Back in the times, there was this series that caught me off guard, through it's unique storyline, an awesome background story and a widespread of characters of unique personalities. All happening in the real world, with societal changes and effects. And that, is the Eden of the East.
The story revolves around 12 individuals or otherwise known Selecaos, as the players of the game that was laid out for them to "save" Japan in anyway possible. In the game, each of the players receive a cell phone with an internal balance worth 10 billion yen, and a phone operator known as Juiz which helps to fulfil any tasks the players request for in return for a price to pay from their stash of money. When a player's balance reaches zero or the money is used or any selfish purposes, the player gets eliminated from the game by the Supporter, or an anonymous player from the group of 12.
It gave the idea or spread it, in terms of how actually one might think they can use the money for. With 10 billion yen, one can do many many things, but what exactly is the "correct" way of saving Japan? With that, it brings upon the "Debatable" factor that was present in the series
And that paved the way for the series to head in the correct direction, with each of the Selecaos trying to clear the game in their own way and the main protaganist, Akira Takizawa chooses to crown himself king of Japan and wipes his memory at the end of the TV series. Following the original series, it lead to 2 subsequent movies that concluded the whole story of the Eden of the East. It was a truly awesome series, with quite little recognition over it, or should I say a series made to be not as prominent due to perhaps it's little advertising and campaigning? There was much much more hype when Guilty Crown arrived but in the end, the hypes proved to be false when the story got clotted halfway through, sending it into a downward spiral.
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That was however, not the main discussion I was intending to head towards, but rather Psycho-Pass, which was another original series that is currently being aired now.
The "Debatable" factor was more strongly present in Psycho-Pass as compared to Eden of the East, with the idea of the Sibyl System, where decisions, whether it's job related or crime related, are all decided by the AI, resulting in a peaceful society, or so they hoped. From the start, the Sibyl System, when came into light, already gave itself as a highly debatable topic, in the end, does the Sibyl System do more harm than good? I would personally feel the former. "Reconstruction" was instead hinted rather than the strong Madoka Magica series (which reconstructed an entire genre), where the idea of keeping a society in check was something new, in a form of an AI. It was true that the government in Psycho-Pass were still human beings, but since they themselves were also chosen by the Sibyl System, does it really make them good leaders even as they continue to rely on the system?
The Sibyl System basically helps to scan an individual's mind, determining his or her aptitude in terms of working abilities and thus helps to sort the people according to their ability and employ them in their relevant job scopes. This then raises the first debatable point: Aptitude, does it really matter that much in an individual? And does someone with an aptitude to work in a certain job would certainly become a better worker? What I believe is the experience that makes a person a better worker and someone with an aptitude does not 100% adapt to the working environment but it does, in a way, make the job easier for the individual to work in. Lets just take an electronics assembler for an example. A person with the aptitude for it may be someone who is able to see small electronics parts easily and fit them into the correct regions, whereas another individual who does not have the aptitude but possess electronics knowledge has little to know about the basis of the electronic parts. In time, the latter would surpass the former as a better worker as he now knows more about assembling too, inclusive of his background knowledge, unlike the former, who at most can only get better in assembling but never being able to understand the logic or basis behind the assembly. So now, who's the better worker? That would be one of the flaw I discover in the Sibyl System.
In accordance to the working selection by the system, another flaw would be the discrimination among the minorities. For individuals who are chosen by the Sibyl Systems to be having an aptitude to working in a high flyer job in the future and thus enrol them into top institutes regardless of whether they are studious to begin with or not. And that actually raises the question on what about the others? Higher education can be a factor in bringing out the aptitude within a person and through the System, some with future aptitudes or have even better aptitudes than the rest are overlooked by the Sibyl System and filtered off the list early to make it easy for the city to operate. Basically as an AI, it does not regard more on the "what if" part but just take action on the present, rather than wasting memory space in computing on whether individual A will or will not perform better than individual B if both goes for the same education when individual A already has an aptitude of working which B does not. This discrimination brings about upset feelings among many others but no one can do anything about it in fear of being eliminated from the city.
