City as System
Machine, Space, and Subjectivity in Psycho-Pass
As the rapid development of generative AIs blurs the line between the virtual and the real, the utopia/dystopia depicted in science fiction seems to be an imminent future. It is useful to revisit the imaginations proposed by science fiction and see how they answer or, conversely, problematize the urgent concerns of our era. In this article, I am going to look into the genre of cyberpunk anime, often known for the works made in the 1980s and 1990s such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Adding to the theme of machine-human relationship (e.g., the theme of cyborg) in traditional sci-fi literature, cyberpunk anime is characterized by the motif of “megastructure”– city composed of enormous, densely-congregated skyscrapers to the extent that it becomes an overwhelming structure.[1] The triangular relationship between machine (artificial intelligence), human, and city (megastructure) in cyberpunk anime is thus a subject worth studying.
Instead of the more well-known cyberpunk anime such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell, I decided to analyze Psycho-Pass, an anime produced by Production I.G. in 2012.[2] How does a cyberpunk anime imagine a future when it is already in the very dystopian, post-apocalypse “future” in Akira and Neon Genesis Evangelion (for Akira, the future is 2019; for Neon Genesis Evangelion, the future is 2015)? While echoing the idea of cybercity proposed by the Metabolist Movement in the 1960s, Psycho-Pass presents the utopian/dystopian city as an ontological condition where the dichotomy is not the surreptitious institution (usually the government) versus the ignorant citizens but the logic of hypermodernity versus the logic of radical existentialism. The concern is not how we resist the machine, the institution, or the ensemble of them, but how we live in and make meaning out of the condition where machine, human, and the city are already fused together — in other words, how do we develop subjectivity when the machine-human-city triangular is simply a matter of fact.
Plot Summary
Psycho-Pass sets in a futuristic city in Japan in 2112. In the city, the mental state of all citizens is constantly monitored by the Sibyl System (shibira shisutemu), a supercomputer, and numericized as Crime Coefficient (hanzaikeisū). Citizens whose Crime Coefficient exceeds the threshold of 100 are regarded as potential criminals and ought to be arrested. The Sibyl System relies on the pervasive scanners that monitor citizens’ Crime Coefficient. When a “potential criminal” is found, Inspectors (kanshikan) and Enforcers (shikkōkan) equipped with futuristic firearms that are connected to the Sibyl System are sent to arrest or kill the potential criminal. The “Enforcers” are potential criminals but are permitted to join to police force because of their physical ability or detective skills. On the other hand, the “Inspectors” are the officers that belong to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Welfare and are responsible to lead, use, and control the Enforcers. When the Inspector or the Enforcer pulls the trigger, the firearm will paralyze the target with high precision if a Crime Coefficient over 100 is detected. The firearm will kill the target if a Crime Coefficient over 300 is detected. With this setting, Psycho-Pass recounts the growth of Tsunemori Akane, a rookie Inspector initially, through her confrontation with a series of crimes which gradually unveil the problems of the Sibyl System. A series of vicious, grotesque crimes point to Makishima Shōgo, who instigates people to commit crimes and provides them with necessary tools. Makishima Shōgo, the anti-establishment villain, seeks to provoke true desire and feeling in the citizens whose everyday lives are determined by the Sibyl System. Tsunemori Akane eventually confronts Makishima Shōgo and shockingly finds that his Crime Coefficient runs below 100 even at the moment when he murders her friend. It is revealed that Makishima Shōgo is Criminally Asymptomatic (menzai taishitsu). The Sibyl System is unable to correctly numericize the mental state of Criminally Asymptomatic people. Furthermore, Tsunemori Akane realizes that the Sibyl System is not a supercomputer but an ensemble of computers and the brains of many other Criminally Asymptomatic people. The Sibyl System has been constantly absorbing Criminally Asymptomatic people into its system to improve itself. Psycho-Pass does not end with a clear resolution. On one hand, Tsunemori Akane resents the Sibyl System which is incapable of convicting Makishima Shōgo when Makishima kills her friend. On the other hand, she acknowledges the peace and social order brought about by the Sibyl System.
Cybercity
At the outset, the city in Psycho-Pass resembles the cybercity imagined by Metabolist theorists including Isozaki Arata and Kurokawa Kishō. In the title sequence of episode 1, a rapid zoom-in penetrates the concrete building, and the building suddenly becomes a cyberspace (Figure 1).
