Thursday 8 November 2012

Psycho-Pass - Episode 5

In the midst of its story of murder, mystery and malevolent avatars, Akane seems to have lost her closest source to solving the groups' current case as "Spooky Boogie" seeks to distance herself from the police after their bundled raid of a club and an offline meet designed to capture the prime suspect.

If this seems like bad news for Akane, then Kogami has something even worse in store for her thanks to his suspicions that something isn't quite right with Spooky Boogie's behaviour - something which seems to prove correct as her figures of speech have clearly altered from past logs and encounters.  In short (and as we saw at the end of the last episode), it appears that she has simply been another victim of the killer.  It appears that she may not be the only one either, with a third popular online avatar also suspected of having been taken over by the same person.


With this information growing and building, the opportunity appears to effectively "triangulate" the person responsible and track them down - an ability which leads them straight into a booby-trapped building and a warning that they're clearly dealing with someone who is serious about not being caught.  In spite of this, they persevere in their efforts to track down the culprit and eventually do so, having to tackle his hacking abilities which succeed in making life decidedly difficult for them, and ultimately leaving them no choice but to perform a fatal takedown.  Have they really caught the true culprit at the head of this whole affair however?

From a decent start to the arc in last week's episode, this second half of the story was a decidedly excellent one that made good use of the show's premise and setting to make some subtle (and not-so subtle) points about online life, whether it's the difference between looking things up online versus actually remembering them or the opportunity for (and ease with which) anybody to slip into the proverbial shoes of another's online persona.  Just as importantly, this was backed up by a strong central story itself which appears to still have some not insubstantial legs to it given its ending - throw in some more coverage of Kogami's back story and Psycho-Pass is most certainly still going strong and deserving of its place as a noitaminA series.

No comments: