The anime television series "Psycho-Pass" aired its first season from October 2012 to March 2013. It was directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani and Katsuyuki Motohiro, with Production I.G acting as head of the show's production. With it came a fully realized world where consisting of a totalitarian society ruled completely through surveillance and automation. A world where every person is accounted for and you are monitored from over 20 different vantage points at all times. The bigger question though is whether I just described our current society or the one introduced by "Psycho-Pass." Is there even a distinction that can be made? Most of us nowadays always keep some connection to the outside world on us at all times, be it a computer or phone. How much though do we really know about what these devices are doing under the hood? This essay will be looking at how the show's take on a future utopian (or rather dystopian?) society held together entirely by population surveillance. To do this I will be examining the theming introduced through the show's visuals and audio, its relation to the concept of "Societies of Control", and how the characteristics of the main antagonist, Shogo Makishima, plays into the many flaws of a so-called "perfect system." The show provides us with many examples of how such an automated system would actually function, while showing glimpses into what its many flaws can be.
To begin, the story of "Psycho-Pass" centers on Akane Tsunemori and Shinya Kogami, two law enforcers who are part of a Public Safety bureau. In this setting, the entirety of Japan is run by a supercomputer known as the "Sibly System", a machine capable of processing a person's chances for committing a crime. With this, each person is given a titular "Psycho-Pass" that determines both their crime coefficient and their overall mental state. Scans of a person's "Psycho-Pass" can be done almost instantaneously, and the overall use of force against a person is handled by a pistol known as a "Dominator", which scales its lethality based on how dangerous the person is.
My initial reaction to "Psycho-Pass" mostly consisted of "Well this is basically Japanese Minority Report right?". However, upon going further into the series it definitely becomes clear that this show was heading in an entirely different direction. This is demonstrated through the show's use of the setting and its intellectual-based take on totalitarian society.
To begin with I will be discussing the striking visuals shown in the first ending used by the series. Many of the images depicted throughout this ending are those related to surveillance. We see images of the Dominator, symbols for the various governments that run the system, images of automated enforcement robots, and several flashes of miscellaneous analytical data. Surveillance is based around the concept of collecting analytical data in order to provide better and quicker response to threats. The entire concept of the "Sibly System" embodies this, a system that is capable of reading anyone's being and decide what the best threat response is. The ending can be seen, in this light, as being the eyes of the system itself. Scanning through petabytes of data, some analytical, some physical like profile shots of the show's cast. The name of the song used in the ending is even titled "Monster without a name", in reference to the system that is portrayed as being perfect and flawless. This also harkens to the idea of the "Leviathan." Hobbes describes the Leviathan as being able to see a human as "matter in motion", capable of being explained right down to their thoughts and desires.
In this show, that concept is being applied to your digital footprint. With the increasing complexity of our computers, we are given the opportunity to share and express more of our thoughts than ever before. The earliest recorded diary dates back to 171 AD, and less than 500 diaries are documented prior to 1700. Nowadays there are millions of people on Facebook who can easily record their own thoughts and view others. All of this information that you post online is backed up and recorded, for future use, for historical documentation, for figuring out your "Psycho-Pass." These analytics can potential show more about you than you think. Your thoughts, trends and intentions are best shown through your body language, and what you type on Twitter is a part of that. If we were to throw all of this information through a computer, could this "monster with no name" effortless sort it all and determine your capacity for misconduct?
Another element to examine with the show is its philosophy on a "Society of Control." Gilles Deleuze represents a Society of Control as being a new type of society that's emerging, one where the individual is truncated to a rank and how they compare to other people. Such a society would allow the individual freedom, in the sense that they must be readily available for use by society and assigned a rank according to one of many systems.
Comparing this to "Psycho-Pass", a setting where systems assign a person a rank, is a trivial task. This also extends to the character of Akane Tsunemori, one who is portrayed as having excelled at education and has been able to consistently keep their hue (a major element of the "Psycho-Pass" rank) clear and in-check. To the system, they are an ideal candidate to live in the society, being given the opportunity to work at nearly any corporation in the country. This is further exemplified in the latter half of the series where she is the one chosen to learn the truth behind the Sibly System's inner workings, as she was the most likely candidate to not leak this information due to her stature in the society. A society where you are an individual in a mass of people, positioned by rank.
While we are on the topic of the cast, this is a good time to bring up the character of Shogo Makishima, the series' main antagonist. The character's main gimmick is that he was born with the ability to not have their crime coefficient go up whenever they commit a crime. This makes them completely invisible to the Sibly System, able to carry out horrific acts without consequence. He primarily uses this ability to try and get people to question the validity of the system in place. As an oddity himself, he is a living example that the system is not perfect. He intends to invoke doubt amongst the populous regarding this, while also aiming to destroy Japan's currently self-sufficient model.
When the Sibly System is confronted with this, it states that it is still the perfect system, and that they simply need to add Shogo's being into the system in order to further progress as perfection. In other words they want to use his brain to better detect the crime coefficients of people, as the Sibly System is compromised almost entirely of human brains with the intention of being as accurate as possible.
Along with this knowledge of Shogo's character, he also frequently refers to literature involving tragedy or dystopian society's. With this we get the usual references to Shakespear and 1984, but one of the more interesting aspects of this is the depth in which he goes to following these readings. It aims at both showing the character's intelligence as well as the many pieces which inspired "Psycho-Pass" to begin with. For instance, at one point Shogo is shown to be reading the book "Heart of Darkness." A tale in which a man is disconnected from normal society and views himself as a demigod, capable of exposing the darkness within what would appear to be a normal man. This perfectly parallels Shogo Makishima who, according to the Sibly System, is a good boy who can do no harm.
The show aims to depict how such a society can be both perfect and flawed at the same time. In a world where humans are broken down into materials that can be classified, where individuals are highlighted by their ranks and where edge cases are completely invisible to the perfect system, it calls into question what path should society take. The one it appears to be heading down towards is a Society of Control, but does that truly benefit the society? A place where passion is meaningless and the only way to survive is to be complacent with the system and rank as a "good boy" on its invisible scale. Going back to Hobbes concept of a Leviathan, the concept of good and evil are only used to dictates a person's passions. If one man's passion for evil can still be constituted as a good boy, then it raises the questions as to whose morals and ethics we should transcribe onto a person. "Psycho-Pass'" answer to this is to create a system purely out of human minds in order to brute force your way to an ethically-valid "perfect system." But as the world of the show demonstrates, no one's perfect.