A collection of thoughts about Psycho-Pass 3 + First Inspector #01
Psycho-Pass 3 turned out to be one big surprise last year, a fresh breeze of a show like I havenโt watched in a long while, so when I heard episode 8 wasnโt the conclusion Iโve got to admit I got a bit intrigued. It turns out a sequel movie calledย โFirst Inspectorโ was in the making and it would carry on the plot starting where episode 8 had left it.
I wondered if waiting four months for this story to wrap up wouldnโt accidentally dim my initial enthusiasm for it.
It turns out the exact opposite has happened. The charisma of the new characters alone was enough to really make me want to watch and rewatch these episodes, and I was pleasantly greeted with the discovery of new layers of interpretation and details whilst doing so. In such ways, I doubt a single first watch will ever do this season justice.
This may or may not be the reason I absolutely loved the First Inspector film - or, well, three episodes, depending how youโve watched it - much to my delight Arataโs short story seems to have wrapped up to a relatively satisfying degree. It gives a solid nod to theories and suspicions weโve come to nurture. Weโve got clear answers about Bifrost, about Shizuka, about his goal. We got justice for Akane. We got a resolution for Azusawa. At the same time, thereโs still potential for yet another kickass arc:
- On one hand, because Shizuka and Akaneโs story is yet to be told - the theatrical version of First Inspector in Japan seems to have included a short teaser to what will be the next Psycho-Pass release in the future - it ended with Akane about to tell Arata and Kei what actually happened to her.
- On another hand, because we still donโt know what was the deal with Atsushi getting accused of killing off Keiโs older brother - enough of Arataโs past seems to have been revealed, but there are still mysteries to be told about Akira and his relationship with Atsushi, as well as Atsushiโs role in Bifrost in general.
Iโm not gonna lie, I grew absurdly attached to Arata and Kei, and I do hope we do see more of them both in the future!
The main theme of Psycho-Pass has always revolved around the theme of โJusticeโ - itโs no surprise the third season follows suit. But if I were to summarize a sub-topic of Psycho-Pass 3 in one word myself, I would say rather claim its theme is about Prejudice.
Because everything about this season is a commentary on xenophobia and many other manifestations of prejudice and what passing superficial judgement on others encompasses. This is manifest in the world building, the plot (in subjects that go from economy, to politics, to religion) but it ties essentially to the identity and personality of both main characters and their enforcers.
On one hand, Kei, a refugee from Russia, is someone who had to endure war back home, and then, even when he finds a country to live in peace with his wife, he has to constantly put up to the unnecessary antagonism of people around him; as well as corruption, and hypocrisyโฆ
Mind you, I got surprised how Kei turned out to be such a stubborn and resilient guy. In the end they made him the kind of character who doesnโt bend his sense of justice to others just for whatever reason - thus testing the audience ability to trust him as well. Itโs his methods that seem peculiar; from the looks of it his goal may have been to investigate Bifrost, the issue being in the fact he has the bad tendency of working alone (perhaps due to the kind of reactions heโs used to receive from others at this point. Which does explain Maikoโs need to pressure in having him trust Arata).
The past in regard to Keiโs brother is still to be told though. It doesnโt mean Kei arc is necessarily unfinished because Kei could try to move on and focus on the present instead of the past for myriad reasons. But this is the tricky part. He could. Except heโs shown to be a pretty stubborn guy and this entire mystery is the reason he has signed up for this job along with Arata in the first place. So I donโt think he will let it go. When another season/film takes place, we may be shown glimpses of what happened. And perhaps even see some of those scenes the opening has casually teased us with. But who knows?
On another hand, Arata, criminally Asymptomatic, with every label and prejudice it brings attached (a challenge to us, the audience). A condition that in every piece of media out there is associated with serial killers and murderers, go figure. A trope abused too often that really messes up perceptions left and right (but allow me to leave this one for later in this post).
