Thursday 24 January 2013

Psycho-Pass - Episode 14

Sibyl system or not, having someone just walk into a pharmacy on the hunt for drugs and kill a couple of people in the name of finding said medication just isn't going to happen, right?

Wrong.  When a strange, helmet-wearing man succeeds in doing just this, it's no surprise that the Public Safety Bureauare called to the scene.  Just how could such a blatant criminal breeze past all of the Psycho-Pass scanners installed as security, kill two people brutally and walk right back out again without anyone batting an eyelid?  It's obvious that the helmet is the key to all of this, but there's little time to dwell on the situation as reports soon come in of another murder - again, the culprit is with helmet, and this time he committed his crime in front of not just a Psycho-Pass scanner but also a crowd who simply looked on nonplussed.


It's Kogami who begins to put two and two together about these incidents, and as yet another crime is reported he takes his first major step towards identified the killer.  Once they've figured out who this person might be and where he lives, a visit to his home soon confirms his motives, while an initial attempt to stop him reveals the "trick" behind his helmet.  From here, it's a simple matter of shepherding the suspect where they need him to go so that they can bring him to justice - a fine piece of police work, but perhaps a drop in the ocean when the real mastermind behind it all is still very much at large...

I realise that it might be a little boring me saying this about the series every week, but this was another great, great episode of Psycho-Pass - as has so often been the case with this show, the core concept of what it was trying to do and the ideas it explored were obvious and pretty simple, but the execution and simply allowing things to play out without getting caught up in defending or demonising the politics of the world made for a top-notch standalone instalment even without the implications for the wider series as a whole.  In short, Psycho-Pass remains as good as ever, and a welcome addition to my week's viewing, somewhat gratuitous violence and all.

1 comment:

Robert said...

God forgive me, but when the drone was nattering away above the woman being attacked, my first reaction was to imagine a troll-face chortling "you seem upset".

The internet has ruined me.