Psycho-Pass 10: "Methuselah's Game"
Episode 10 makes up for Episode 9’s smorgasbord of character development by heading right for action, so much so that I have barely any screencaps for the first half of the show. We start off with Tsunemori in bed, and I’m wondering if we’re about to hear her Psycho-Pass is finally getting cloudy when she gets an email from her friend. (She should really turn on Do Not Disturb mode.) The next day it turns out said friend is missing.
Kogami knows it’s a trap. Tsunemori can’t think who’d want to set a trap for her. Kogami gives her a verbal smack upside the head, Inspector, though admittedly most of the criminals they’ve been chasing so far don’t seem to have had many friends. Intelligently, he suggests they don’t both walk into the trap, and can he have a weapon, please?
Even before we get into the actual trap I’m wondering if the Bad Guys just wanted her voiceprint, though in this hypothesis it’s so that they can authorize use of weaponry themselves later. There is her badge-bracelet to consider too, but that’s probably just a copyable RFID, right?
Kogami heads downstairs, and it turns out Makishima has hired Mal Cobb to hit him with a train.
Tsunemori calls in the rest of the crew. Ginoza points out something that hadn’t even occurred to her, and to be honest me.
This is a good point. “Latent criminal” aside, the Enforcers all lead very circumscribed lives, which could already be a reason to try to escape. Kogami specifically could be considered to have a purpose for escaping—to take revenge on Makishima. (Please ignore that it would probably still be easier to do that within the MAAPL rather than outside it.)
I think this is actually a flaw of the show, or at least a choice that has downsides: except for the first few episodes, we always get to see Makishima’s side of the story, which means we always know what really happened. In this case, we’ve already seen them fake Tsunemori’s voice, so we know Kogami’s not actually deserting. It might have been interesting to leave us wondering for a bit.
More on this later. As it was, it was still an added complication that I hadn’t thought of.
Side language note! One of Ginoza’s earlier sentences clued me in that the word being translated as “inspector”, 監視官, is closer to “overseer”—as in, someone who keeps watch on their Enforcers (rather than the city). Suddenly the whole Inspector/Enforcer bifurcation is a little clearer.
Anyway, Ginoza has a good point, but he’s certainly not feeling kindly to Tsunemori right now.
Kogami climbs inside the train car. Conveniently, Tsunemori’s friend is on the same car, and at this point I’m forced to come up a snarky nickname for her on demand, since I weaseled out of doing it last time. Let’s say…Stripy Leggings?
The train takes them to BicenTunnel Man’s hunting grounds, which have been illuminated a lot like the slums from Episode 1, and more importantly Kogami’s traumatic flashbacks. At this point I wouldn’t put it past Makishima to have done this deliberately.
They find a bag with flares in it. I wouldn’t have bothered to screencap this except I’m really curious what’s in the bottles. If anyone figures it out please tell me.
(There’s also the later bag that Stripy Leggings runs up and grabs for absolutely no good reason. Like, you just saw Kogami point out some terrifying traps. What are you doing?)
A chase scene ensues. Kogami kills a robot dinosaur hunting dog and gets them to temporary safety, and I’ll take advantage of the pause in the action to circle back to something I skipped earlier. (The previous two screencaps are out of order anyway. Sue me.)
Earlier, Kogami and Stripes talked about Tsunemori. I didn’t actually care that much, because it’s things we already know: Kogami respects her as an idealist detective, and she had a spotlight on her even back in school. Boooooring. Being me, I focus in on the way the Psycho-Pass has affected society.
“…are always people like her.”
*cringe*. Even though it doesn’t seem to be genetic, I don’t like the idea of a ruling class driven by a single system’s idea of mental health. Even though we have a sample size of exactly one person with a Psycho-score as good as Tsunemori’s. Even though that’s not what Stripy Leggings is saying.
(I’m not actually sure what I think she’s saying. “She’s special, so maybe other people with clear Hues are special in the same way?” vs. “She has a clear Hue, so maybe that’s what allows her to be special?” vs. something else.)
Anyway, Stripes isn’t stupid herself. When Kogami realizes the trap would have worked just as well without her actually being on the train, she answers, “Isn’t it…to make it difficult for you to run away?” With a bitter smile, no less.
But Kogami Shinya, Ace Detective, can’t leave it at that. He recognizes that they’re deliberately being given a chance, and therefore whether he abandons Stripes is part of the game. Which means, of course, that she should take off her clothes.
I hate this trope. Not just where the dependent, defenseless woman needs to strip—although that’s bad enough—but where the man that’s telling her to do so won’t explain why, thinking “Come with me if you want to live” is enough. They’re playing the scene for a cheap laugh, when Kogami could have just as easily said “they could have hid the antenna on you when they took you” and that would be that.
There’s another problem here, which is that Kogami is never wrong. This is the second half of my complaint from earlier: not only do we know that Kogami’s right about Makishima testing him, but he’s figured out exactly how that test works. To be fair, Makishima did try to make this one obvious, but he could have just as easily come up with a way to force Kogami to choose between getting an antenna and keeping Stripes from getting killed. Or maybe he’s saving that for level two.
Anyway, the point is that Kogami may be clever and a really good psychoanalyzer, but for him to guess that the antenna would be hidden on Stripy Leggings somewhere seems to be promoting one hypothesis to the truth out of thin air. It would be different if it were the third thing he tried (and it would be the third, not the second or fourth).
But being Kogami Shinya, Ace Detective, his first hypothesis was right. The last piece of the walkie-talkie was bent into the wires of her bra, which means…well. After knocking a woman out, kidnapping her, and presumably leaving her to die, Makishima taking her bra off in order to provide a clue for his twisted game (rather than to ogle her breasts) just…doesn’t seem like it’s that important, and yet it’s still added discomfort stacking up against the guy.
Kogami has solved the puzzle and calls for help.
Meanwhile, Ginoza’s preparing for the worst.
Tsumenori: WTF?
Ginoza: If you’re right, it’ll just stun him.
Kagari: And if the boss is right, it’ll be a painless death.
Tsunemori: WTF?
Ginoza:
I almost, almost feel sorry for Ginoza at this point. It wasn’t until here that it really hit me that these two scenes were a continuation of Episode 9—that his own fears and insecurities are haunting him so much that everything Tsunemori does freaks him the hell out. And it wasn’t until here that I remembered that Kogami and Ginoza were partners, which means not only did Ginoza lose Kogami, but he’s also responsible for Sasayama.
Again, in another show, Ginoza would be the main character.
But Masaoka disagrees, and calmly tells Ginoza to knock it off before throwing him into Kunizuka’s computer wagon.
Tsunemori:
I took this screencap because her reaction surprised me: she’s not just surprised by Masaoka’s intervention, but touched, at least as far as I can tell. It’s a look she’d normally give Kogami, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. Masaoka’s actions were certainly on her behalf, but they don’t really reduce the impact of Ginoza’s words.
Luckily for Masaoka and team coherence, Kogami’s distress call comes through just then.
I would have taken this just for Tsunemori’s expression, though it’s really more relieved and child-like than the situation deserves when Kogami is still in danger. But the real important point here is Masaoka and Kagari, who both had much more faith in Kogami all along; they’re smiling like this as soon as Kunizuka announces there’s a signal.
The credits music starts, marking the beginning of the rescue operation. The team bursts into the tunnels and races for Kogami.