This zoom-in evokes the common motif of the visualized internet composed of three-dimensional, fluorescent grids. The physical megastructure is revealed to be the information structure. Indeed, in Psycho-Pass almost every visual representation, including one’s outfit, the interior of a house, and the look of the automobile, is created by the futuristic hologram (horoguramu) technology. Such a city resonates with the Metabolist imagination of the future cybercity and the architectural experiments at the 1970 Osaka Expo. In the essay “Invisible City,” Isozaki characterized the future city as being “reduced into codes” and “reorganized as a system model.”[3] Other Metabolist critics describe the city as transforming into an amalgam of “signs, codes, floating images.”[4]
Subsequently, the view of the city as signs and images is practiced at the Osaka Expo. Using video and multiscreen extensively at the pavilions of the Expo, Kurokawa Kishō argues,
Today architecture is still fundamentally walls, floors and windows, but there is already an imaginable state of affairs where all these elements could become somehow simply images — there is going to be an interpenetration between very spiritual, very visual things and the physical world that we now work with.[5]
In Psycho-Pass, the “interpenetration” between the visual and the physical is embodied by the hologram technology and the sudden transformation of physical buildings into grids. This emphasis on the power of technology to transform the material city into the image-city or cybercity, however, is criticized as “managed society” by the contemporaries of the Metabolist theorists. The Metabolist imagination of a cybercity comes hand in hand with the government’s fascination with technology as a way of control in the late 1960s.[6] As a result, the idea of cybercity connotes both the fascination for the futuristic, post-industrial city and the fear of a dystopian, techno-control society.
Control Society aka System
In this respect, the setting of Psycho-Pass manifests this duality in the idea of cybercity. The rationale of “psycho-pass” — that is, one can only traverse the city with a pass — echoes Gilles Deleuze’s idea of “control society.” According to Deleuze, contemporary society is transforming from the Foucauldian disciplinary society, where the distinction of outside from inside (of factory, school, hospital, prison, etc.) is clear, to a control society, where an outside simply does not exist. “In the society of control,” Deleuze writes, “what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password.”[7] Traversing in a city means traversing with a password. If a password grants one the right of movement or entry, it can equally deprive one’s such right at any moment. An outside where the “password” does not matter does not exist. Furthermore, Deleuze’s “control society” is tinged with a dystopian view of technology. According to Deleuze, in control societies “individuals have become “dividuals,” and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks”.”[8] Citizens are numericized into parts of the system.
Here, we see an important distinction between the institution (in the disciplinary society) and the system (in the control society). On one hand, theories on the disciplinary society presuppose an a priori, modern self. The institution exists outside of the self and is often pitted against the self. The critics who call the Metabolist cybercity a “managed society” align with this view, framing it as an issue of government surveillance or human rights.[9] The typical metaphor of the institution, moreover, is a prison. Maeda Ai, for example, examines the literature on utopia and prison and points out their affinity with urban design.[10] Ultimately, however, it is the romantic self — the writer — who imagines the prison, the utopia, and the city. In such theories, the dichotomy between a self that rebels and an institution that controls is a precondition. On the other hand, in a system, or a control society that Deleuze propounds, humans are simply incapable of imagining an outside because they are part of the systemized city. The space where one can move without the peril of being rejected does not exist — one is always inside. In such a city, or system, the self is already inextricably embedded in the system.
In addition, I prefer the term “system” in the case of Psycho-Pass because it not only implies the dystopian control society but also pertains to the city as a large technological device. The city in Psycho-Pass is a large computing system where people are, as Deleuze puts it, “data.” Thus, the question that concerns subjects living in such a city-as-system is not how to overthrow the government or the institution because a center that wields power does not exist, and an outside is simply unimaginable. The question is, rather, how to live a life in and make meaning out of the “city/system.”
Life in the City/System: Hypermodernity
In Psycho-Pass, the system is presented not as a hostile or evil entity but as an ontological condition, embodied by the mise en scène of grids. For one thing, not only does the Sibyl System police like that in previous cyberpunk anime such as Patlabor, but it is also deeply entrenched in the lives of dwellers of the city. The Sibyl System, for example, determines one’s future profession based on a series of tests and calculations. In a setting where work is still largely equivalent to one’s purpose in life, Psycho-Pass probes into an existentialist question: what happens if our “essence” can be deciphered and calculated by the system? Psycho-Pass is clearly aware of this existentialist theme. In episode 2, after hearing that Tsunemori Akane is troubled by which department to go to because of her peculiar excellence in all exams, Kagari Shūsei, an Enforcer, says, “You’re just like the grandmas and grandpas that lived in the time before the Sibyl System. Nowadays, the Sibyl System simply reads one’s potential and tells him or her the happiest way to live a life. A genuine life? The meaning of our existence? No one makes a fuss over that.”
This theme of the determined essence, moreover, is embodied in the mise en scène of grids. Throughout the chasing sequence in episode 1, for example, the pipelines, alleyways, signs, small footbridges, and wires form a grid-like structure. In a point-of-view shot of Masaoka Tomomi, an Enforcer, and Tsunemori Akane, the rectangular signs and footbridges divide the scene into grids, where Kōgami Shinya, another Enforcer, is trapped (Figure 2).
Such grid structure is repeated in the entire sequence of the Inspectors and Enforcers’ chase after the criminal in the alleyways. For another example, the anime chooses to frame Masaoka Tomomi and Tsunemori Akane with pipelines (Figure 3).
In so doing, episode 1 not only sets up the predominant mise en scène of the anime but also implies the living condition of the characters — grids. Such structure constantly tries to capture humans, assigning them into respective grids, just like how the Sibyl System assigns people their meaning of life.
Embodied through the structure of grids, the Sibyl System in fact represents a radical form of modernity. As Max Weber writes on modernity, “It [rationalization and intellectualization] means that in principle, then, we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but that, on the other contrary, we can in principle control everything by means of calculation.”[11] Psycho-Pass thus presents a world where even one’s meaning of life can be deciphered, calculated, or, in Weber’s words, “disenchanted.” The Sibyl System’s rationalization and optimization pushes modernity and modernization to its most radical boundary. I call this hypermodernity.
Life in the City/System: Existentialism
Contrary to hypermodernity is Makishima Shōgo’s radical existentialist attack on the Sibyl System. Critical of the Sibyl System and people’s unthinking adoption of its decision, Makishima Shōgo instigates and seduces people into committing brutal murders. In a monologue in episode 10, Makishima Shōgo says, “When people confront fear, their souls are tested. What does one crave, and what should one be doing for their very existence? Their nature (honshō) will be apparent.” In the next episode, Makishima Shōgo kidnaps Tsunemori Akane’s friend and confronts Tsunemori Akane. Makishima Shōgo, a Criminally Asymptotic person, threatens to kill Tsunemori Akane’s friend if she does not use the old-fashioned shotgun — not the firearm connected to Sibyl System because Makishima Shōgo is Criminally Asymptotic — to kill him. Makishima Shōgo’s critique is that the police like Tsunemori Akane have been used to having to Sibyl System to decide whether to kill or not and unthinkingly performing that decision. As a result, he is testing Tsunemori Akane whether she can pull the trigger of an actual firearm — fully from her own moral judgment and will. At the end of the episode, Tsunemori Akane is incapable of pulling the trigger, and her friend is killed by Makishima Shōgo. In so doing, Makishima Shōgo represents a radical form of existentialism that seeks an “essence” that is fully originated from human agency.
In addition, it is noticeable that the dichotomy is not between the ignorant citizens and the institution/government that seeks to control them through technology. For one thing, a rebel that stands for the people and fights against the government does not exist in Psycho-Pass. The only rebellious character, Makishima Shōgo, stands for his ideology rather than the goods of the people. On the other hand, people do enjoy the life brought about by the Sibyl System, and the protagonist, Tsunemori Akane, though critical of the Sibyl System, never seeks to overthrow it. As previously mentioned, the people are already inextricably connected to the city/system. Their lives rely upon it. For another, the Sibyl System itself is a grid as well — the brains of Criminally Asymptotic people are gathered and put into boxes (Figure 4).
Hardly can one tell who is freer, the brains that are confined in a white room, eternally calculating people’s mental status, or the people that are constantly monitored but enjoy life. For this reason, Makishima Shōgo fiercely rejects becoming one of the brains that govern. Again, Sibyl System is not an institution but a city/system. Humans are not pitted against the city/system; they are part of it. The city is our very living condition, not our enemy. The dichotomy is, instead, between two kinds of logic: hypermodernity and radical existentialism — essentially, two ways of life under such an ontological condition. What way of life, then, does Psycho-Pass propose? How can we possibly develop subjectivity in such a city/system?
Think Inside the Box
Psycho-Pass’ answer is simple: the system does not necessarily preclude human’s freedom to think. In episode 11, Tsunemori Akane confronts Makishima Shōgo, both of whom are confined in a grid structure of handrails, pipelines, and footbridges (Figure 5).
Yet, this scene is the turning point where Makishima Shōgo critically interrogates Tsunemori Akane and demands she kill him with the old-fashioned shotgun rather than relying on the decision of the Sibyl System. Although Psycho-Pass does not deny the power of the city/system, this scene reveals that one’s living condition — grids — does not dictate his or her thinking. Although Tsunemori Akane struggles to respond at the moment, this event nevertheless prompts her to contemplate the Sibyl System, morality, law, and so on.
In episode 20, after Tsunemori Akane witnesses the reality of the Sibyl System, a montage composed of flashbacks and imagination is presented. The montage is composed of four scenes: Tsunemori Akane’s memory of waiting for the Sibyl System to announce her job with her friends, her memory of Kagari Shūsei’s remarking on the purpose of life as previously mentioned, her imagination of Makishima Shōgo talking about his radical existentialism, and her dead friend’s questioning of whether she is happy even if everything is decided by the Sibyl System. In the third scene, when Makishima Shōgo argues that a life planned by the Sibyl System is meaningless, Tsunemori Akane opposes, “No, it’s not meaningless! Are you the one who decides the meaning of life for the people that you don’t know?” In the last scene, when Tsunemori Akane’s dead friend asks whether it is still a happy life when nearly everything is decided by the Sibyl System, Tsunemori Akane responds with determination, “Of course you lived a happy life. You had been able to look for the answers [to the troubles and questions in your life]. Whoever you are, as long as you are alive…” Through this montage, Psycho-Pass conveys Tsunemori Akane’s stance on the relationship between the Sibyl System and human subjectivity: humans can make new meaning out of their lives even if the supposed “meaning of life” is rationalized and optimized by the Sibyl System.
The Meaning of Life Exists
Tsunemori Akane’s emphasis on people’s agency of making meaning out of a given system resonates with Raymond William’s proclamation that “culture is ordinary.”[12] Williams contends that culture is not limited to high culture such as art and literature. “To go on to say that working people are excluded from English culture is nonsense,” he writes, “they have their own growing institutions, and much of the strictly bourgeois culture they would in any case not want.”[13] Culture, according to Williams, is how people think, feel, and act. Thus, material conditions do not render working-class people void of culture. Williams is, essentially, asserting the subjectivity of human to develop ways of interaction and read meanings out of everyday events. Similarly, Tsunemori Akane strongly objects to Makishima Shōgo who denies the meaning of life in its entirety when decisions are arranged by the Sibyl System. As she responds to her dead friend, meaning still exists, and happiness is true even when the important decisions in life are made by the Sibyl System. This also runs against previous scholarly interpretations which see Psycho-Pass as an example of city-as-prison and accuse the citizens in Psycho-Pass of “abandon[ing] their critical enquiries into their life purpose and beliefs, accepting the immediate solace of their predetermined roles, both at the professional level and the personal level.”[14]
In fact, Tsunemori Akane’s own subjectivity is developed in this city/system. Psycho-Pass is a coming-of-age story that begins with how a rookie Inspector fails on the first day of her work and becomes a skilled Inspector who leads the whole team at the end. After knowing the truth of the Sibyl System, Tsunemori Akane decides not to demolish it because people’s lives are already inexplicably fused with the system. Again, the city/system is not positioned as an enemy but as a living condition. Tsunemori Akane decides — yes, it is her decision and free will — to maintain a critical distance from the Sibyl System, at times negotiating with it while at times threatening it to achieve her goals. Her character gradually develops along with her confrontations with the city/system. Psycho-Pass demonstrates how one can think inside the box through the character Tsunemori Akane.
Psycho-Pass, while evoking the memories of the Metabolist cybercity and the people-institution dichotomy, differs from them in its presentation of the city as a system composed of grids that seem to confine people to predetermined ways of life. In this sense, the city/system is an ontological condition that humans cannot escape or resist. Nevertheless, Psycho-Pass demonstrates how one can still think inside the city/system. The underlying premise is a simple fact — although space constructs our ways of life, our ways of life are not completely dictated by it. We are free to think, act, and feel in ways different from that prescribed by the city/system.
At the boom of generative AIs, a piece in The New Yorker voices the concern that AI is likely to become a way for companies to escape necessary decisions and the accompanied responsibilities. “Even in its current rudimentary form,” Ted Chiang writes, “A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that it’s just doing what “the algorithm” says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place.”[15] AIs have become surprisingly akin to the Sibyl System that decides the important matters for all the citizens in Psycho-Pass. How do we still think in such a condition? Psycho-Pass has provided an answer to us.
Reference
[1] William O. Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination (Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 2020), 7.
[2] In this essay, I am primarily focusing on the first season of Psycho-Pass because the coming seasons do not really expand on or provide new arguments for the theme of machine-human-city proposed in the first season. In addition, all translations of the dialogues from Psycho-Pass are mine.
[3] Quoted in Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination, 111.
[4] Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination, 112.
[5] Quoted in Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination, 117.
[6] Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination, 112–113.
[7] Gilles Deleuze, “Postscripts on the Societies of Control,” October 59 (Winter 1992): 5.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Gardner, The Metabolist Imagination, 113.
[10] Maeda Ai, Text and the City (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2004), 21–53.
[11] Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, trans. Rodney Livingstone, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 2004), 12–13.
[12] Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” in Raymond Williams on Culture and Society, ed. Jim McGuigan (California: SAGE Publishing, 2014), 1.
[13] Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” 6.
[14] Filippo Cervelli, “Mindless Hapiness: Presentism, Utopia, and Dystopian Suspension of Thought in Psycho-Pass,” Japan Forum (September 2022): 9–10.
[15] Ted Chiang, “Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?” The New Yorker, May 4, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey.
