Psycho-Pass Episode 16: Gate of Judgement

“This is the true form of the Sibyl System! If we make this public…it’ll be the end of this country.”

Summary

Akane, Shinya and Kagari arrive at the Nona Tower, where they decide to split up in order to combat the latent criminals – with Akane and Shinya heading up to meet Makishima at the peak of the building, while Kagari descends into the depths of the basement to apprehend Choe Gu-Sung as he gets closer to the core of the Sibyl System. After a fierce fight in which Makishima is somehow put under arrest, Kagari ultimately discovers something he shouldn’t have, and is eliminated as a result.

Impression

Well, that was intense. The Nona Tower did end up holding more secrets than were revealed to the public eye – primarily the fact that the basement’s fourth floor isn’t the bottom of the tower at all, and that there are at least twenty floors below the “basement” that have no security cameras and no blueprints, which is fishy indeed. The radio tower sits at the very pinnacle of the building, and so that provides the perfect opportunity for our latent criminals to split up, with Choe Gu-Sung getting access to Sibyl in the basement, and Makishima heading upstairs to act as a decoy. Once again, we are reminded of the problem that’s arose out of the government’s complacence, where someone must have evidently thought it would be a smart idea to have the Sibyl System effectively do the job of the police force, resulting in a pitifully scarce number of active officers. And when riots break out, those officers are split up into pitifully small groups – so when word gets round that dangerous latent criminals have broken into a high security government building, a grand total of three people are sent to apprehend them. While I agree that Makishima is the more dangerous of the two and deserves to have both Shinya and Akane go after him, it was still a very ominous feeling to have Kagari go off on his own – and given the nature of the show and its producers, I had a more than nagging suspicion that he wouldn’t be making it.

We actually got an explanation for the fancy pink and blue helmets Makishima had his men wear – they were probably linked straight to his own Crime Coefficient instead of anyone in the vicinity, making the Dominators absolutely useless. The same trick doesn’t really work twice  with Makishima, and he probably did take into account the fact that high Crime Coefficients could be copied as well as good ones, should a small enough number of people be in the area. Anyway, this episode featured that scene from Episode 1 that the show was introduced with – the first meeting of Shinya and Makishima. Both of them are pretty similar physically, and it just goes to show what a scary human being Makishima actually is – in addition to all the intellect he displays surrounding politics, sociology and literature, he’s also a formidable foe on the physical front, managing to destroy a side of Shinya’s face without sustaining many injuries himself. And while Shinya’s strict training regimen allowed him to hold his own against Makishima, that’s all it managed to do, and I can imagine the frustration he’s going to be feeling while undergoing rehab after all this is over – assuming everything simmers down straight after this.

“Inspector…kill him.”

For all her lack of significance throughout the series, I felt that Akane’s sudden appearance averted what would have probably been a really nasty follow-up to Shinya and Makishima’s battle – and of course, who can forget that magnificent helmet whack? Aside from my initial surprise at Makishima going down from something so incredibly simple, Shinya’s painful request and Akane’s subsequent internal conflict at what to do was full of emotion – while Gino’s direct order was to apprehend Makishima, it took some incredibly strong will to just not bash his head open with that helmet when presented the opportunity, especially when Makishima has performed so much wrong…even I wanted her to kill him very much. Yet Akane’s decision to arrest him instead, even after displaying the amount of pain her eyes did just goes to show what a genuinely moralistic person she is, which happens to fit in line with Sibyl’s idea of the ideal citizen.

Right from the start, with the giant block over electromagnetic radiation the entire episode was full of death flags for Kagari. I mean, it’s an Urobuchi Gen production – I don’t expect the deaths to stop any time soon. In fact, they’re starting rather late considering there are only six episodes left. Anyway, Kagari as a person had his own moral ideals – as a latent criminal, he is happy to see the role reversal where the society who discriminated against him are now acting in an animalistic fashion themselves. And that’s natural, since it’s not like the latent criminals actually like their position. Kagari is just slightly better-off than your average criminal, and while hating Sibyl with all his heart, has decided to assign his own system of value to the things around him, and live by that code.

“Don’t you want to know the truth about the Sibyl System?”

Yes, yes I do want to know the truth about the Sibyl System, though to be honest, quite a lot can be inferred even from the point of view of a casual watcher. The first revelation was that the Chief of the Ministry of Welfare is actually a product of biomechanical science herself – an android, much like one of the antagonists from a couple of episodes ago. And she has the power to forcibly change the Dominator from Non-Lethal Paralyzer to Lethal Eliminator despite Kagari’s Crime Coefficient not being high enough, proving that she’s at least a very close agent of Sibyl – possibly its creation, if not the Sibyl System itself. About the core of the system – it’s very clear that it’s not any sort of machine, and if it’s something that will make people instantly riot upon seeing it, it’s got to be some sort of biological entity. I’m leaning towards a mass cultivation of humans who are criminally asymptomatic, or perhaps rows and rows of human brains used to make Sibyl’s decisions. Whatever it is, it’s scandalous enough for the chief to decide to eliminate all witnesses in the name of Sibyl – that’s the kind of extent she’s willing to go to in order to protect the stability of society.

PS. Oh god…seeing a post on Psycho-Pass turn up in bright pink looks so awkward…