information about their other missing friend.

We then cut to Rikako sleeping in a large bed with the dead body of said friend.

(Ffffuuuu—)

Her dad has finally died, and we find out that Rikako’s doing this to pick up where he left off. Again, I wonder if he’s the man from three years ago. That would make sense, right?

The room is covered in disturbing pictures of dismembered girls.

We then cut to Luigi’s Mansion

(maybe Luigi hasn't inherited it yet?)

where Advent Child is busy having a conversation with his butler. It’s not really a conversation as much as a chance for Advent Child to dump a bunch of worldbuilding on us. More of a Medium post, perhaps.

  • “Serenity” is a real disease, which Advent Child labels “eustress deficiency cerebral infarction”. I had assumed that was a typo at first, but no, infarction is a real word, meaning obstruction of bloodflow. Essentially, without some level of stress, the brain just shuts down, and eventually the autonomic nervous system shuts down too. Advent Child blames Psycho-Pass for this, along with prescription drugs. (This is our connection to “bletilla striata”.)

  • The average lifespan has gone down since the introduction of Psycho-Pass. Advent Child’s butler puts this down to a lack of reasons for living.

  • Rikako’s father used to be an artist; the disturbing pictures are all his work. But he painted these in order to show that people could transcend this cruelty, and he was a strong supporter of the Psycho-Pass system…even though it meant his work was no longer needed. This means he was not the culprit from three years ago.

  • Rikako’s father was also on heavy anti-stress medication, which likely led to his death by “serenity”.

This data-dump firmly establishes that Advent Child is anti-Sibyl, which we already knew but which hadn’t quite been spelled out in full. Again, I would be a lot more sympathetic if it didn’t all lead to “and therefore, we kill people for fun”.

Also, Advent Child’s butler has really big green eyes. I don’t know why.

(I don't actually know if he's a butler.)

Rikako’s ready to embalm her next victim, so she calls

"Choe Gu-Sung?"

…hang on, C-3PO In A Human Suit is Korean?1 That’s racist, yo.

Rikako observes that Makishima seems to collect people who use their genius in twisted ways, including Choe. She says he and Makishima are peddling toys that the rest of them can play with. Choe doesn’t disagree.

(Rikako prepares her next "work".)

The next day, Nancy Drew goes to ask Rikako about her missing friend. This is a Bad Idea.

(I will say Rikako is definitely a good painter.)

Screw the inspectors—no more screen time for them. Rikako captures her next victim and brings her to her “studio”, and the episode ends. Apparently she’s a more important miniboss than Hologram Guy, since she’s getting at least three episodes.

…but how is she evading Psycho-Pass checks at school?

  1. The subtitles say “Choe Gu-Sung”, but it sounds more like 채구성 to me (“Chae Gu-Seong”). Maybe Japanese speakers just don’t do a proper 최? ↩︎