Psycho-Pass 12: "Devil's Crossroad"
Who’s this woman in the flashback? Who’s this from three years earlier—
KUNIZUKA EPISODE
The dream-within-a-flashback ends, and we see Kunizuka wake up at the start of Portal.
(admittedly with classical music instead of elevator “Still Alive”)
It’s Psycho-Pass Season 2 (did you see my halfway recap?), and that means it’s time for a new opening theme. I’m not sold on this one; the old “plastic beautiful world” fit very well even if it doesn’t seem to reflect any particular character. But they did conveniently remind me what this stands for:
Past-Kunizuka’s in rehab. We never quite get told why, though the implication later is that she’s been listening to too much non-authorized music. We learn that she’s actually pretty well-off—at one point her Psycho-Pass is listed as “MEDIUM BLUE”, which actually seems really good when normal people in previous episodes have had various greens. The one thing she wants is guitar strings
despite me not seeing a guitar in her room/cell. But if music was related to her getting committed, I can’t see Sibyl allowing her to play ever again.
Even though she’s doing well—or perhaps because she’s doing well—Ginoza’s been trying to recruit her to join the MTLDR. This time, Ginoza’s partner comes along as well—
HEY I KNOW THAT GUY
Ginoza gets a call and heads out to his car, where we meet
Sasayama! Who’s not what I expected. From Kogami’s description in Episode 7, I was expecting someone older and cruder. Instead, he’s pretty much just another Kagari, maybe slightly older. Ginoza’s calling him ばか here, but there’s not much sting in it; they’re comfortable in this role. For his part, Sasayama calls Ginoza “Gino-sensei”, which I’m sure is meant ironically but still comes off as more respectful than Kagari’s calling everyone “-chan” (when he’s not just dropping honorifics altogether). Really a more mild guy than I expected.
Ginoza and Proto-Kagari have a conversation about art, and we get this (minor) bombshell:
In order to do art, you have to get approval from Sibyl. Right, we’re in a 1984 world here. As a creative-type person, this is of course a personal insult, but it’s not really a surprise; more on this later. For now, Not-Kagari cuts to the contradiction at hand: “And then an approved artist [Kunizuka] ends up becoming a latent criminal? Good grief.”
Meanwhile, Kogami is still in the process of recruiting Kunizuka. We get this nice shot of the division of worlds.
The bright/dark division is mostly just pretty, but it did remind me that Kunizuka isn’t supposed to be a prisoner; she’s a patient. Everything in here is clean and medical; they’re here—supposedly—to get better.
Kogami tries to flatter Kunizuka, but she doesn’t fall for it. She’s determined to clear up her Psycho-Pass and get released. So in a completely unfair move, he bribes her.
Taking advantage of her yearning in this way feels wrong. That said, if she had been a little less determined to get through rehab, Kogami might have just given her the strings as a positive gesture, so that next time she’d be inclined to say yes. That feels better, but of course isn’t really any less manipulative. It might not have worked, though, and I think Kogami can tell that.
The packet of strings triggers a flashback to the moment when Kunizuka realized she was attracted to women.
Her friend finds her and reprimands her for hanging out with someone in an unauthorized band. It’s treated as something minor, perhaps on the level of underage high school bumming cigarettes off of 18-year-olds, but still something that could cloud up her Psycho-Pass. Her Manic Pixie Dream Girl offers a “college anarchist” response:
Burrrrrn.
Back in the present (which is still the past, mind you), Kogami’s bribe has done the trick. The group moves out, sending Masaoka and Pre-Kagari to scout the locations Kunizuka has identified for them. (Oh, and Karanomori doesn’t seem to have her eye on Kunizuka just yet. Or vice versa.) Kogami and Ginoza wait in the van with Kunizuka, and Kogami spins a bit more of his recruiting web…by telling her that even the people who make it out of rehab don’t usually make it back to “normal”.
Kunizuka is clearly shaken by this, and I almost expect Kogami to twist the knife by suggesting she’ll never be able to play guitar again. He’s a bit more subtle than that, and instead talks about those who grow accustomed. “Accustomed?” asks Kunizuka. Yes, to being in prison and having everything taken away from you—having no power.
He then hands her a Dominator.
I was pretty surprised by this scene. A Dominator is very obviously a gun to me, and I’d be startled if a police officer suddenly handed me a gun, even if they were trying to recruit me. Kunizuka, however, doesn’t really seem to know what it is, and inspects it distantly. There still seem to be shooting games in this world, so…what’s going on?
Kogami frames the gun and joining the MLTTP as a form of power. Kunizuka is listening.
(Strait-laced Ginoza, meanwhile, is freaking out. This is definitely not standard procedure. But he’ll give Kogami the benefit of the doubt.)
Prequel Kagari interrupts by livestreaming his grandstanding.
This does not go as well as it went in his head. Sure, he gets the first guy, but the other gets away and sets the place on fire. Kunizuka, meanwhile, recognizes the band, and when she sees everything’s going to hell she breaks away to find her crush.