Which comes to my next flaw of the System, in the way it decides a person on whether he is a criminal or not. The Sibyl System monitors the stress level of areas of the town, the stress and mental state of an individual and the likelihood of he or she wanting to commit a crime depending on their Crime Coefficients, and their mental states are like an IC to the individuals, or their Psycho-Pass which determines their future. It is perhaps a good system in terms of ease but it ultimately boils down to the topic of whether the mental state does decide a person's likelihood of committing crime. What I believe is that the system could have analysed the mental state of past criminals and through it's wide pool of data, it enables it to capture all those individuals with similar mental state as a tendency to commit a crime. But what the Sibyl System has resulted in, is a forced flat society where people just do what the system tells them to do, never letting anything to stress them or to think about what bad things that might happen to them as they know that the streets that they walk are safe as any "criminal" do not exist in the streets. That results in the situation where there is over reliance on the system and when it fails or when it crumbles in efficiency, the society falls apart as seen in the latest episode, where people who were once sane turn into possible criminals as they no longer know who they can trust in the streets since Sibyl's eyes no longer work.
Following that, the mental state does not show that the person in question is really going to commit a crime or not. Based on the case of Makishima Shogo, the Sibyl System has proved to be useless in terms of judging criminals like him who is able to commit crimes without his crime coefficient going up, making him invulnerable to the Dominator, a flawed weapon that is based on the Sibyl System, or a gun used for judging through Sibyl's eyes. In the incident where Akane's friend was killed by Makishima, it clearly shows the flaw in the Dominator system, which locks its trigger when pointed at someone who is determined as a good citizen, even when he was about a slit the throat of another individual. At that point in time, the Dominator is reduced to just scrap metal, a useless piece of weapon. Furthermore, the usage of the Dominators just result in greater reliance over the Sibyl System and just "shoot when you are told to" instead of thinking it over as to whether it was for the better or not. Which was perhaps the shine from Akane where she stops Kogami from shooting the woman victim at the start of the series when Sibyl judged her to be an individual not fit to be living in the society, until Akane goes forth to appeal to her, resulting in her returning to her calmer state of mind and saving her life as a result. The issue of having the Crime Coefficient also heads to the debatable issue of whether its a split of the moment thing or a lengthy one. Based on the 1st crime case that Akane was involved in, the woman victim had her psycho pass tainted due to be abused, resulting in her mental state to be highly unstable and Sibyl deem her as a potential criminal, turning the mode on the Dominator to being the Eliminator mode. But Akane manages to calm her down, the Eliminator mode returns to its normal stun mode and as a result, her life was saved and this clearly shows that it was a gun that can eradicate anyone as long as the person show signs of being a criminal even for only a second or so. So it isn't that trustable after all, more like a horrific weapon that misleads the user into killing other people.
Unfair would be another way to put it, where Kogami got demoted to an Enforcer after his crime coefficient goes up after he sees his partner being killed brutally and from that moment on, he remains as a latent criminal, not being able to return his psycho pass to normal.What he could have possibly felt at that moment could have been anger and revenge which for his friend, its an acceptable thing to feel but as a result, Sibyl deems him as a criminal, without looking at the reason of how the mental state was affected. And that is yet another flaw of the system with being too shallow in making decisions.
From the current way the story is heading, people are already doubting the Sibyl System's effectiveness and the society has collapsed from the over reliance of the artificial intelligence. This has already shot up to one of the more promising series since it first aired, and hopefully it doesn't disappoints or adopt the GC effect.
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Sidetracking from here on, Sasamisan@Ganbaranai does really show how crazy the show already is from the start. From a recorded DVD to Shinto priest slaying another personality to a sudden UFO descent and armed forces heading to intercept the UFO... this just can't get more crazy than it already is. And not in a bad way so it seems. No matter how crazy the story gets, or how much weird transitions that the story has in their flow of time, the dots always connect to each other in the end, making one go: "Oh, so that's how it is". And that is one of the reasons why I really like the series' uniqueness. There was quite an inception styled work over at its 3rd episode, where after we do know that Sasami-san's brother actually holds the power of a certain divine being possibly being transferred from Sasami but the true answer that we received was that the divine being was actually one of the 3 Yagami sisters, known as Yagami Tsurugi. And it was in the past when she didn't want to be bothered by humans for her powers that she passes the power on to the Tsukuyomi family and had it reside in the females of the family, and now, in Sasami-san. The power was never in her brother in the first place and has always been inside her. The power allows the wielder to alter the world in a way to fulfil her wishes and at that moment, she had changed the world to let her brother have happiness and to her brother, his happiness comes from the ability to have the power of the divine being so that Sasami would no longer have to carry the burden of the Power of Amaterasu. And so as a result, the world had been altered in a way so that it seems that her brother has the power whereas the origin was still inside Sasami all along. That was some nice plot twist over there right in the 3rd episode and I do see the plot going well, no matter how crazy it does seem to be.
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Shin Sekai Yori has finally shown the children all grown up, at the age of 26, with the 2 being left out of the initial 5. And after all this years, it has finally come to light that the sly Yakomaru or Squealer the Queerat, is officially evil after it attempted to rebel against the humans and attacked the town square. It was really a matter of time since it was always portrayed to be the evil one but what was even more disturbing was the fate of Maria and Mamoru. At the start when Saki actually had thought that she had seen them along with Shun, and that Satoru tells her that it was in this festival that the dead returns as spirits, possibly allowing her to see them. And that was perhaps the 1st hint. Next then comes the statement given by Tomiko-san. Where she denies the suspicion of Maria and Mamoru from helping the Robber Fly colony by stating clearly that the both of them are dead and that through inspection of their remains being brought by Squealer, it was really Maria and Mamoru's remains, even their DNA were matched. That surprised Saki as well as she might have realised that at that moment when Squealer had suggested to leave the issue of having fake remains to them instead might have been actually Squealer actually going to hunt down the two. Now that just gives 2 possible situations that might happen, one of which Maria and Mamoru were really hunted down by the Queerats and the remains were really theirs, or that the both of them had escaped and Tomiko-san had made her statement just to help Saki and to remove any suspicions over the two of them. As little as I want to accept, but personally I do feel that the former is true after all those hints and even a short "dream" sequence of Maria talking to Saki, as though it was a former goodbye. If it really was, that would be depressing since I really wished for the four of them to be reunited once more. Seeing how their official webpage does not have the character designs for 26 years old Maria and Mamoru, I do feel that the former is really true. This has since been a strong series after leaping back from the start, and it's really getting more and more interesting as the plot gets developed even further.
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and here's the 2nd ED to Shin Sekai Yori, it was pretty depressing after it was first played in depiction of Maria and Mamoru's departure. A beautiful song :)
and here's the 2nd ED to Shin Sekai Yori, it was pretty depressing after it was first played in depiction of Maria and Mamoru's departure. A beautiful song :)
Anata ga ireba ii
Sotto yokogao iki wo korosu
Mabataki sureba kieteshimaisou de
Mitsumesasete suki da yo
Akiki ga furue furidashita yuki
Ashiato futatsu shiroku
Toki yo tsumore
Kami ni mune ni futari dake no yume ni
Sakenai hana no
Tane wa yuki ni dakare
Yorisou no
Shizuka ni wasureraretai
Mou kore ijou
Shinpai iranai yo
Kitto watashi ga tsureteku kara
Toomawari demo ikidomari demo ii
Isshou dakara kowakunai
Ne yamanai yuki ne yuki ni naru ne
Tsunaida te dake atatakai
Toki yo fubuke
Yureru omoide ni omokage ni ima
Daiji datta
Subete te mo furazu ni
Toozakaru
Honto wa nakushitakunai
Aishiteru hajimete iu yo
Aishiteru tsuyoku naru tame
Aishteru hajimete kiku yo
Aishiteru wakatteru kara ne
Toki yo tsumore
Kami ni mune ni futari dake no yume ni
Shiroi yuki ni
Kumore
Hito shirezu sotto saku hana
Kasuka na hikari
Kao wo agete
Shizuka ni wasureraretai
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