Azusawaโs attitude on another hand keeps reminding me a lot of my philosophy professor in university when I engaged in Art Studies go figure. Iโm not sure Iโm articulated enough to explain this in a contrived medium like this with my only limited English skills, but in my field the question โWhat is Artโ was a constant.ย Jumping from Kant, to Schiller, to Nietzsche,โฆ
Itโs usually brought up among scholars that Aristotle for example absolutely denied โgamesโ a place in philosophy. He worried about the alienating aspect of simulations and argued if philosophy is to be the pursue of knowledge, it means it has to stay connected to truth. Not to a fake version of it (simulations).
But on another hand you also have Friedrich Schiller, who defended โMan is only Human when at Playโ, thus defending the Aesthetical education of Man, and Nietzsche, who has eventually challenged the classical perception and to whom we owe much of our educational methods. Simulations are perfect for children to develop and prepare themselves for real life situations before they happen, and without simulations our society would hardly be prepared to โdebugโ many of todayโs issues.
Thereโs actually an entire group of scholars defending perhaps Aristotle wasnโt as ignorant of this as we may have thought until recently, and that we may have completely misunderstood Ancient Greek cosmology in that regard - for even Aristotle was deeply engaged in Arts and most specifically Greek tragedies performed in the form of drama plays. He thought highly enough of the potential of storytelling and playing to educate audiences and invite citizens to question the importance of good values in an educated society. Telling stories and tragedies about the predicament of Gods, actually allowed citizens food for thought in the most varied topicsโฆ from sacrifice, to courage, to the most varied aspects of life itself.
Schillerโs epiphany seems to have been that Man is, fundamentally, Homo Ludens. The Man who plays. Questions such as โWhat makes a given group acknowledge a certain object as art?โ get to be answered to when you think of society like a big game with its own rules. For a given group of people, like letโs say, that engage in dadaism, something may be considered artistic as long as the participant artists play by the rules of dadaism. Even if in this example the rule isโฆ not obeying any rules.
Then again, this is hardly exclusively to art; this is trait that exists in the DNA of humankind itself. To belong to a given something - a group, a system - you always have rules of some kind. We are social creatures.
And this isnโt without an innate desire to always break those same rules. We create rules at the same time we always seek to break and transcend them, as if to escape from โhere and nowโ.
This is where some may turn to the most varied forms of escapism. Being gambling, drugs, alcohol, or even the most self-reassuring forms of religion.
In that regard, itโs kind of amusing to me Azusawa calls Sibyl โGodโ. It seems that merging with Sibyl is the ultimate and most perfect form of transgression for him. His ultimate desire is to escape society by merging with the entity that controls it - this is Azusawaโs own way of outwitting society itself.
Itโs too bad that didnโt turn out right for him. The only way of truly merging with the transcendental โOneโ is to look after your individuality and accept yourself as the unique human being you are, and in that regard one may argue Arata did manage to do it better than Azusawa.
I have replayed the scene Arata visits the cemetery and looking back itโs actually striking how much of this character is built on the pillars of faith. Faith in Kei, faith in humans nature (thereโs something endearing in how he counterargues Keiโs statements on episode 8 and tells him most people are normal instead of criminals, they just want peace), and then faith in his father and teacher Shindo Atsushi (whose image he has desperately tried to restore in order to keep living, it seems).
It may be a sign of intelligence to question everything and consider every variable in any situation. The trap of this mindset is accidentally falling into an attitude of distrust in regard to every and any situation. Because worst case scenario possibilities arise in your mind. When articulated with fear, especially of another personโs intentions, prejudice and unfair judgement may take over a personโs actions. So I think there is some merit to faith in this context. โNot everybody is out there to get youโ, that is.
Itโs a rather frail rope to hold onto, but in this context, itโs also the lifeline holding us people onto our humanity.
Arataโs faith that even Azusawa can atone for his sins is yet another frail rope to hold onto. Ideals arenโt to be taken lightly; they require some gambling and risk taking. But this kind of faith may as well be required if any society really wants to move forward.
And that is also Akaneโs bet.
A lot about growth is related to challenging comfort zones and taking a step towards the unknown. If this goes for the individual who enters adulthood, it isnโt farfetched to consider perhaps it also applies to group of individuals. To collective beings.
