Psycho-Pass - Episode 12

Deliciously poised though the half-way point of Psycho-Pass left us, that isn't enough to stop the first episode of this show's second half deviating off in a slightly different direction.

Specifically, this week's episode drops us back in time by three years to tell the back story of Enforcer Yayoi Kunizuka, allowing us to meet her at a time where she was encarcerated on account of the cloudy hue of her Psycho-Pass after getting involved in the underground music scene despite being an "authorised" musician under the Sibyl system in her own right.

While her desire at this time was simply to clear herself of her mental "ailment" and return to her life as a musician, things clearly weren't quite this simple - not that this kept Yayoi from her determination to follow her chosen path, even when offered the opportunity for a way out of her current situation by becoming an Enforcer.  Eventually, Kogami (at a time where he was still a detective) proves to have the nous to persuade her otherwise, which sees her becoming involved with the MWPSB to hunt down some supposed anarchists operating in her old haunt, in turn bringing her face to face with some individuals whom she used to admire which makes for some difficult decision-making on her part.

Although I was more than a little keen to see what had become of Akane after her run-in with Makishima in the previous episode, I have to confess that this was another pretty strong episode of Psycho-Pass - as has been true for quite a lot of the series many of the points it deigned to make were quite obvious, but the story as a whole were no less strong in spite of that and the episode as a whole gave us a broader view into the outlook of Kogami in particular as well as his relationship with Sasayama, which in itself was a valuable piece of insight.  Never mind the perceived weakness of the winter anime season, as long as we have more of this to sustain us through the next few months things don't seem so bad at all right now...