Now this was an excellent episode here from Psycho Pass. At this point I really like what this show is doing: create thought-provoking cases of morders in which no side really is right. It aims to show these moral dilemmas.
It’s not exactly a murder mystery: in this episode it quite quickly became clear that the bullied worker was the one who murdered the three people, but instead what stood out was how it was delivered. The portrayal of this facility was great, and the creators got a particularly good voice actor for the boss of this facility.
The main character also stood out here: the previous two episodes showed him as this level-headed guy, but this episode portrayed a very dangerous side of him that enjoys the thrill and action of crime fighting. It also showed that the female lead is going to have to keep every single one of the characters in check, because all of them have their issues, mixed in with their good points.
Also, the opening for this series is really good. A quick look at the staff for this series reveals why: Sayo Yamamoto, the director of Michiko e Hatchin and Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna. She often gets jobs to do OPs, and they always really shine with their style and execution, and this is no different. She really should do another series again.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)
Loved this episode. I like how it was sort of your typical murder mystery episode, but with the twist of the murderer becomes apparent rather quickly and most of the tension is centered around how to deal with him. Some great moral grey area there.
I appreciate that it seems like the ruling system / Psycho-Pass evaluation / whatever actually seems to be reasonably accurate. The latent criminals really do have dangerous tendencies. Or…
The evaluations are benign and close enough most of the time that the world doesn’t feel like some Orwellian dystopia; however, on the surface at least, there are some contradictions like Akane’s suitability for her job against her own feelings of the matter. There are legitimate questions of whether or not the system knows something (or many things) we don’t know, and I hope we see more of those in the future.
Another excellent episode from Psycho-Pass, loved it the minute i knew it’s going to feature actual detective work and a murder case which will show us another different facet from the work of the Public Safety Bureau (like the first ep showed us some cop-style work, and the second showed us some public safety-style work of capturing someone with a high coefficient and sending them for treatment department) .. now we get some actual detective work, but it’s quite different from the normal due to Sybil’s involvement.
I also really enjoyed the tension and differences in views inside the team, it seems that Masaoka, Akane and Kogami are all old fashioned detectives while Ginoza believes in just following Sybil’s directives without much thought (i.e like a robot) .. the tension between Ginoza on one side and Masaoka+Akane was really sky-high as Ginoza was really ticked off by Masaoka’s old-fashioned detective mindset and Akane’s support for him .. Masaoka and Ginoza seem to really have some bad-blood between them.
I also loved it when Kogami pulled off some Bad-cop spoof on the suspected worker to make him breakdown and commit a mistake that exposes him (although he was very reckless to not apprehend him before he completes his reprogramming of the bots into killer robots), heck he even didn’t allow Akane to play Good-cop in the spoofed interrogation he made XD
There is also some excellent world building here, the way the manager let the bullying slip by just becasue it’s the only outlet for the workers in the isolated working hell (cheap bastard, couldn’t he just get some arcade machines or gym or something to keep the workers busy during their free time and give them an outlet !!!), and Bureaucracy is alive and well after all .. the part about the factory being under jurisdiction of the commerce ministry and how they don’t the Public Safety Bureau sticking their noses in their business so they don’t mind passing a murder as an accident (bastards) and the manager was actually going to succeed in send out team away with the famous “Get me some bureaucratic paper work done and i’ll let you investigate” trick .. but Kogami put his “Bad-cop” routine to work and got things done XD
The real highlight for me was how the isolation aspect was EXCELLENTLY used not just becasue it’s truly the best deterrent against external hacking, the reason why the workers resorted to bullying and also a way to showcase the limitations of the Sybil system and the Dominators .. but also getting us to see some cool action sequence in the final part of the episode with Yayoi and Kagari racing through the factory to deliver the “cable-connected” Dominators platform/robot to Kogami and Akane .. that’s some solid writing here *a round of applause*
Lots of inner personalities of the different characters are hinted at in this episode. I like how they mixed up action and a murder with something under the cover as well.