I think Psycho-Pass in general isnโt as pessimistic about this as it might look like.
Looking into Hoffmannโs โNutcracker"ย - which I have always heard about but never knew the contents of before this show anyway - it turns out itโs a rather simple Prussian tale. One about (surprise surprise!) Prejudice.
In the PPFI movie, Azusawa has basically used the entire building as a stage for the reenactment of the Nutcracker drama playโฆ what I didnโt realize during my first watch is he has even created an algorithm for it. Suddenly the entire scheme doesnโt feel as complex.
Karina is set up into a situation sheโs given the choice of either playing Marieโs role (a character who likes others by judging their hearts instead of their looks thus completely overlooking how different they may look like) or the role of princess Pirlipat (who rejects marrying the Nutcracker for being "differentโ).
Karina didnโt really pick any of these choices because Arata has stepped in and interrupted the course of the events. But Azusawaโs intent seems to have been originally that of โeducatingโ Karina and teach her a lesson about the true value of people in this stage (he wanted her to sacrifice herself to save En). Naturally, all of it backfires. He has done everything he tried to make Karina accountable for in this setting. The guy really did think of himself beyond the realm of human judgementโฆ
Interesting enough, in episode 8, Azusawa tells Obata-chan he thinks of himself like the Nutcracker. If thatโs so, you could say Arata is like Marie/Clara in the very last part of First Inspector.
This may be just me, but thereโs an underlying meaning to this Azusawa/Nutcracker parallel, that seems to imply Azusawa himself had to deal with his own share of prejudice sometime in his lifetime. Something happened that may have metaphorically cursed him and turned him into the Nutcracker. Azusawa was once an Enforcer, so I have to wonder if whatever situation he has lived once was anything similar to Todoroki Tenmaโs predicament.
This prompts me into thinking he didnโt arbitrarily decide to trick society for the sake of tricking it. Something may have happened, and itโs intriguing Atsushiโs ability to play with minds seems related to it to some degree. By acknowledging Azusawa can still be redeemed could it be did Arata undo whatever insecurities and unresolved issues his father created inside of Azusawaโs mindโฆ?
This season is told from Arataโs pov. Itโs not like Arata needs his backstory to decide to not pull the trigger, soโฆ Maybe itโs perhaps precisely due to the fact he doesnโt know that he gets to be Azusawaโs โyoung Marieโ here.
Azusawa thought he was already a โGodโ even before he approached Sibyl and asked to join them. Itโs an entire new level of self-righteousness. Sibyl draws a line and argues, for all it counts they donโt exist to corner people into binary choices the way Azusawa does (Hence, the algorithm. You can clearly see the โtruesโ or โfalsesโ of his binary system).
I have my questions hereโฆ In the first season you could easy argue Sibyl does end up fulfilling that role. But then againโฆ is it the system itself, or is it the fact people put blind faith in the system and excuse themselves of the burden of choice and free will with it?
Here Sibyl doesnโt even realize how used they are to being obeyed without being questioned. It takes someone like Akane or Arata showing up to shake their structures, because they donโt pull the trigger even when the system basically tells them to.
I suppose this is where the issue of Artificial Intelligence taking over societyโs Government acquires a whole meaning of its own. Why is it meaningful that Shizuka defeats an AIโs attempt to take over the system?
When Aristotle said gaming, simulations, or anything that is a mere copy of the real world wonโt even achieve the status of truth, I guess we do have to take into account the cosmology greeks had back in the day (I wonโt go through the pain of explaining Platoโs cave here, google it). But what he says stills hold some truth in regard to the issue of Gaming enabling a tendency for Escapism. In this exact context there is meaning into defeating AI in favour of allowing for flesh and bone people who hold responsibility for their own lives, actions, and emotions (AIs being but mere simulations of human intelligence, in Plato terms, there are but mere shadows of real human beings).
