A Spoiler-Filled Look at Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector

With the lackluster end of Psycho-Pass 3, we were left with a few major questions:

What really happened to Akane?
What happened to the two detectives Kei and Arata replaced?
What is the full extent of Sibyl’s newest nefarious plan?
What exactly is Bifrost?
Who are Azusawa, Shirogane, and Homura—and what are their motives?

First Inspector answers some of these questions, hints at others, and just simply ignores the remainder.

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In the widest sense, First inspector is the action climax that the series proper was missing. It’s centered around Azusawa’s attack on the CID itself as he tries to assassinate Karina–i.e., have her die in an accident, be killed by the police, or commit suicide. The reason she has been targeted by Bifrost, however, is far more complex than it appears on the surface.

From all that we have learned about Bifrost in the series, it’s clear that the members of Bifrost are playing a game where normal people are the pieces, the city itself is the board, and money is the scoring system. With this in mind, killing Karina and reaping the benefits in the chaos caused by the death of a beloved new mayor seems like a solid strategy to cash in. However, Counselman Shirogane’s plan goes far deeper and concerns the very future of the game.

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“Roundrobin,” as the game is called, was originally the debugging system for Sibyl itself. It’s designed to act outside the system and exploit Sibyl’s vulnerabilities–forcing it to evolve. However, it has long since been co-opted into being the game we’ve seen over the course of Psycho-Pass 3.

But here’s the problem the players are facing: as time goes on Sibyl has fewer and fewer vulnerabilities to exploit. Thus, Shirogane’s plan is to add more vulnerabilities to the system. Ma-Karina is an AI that, over her months with Karina, has become perfectly in tune with her–able to predict her actions perfectly. As long as she is with Karina, she is a tool. But the moment Karina is dead, she is a copy of a dead person–a person untracked and unjudgeable by the Sybil system. The ways such AIs could be exploited are limitless–and thus the games of Roundrobin can continue far into the future by using them.

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Of course, therein lies the trick. Homura, the other Congressman, doesn’t want the games to continue at all. He’s a true believer in the Sibyl System and wants this perversion stopped. However, to do that he must win the game himself as the sole survivor. And it is the very fact that Shirogane can’t predict his motives or how far he’ll go to achieve them that grants Homura the victory in the end.

However, as far as our heroes are concerned, it’s Azusawa, not Shirogane, who is the main villain of the story. Azusawa has perfected a system to force people into binary choices where they will either die or have their Hue clouded–and in the world of Psycho-Pass, a clouded Hue is often considered a fate worse than death. In Azusawa’s mind, all he does is set up a dangerous situation. If people choose the path that leads to death, that’s on them. Of course, if you create enough of these situations, people are bound to die eventually just due to the odds. Though, it’s important to remember that Azusawa truly believes no responsibility lies with him.

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The ability to reign over life and death has given Azusawa a god complex. Because of this, he wants to be the one pulling the strings on the grandest scale possible. At first, this means becoming a Congressman of Bifrost. However, Arata is able to tempt him with one step higher: becoming a part of the Sibyl System itself–become the closest thing their world has to a literal god.

Of course, both we and Arata know the truth. The Sibyl System would never accept Azusawa. They only want the criminally asymptomatic (and occasionally Akane with her incredibly resilient Hue). When the system explains to Azusawa why this is, we get a rare look at how Sibyl views itself:

“The Sibyl System must consider all possibilities […] The criminally asymptomatic are both criminals and saints by birth.”

Or, in other words, only those who can objectively see the whole picture can judge others.

On the other side of the coin is the fact that the system has occasionally chosen to break its own rules in extreme situations. In season one, this is how Akane got the unlocked dominator. In First Inspector, the system recognizes that Azusawa in his enraged disappointment, has barely crossed the 100 criminal coefficient threshold–however, the dominator itself switches to lethal form to kill Azusawa instead. After all, while Azusawa may not accept it, he is responsible for many deaths (not to mention that he knows the secret of the Sibyl System).

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However, Arata refuses to take the shot and in doing so points out something vital to the Sibyl System. While the system itself judges, it is normal people–be they upright citizens or latent criminals–that enforce the judgments. Technologically speaking, there is no reason that Sibyl couldn’t be fully automated with dominators strapped to drones. However, it is the person holding the gun who is the ultimate check against the potential tyranny of the system.

And after a moment of deliberation, Sibyl agrees and plays by the normal rules–leading to a fight between Azusawa and Arata where the former is trying to build his criminal coefficient to lethal levels before the later can shoot him with the non-lethal paralyzer.

What’s interesting here is why Sibyl would even listen to Arata. With Akane, they listen because she is an objective outsider. With Mika, they listen because she is their idealized fanatic. With Arata, they listen because he is an equal. And that’s the reason they let him go back into the world with his newly remembered knowledge–well, that and a bit of interference by Akane.

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Akane’s plan, in the end, is the same as it has always been: improve the system or replace it with something better. With her discovery of a criminally-asymptomatic-yet-not-evil person, Akane finally has the potential leverage to correct one of the most immoral things about the Sibyl System: the fact that they incorporate (i.e., kill and rip out the brain of) anyone who is criminally asymptomatic regardless of whether that person wishes to be or not.

By proving that criminally asymptomatic people may be as useful to the system on the outside as inside, she can incentivize Sibyl to pass a law that protects the lives and freedoms of the criminally asymptomatic. On one hand, this means they must choose to join Sibyl of their own free will instead of simply being conscripted. On the other, it means that Sybil itself will gain legal protection for when its true form is revealed to the general population. And with the resolution of First Inspector, the latter seems ever more likely.

Now as for why Akane is in prison, we still know little–only that she is accused of killing a person. Sybil is still debating what to do about it. It is revealed that she is indeed there of her own choice (explaining her internet etc.), however, due to her actions and predictions over the season–and possibly Homura’s request–Akane is forced to leave the prison and returned to the CID as a “statutory enforcer.” And with this we’re all set up for whatever the next story will lead us–despite Mika’s obvious exasperation at having Akane return in any position to undermine her authority.

Random Thoughts:

Kei never really gets any comeuppance for outright betraying everyone and becoming one of the foxes–though Arata doesn’t come clean about the crazy stuff he knows either.
I wish Arata would have scanned the System itself. If the person holding the dominator does affect the criminal coefficient shown–like Kamui suggested in season 2–I wonder what the score would be from Arata’s unique POV.
How pissed do you think Mika’s going to be when she scans Akane and sees that, despite being a “statutory enforcer,” her criminal coefficient is under 100?
Yayoi has a free room in her apartment building for the rehabilitated Shion. How much do you want to bet that that room happens to be in Yayoi’s apartment?

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