PSYCHO-PASS

This town is like a parody of one of the novels I read in the past. It's not as controlling as the society George Orwell depicted, and it's not as wild as what Gibson depicted. -Makishima Shogo

Psycho-Pass paints the story of a technologically advanced dystopian technocracy, one that dances on the wall of totalitarianism. It tells the story Akane Tsunemori, a police officer working for the state to apprehend latent criminals by scanning their psycho-pass using a cymatic scan. Once someone's psycho-pass is foggy enough, and their crime coefficient is high enough, the officer's denominator trigger will unlock, and they can shoot a paralyzing or neutralizing bullet depending on the suspect's crime coefficient. Until it locks on a man who just killed Akane's friend.

This proposes the question for Akane, and for the viewer; can a denominator, a machine, tell us someone's morals merely by measuring their vibrational frequency? Does it know best for us, and should we follow its lead? The same gets asked about the technocratic judgement of the collective top machine minds of the state. She has everything provided for her, and she works as a officer of justice. But is this really what justice is? Whoever the denominator deems as apprehendable, whoever it deems as to be neutralized? This is where Psycho-Pass truly shines.

The state is managed by the Sibyl System, a technocracy of collected criminally asymptomatic minds. The Sibyl System rejects valuations such as good and evil, their goal being to maintain perfect, infallible judgement. In it's ideal society, authority is not questioned and is not needed to be questioned, their decisions transcend all ethics or morals.

We have attained a logical society in which various contradictions and inequalities are solved, is that not the ultimate happiness sought by the rational human mind? At this point in time, you detest us emotionally and hate us instinctively, yet you still cannot deny the Sibyl System's significance and necessity. You value its necessity above it's justifiability, and we highly value your standards. Tsunemori Akane, do you wish for a world without the Sibyl System?

Akane morally hates the Sibyl System, she wishes for something more ideal. But what is her ideal society? Does she have one that can function as orderly and is as realistic as the Sibyl System? Where is realism and order flawed? Should one individual's desires and liberty be catered to if it causes a lapse in order? Can a society be realistic, orderly, sustainable and yet have room for the individual's liberty? These are the questions asked by Psycho-Pass, an outstanding critique of society in all ways.

Psycho-Pass is set in totalitarianism. It uses this ideology of societal structure to form a basis which questions can be asked. In the future, as technology progresses, complete totalitarianism will be closer to achievable as censorship can get more efficient and stricter, and government surveillance could become more prevalent. But what if we go in the polar opposite direction? Complete anarchy with primitive technology, one with extreme opportunity to develop and cannot be sustained realistically. The unrealistic one will be wiped out very fast, and have another societal structure take its place. The realistic one will be extremely sustainable in almost all ways, with very little threat to its normalcy. Where is the middle ground between realism and idealism?

This is why Psycho-Pass in my opinion is a borderline philosophical masterpiece, with Production I.G. backing all this up with immense production quality in its animation, voice acting, and soundtrack. I have not seen the sequels to Psycho-Pass, and I don't prioritize them because season one is in itself very high quality.