Who, as it turns out, is actually an anarchist.
Who makes some valid points about paper elections and “circumscribed lives”, but is also someone probably overstating the power of music.
(SMBC has something to say about this.)
Kunizuka did not see this coming. She just likes music, even unapproved music. And her Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Sibyl, on the other hand, did see this coming—it’s the most sensible resolution of the “approved artist still committed” paradox that Un-Kagari brought up earlier. It’s never confirmed, but I suspect Sibyl wanted to keep Kunizuka away from that influence, clear Psycho-Pass or otherwise. More generally, while art can be an effective revolutionary tool, I suspect that Sibyl’s acting as gatekeeper is more meant to avoid depressive spirals or communication of disturbing stories, or even just things that would make people unhappy. It doesn’t have to be a threat to the system; it might just be another optimization goal.
Dream Girl herself echoes Kogami from the other side of the ideological divide, and so I guess that’s the theme of this episode.
I’ll circle back to this at the very end.
Kunizuka’s not convinced. Not only has she grown up in a Sibylized society—ha, finally I come up with a pun around this computer! Wait, hang on, in Japanese you could choose to write “Sibyl” and “civil” the same, just like “Psycho-Pass” and “psychopath”. Maybe this was intentional all along, on top of the soothsayer part.
*cough* Not only has Kunizuka grown up in a Sibylized society, but she’s just spent half a year trying to fit more into it, doing what she thinks she needs to do to get released from rehab. A friend or crush from the music scene isn’t going to change her way of thinking in one confrontation.
But it’s her first time holding a gun. And she clearly doesn’t want to shoot. So Manic Pixie Dream Girl walks past her…
…demonstrating that she’s not nearly as good at reading people as Kogami is. But—
The whole thing was a setup. Kogami gave her something that he told her represents power, but just wanted to see if she’d pull the trigger, and specifically against her old crowd. This is such a strong psychological play and such a jerk move that I have to reference the Star Wars prequels to talk about it.
[You’re Anakin Skywalker, and now here’s Jules from Pulp Fiction] threatening to kill the supreme chancellor and the only guy who has a plan to save the woman you love. The only way to save her is to kill Jules. Finally you’re like, “fuck it, if I have to choose between Jules and Yoda on the one hand, and Grandpa and Natalie Fucking Portman on the other, I’m going with Grandpa and Natalie Fucking Portman.”
After that the political philosophy just falls into line as a matter of removing cognitive dissonance.
(from Daniel Fincke’s “Why Anakin’s Conversion To The Dark Side Made Sense”, which he wrote because the movie doesn’t do a good job of convincing most people of that.)
Kunizuka’s at the opposite end of the spectrum. She was just a normal young woman, but as Kogami says she’s had everything taken away from her, first by being taken into rehab and then in having her access to music denied. (We never see her family or any other life in this episode, but as an Approved Artist presumably music was the most important thing she had going on.) Now she finds out that her crush—the primary thing she was holding on to—isn’t who she thought she was, and is left anchorless. Kogami sets it all up to twist the knife a little more by making her almost literally aim and fire a gun at her old life.
That’s it. She’s broken. Kogami and Ginoza find her on her knees, and Kogami has the audacity to call it a “good experience” for her.
Fuck you, Kogami.
Kunizuka whispers
and then repeats it again, and after that the job and her feelings about the past just fall into line as a matter of removing cognitive dissonance.
And, bonus: she said at the start of this endeavour that she didn’t want to get involved in something that would cloud up her Psycho-Pass, and here Kogami has put her in one of the most personally traumatic experiences he could have come up with. That means she’d be likely to have fewer choices anyway if she returned to rehab, though we don’t actually see that part. She becomes an Enforcer because it’s the only thing left…which means admitting that she’ll never have a clear Psycho-Pass again.
In the present—Tsunemori’s present—Kunizuka is taciturn, effective, and relatively undisturbed by depravity. That doesn’t square with the in-the-moment, sensitive young woman we saw here…but I guess this is where it started.
The new credits begin over Kunizuka packing up her lone duffel bag, and leaving behind the connections to her previous life. I’m not attached to this new song yet either, but it’s a little better than the opening.
She’s already wearing a suit. This is her becoming an Enforcer.
This is her, mechanically adopting the dress of the only option she has left that could mean anything to her.
This is a broken woman.
It wasn’t until the very end that I realized the episode didn’t have any plot in it—none of Kunizuka’s backstory is directly relevant to the present-day cases or the way the characters have interacted thus far. However, it was still useful to get more worldbuilding, and specifically to see a version of anarchism that isn’t Makishima’s.
I started out wanting a Kunizuka episode so that I’d be able to better make fun of her, but as we got insights into Masaoka and Kagari it became more just plain curiosity. I definitely got more than I bargained for, and you can see that reflected in my response and in the number of screencaps.
I think I’ll ask for Kagari next. (Yes, Karanomori’s the one we know least about, but she also hasn’t done much to pique my interest.)