True or False. There is no escaping this when it comes to algorithms, even in the case of AIs who have the ability of going back to pick another kind of answer once they learn a given outcome returns a bad end. Human beings can take into account variables no machine ever will.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find about the sentence โThe rain is fallingโ that Atsushi uses and Arata repeats to trigger Mental Trace actually refers to one of Miyoshi Tatsujiโs poems, whose works of literature usually focus in helpess feelings of loneliness and isolation (the Great Aso poem).
I have refrained from referring to Arata until now, but itโs actually mesmerizing to me that for once we have a canon โpsychopathโ main character that - while still held accountable for his thoughts - he just blends in well enough in the role of aย โgood guyโ type of main character to be rooted for. Instead of hyper focusing on how cleverly twisted psychopaths are, PP3 decides to focus on how awfully lonely these individuals can be, offering an alternative view that in my opinion is slightly more accurate and aligned with the reality of such people.
There used to be a rather embarrassing bias in how studies about psychopathy or sociopathy were conducted - after all, whenever you wanted to find those people what would you do? You would go to a prison hospital and find the object of your studies there, all ready to answer to stuff and be studied from. This is so obvious itโs dumb but, think about it: if you only study criminal psychopaths, naturally, youโre going to end with results that mirror that reality. That will affect the results and overall conclusions about these people. The thing is, there are those who blend in society well enough to have an arguably โnormalโ life and those used to be hardly ever seen in such studies.
From what I have read, upon having realized this issue and deciding to make up for it, some clinical psychiatrists have grown wary of using terms such as โpsycopathโ or โsociopathโ. Some apparently even defend using the term โantisocial personality disorderโ instead - although this isnโt without a heated debate and arguments as to what actually fits in the box of such labels - what are worth keeping and whatnot. But one of the grown shaking studies I have read last year was that these individuals do experience a rather vast range of emotions, they just are unnable to recognize them and therefore to intuitively build and develop what most people naturally perceive to be empathy.
It may sound confusing to claim psychopaths can empathize if they really want to, or that they do feel regret and disappointment; not to mention its still possible to develop cognitive empathy. Instead of emotional empathy, that ought to come naturally to most individuals.
And I think this is where PP3 offers a bit of an updated take. If Psycho-Pass is to be a pun of how Japanese language reads โpsychopathโ, while itโs laughable to expect accuracy from a piece of fiction, ignore it and all we end up doing is glamorizing the issue. Not to mention, contributing to the misconception that these individuals are nothing but pathological criminals or liars. โLyingโ for these individuals isnโt a matter of option. Itโs all they can do to make up for the lack of natural empathy they are borne with.
There is objectively nothing wrong with glamour itself of course; all things considered if we build misconceptions perhaps thatโs more on us for judging without actually looking into it. And itโs not like fiction has any commitment to realism for the sake of realism, or else, what would be even the point of storytelling? This only works in the context of PP3 because the entire season seems to pose a reflection about prejudice, misconceptions, and related topics.
Itโs precisely due to the fact this is a series that from the very beginning exists to make the audiences question and asks themselves, โwhat is justice?โ. If that is indeed the epicentre of this show, the theme that guides its direction, it only makes sense it worries about it. Without undermining the world building it has had until now, it still offers what in my opinion at least is an interesting twist to the Psycho Pass universe and the topics it touch upon. I believe this is why in PPFI we have Akane telling Sibyl with a smile, whatever laws they make up for Arata, it will limit Sibyl itself and therefore bound them to responsibility for their actions.
Iโm still unsure if Atsushi did join Sibyl as the visuals of the film suggest. Because he apparently has shot himself in the head and in the novel they go as far as referring to the stains of blood in the driversโ seat of his car. Stains hard to remove.
So I have my doubts here: was he really CA too? Did he really join Sibyl? Did they retrieve whatever was left of his head and put it in Sybilโฆ..? I hope to get answers in the novel at least. Assuming Atsushi was CA, that would certainly explain why it feels like heโs such a lonely guy that he did what he could for Arata to get himself a friend for a lifeline no matter what.
This means Mental Tracing may have been originally developed a technique to (over)compensate for lack of empathy and ensure they can have more of a socially-aware life. Atsushi firstโฆ and then Arata.
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