Mika Shimotsuki

Mika Shimotsuki (Japanese: 霜月 美佳, Hepburn: Shimotsuki Mika) is a fictional character, introduced in the anime Psycho-Pass by Production I.G. A minor character in the 2012 series, Shimotsuki's role has gained importance in the sequels, in which she becomes an inspector working in Unit One, an organization fighting crimes in a future where people live according to the will of the Sybl System. She has returned in following media, most notably as a protagonist in the first film of the Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System trilogy. By Psycho-Pass 3, Shimotsuki has become the leader of Unit One, looking after the new cast. She is voiced by Ayane Sakura in Japanese and by Cherami Leigh in English.

Shimotsuki was created by writers Tow Ubukata and Gen Urobuchi in Psycho-Pass 2, as a supporting character contrasting with Nobuchika Ginoza.

The character first appears in season 1, episode 6, attending Oso Academy as a high school student and schoolmate of Rikako Oryo. Two of her friends become Rikako's victims during the story arc. At the end of season 1, Mika Shimotsuki becomes a MWPSB inspector, in the same team as Akane Tsunemori. In Psycho-Pass 2, Shimotsuki learns that one of her allies is scheming against Tsunemori. When Shimotsuki is discovered, she is forced to cooperate with the schemer, and with the Sybil System. Now knowing that the Sybil is a collective consciousness, Shimotsuki finds herself turning into a Sybil puppet. Shimotsuki returns in the 2015 film, where she and the chief of the group trick Tsunemori into going to another country to deal with Tsunemori's former underling, the mercenary Shinya Kogami, and use the duo's teamwork to overcome them. In the climax, Shimotsuki and Unit One save Kogami and Tsunemori from armed soldiers.

Shimotsuki returns in the 2019 film Sinners of the System. Akane Tsunemori's team is directed to return a woman to a special experimental prison, where the woman had worked as a therapist. Tsunemori dispatches fellow inspector Mika Shimotsuki, along with two Enforcers, Nobuchika Ginoza and Yayoi Kunizuka, to investigate the prison, while Tsunemori and the rest of the team investigate the case in Tokyo. Through a new combination of drugs, therapy, and work, the prison has produced a different kind of society, where latent criminal prisoners act in harmony with one another. Shimotsuki sees the woman as a criminal deserving of death, but she and Ginoza then realize that the woman has used herself as bait to try to protect a small child. The duo discovers that the warden is exploiting the prisoners to harvest nuclear waste buried beneath the prison, causing the prisoners to die of radiation. Shimotsuki records the warden's confession of her actions and reveals it to the prisoners. Shimotsuki then kills the warden, but the prisoners riot. Shimotsuki and Ginoza hunt down the rest of the complicit staff, and begin working to protect the prisoners. They later discover that the Sybil System knew of the warden's actions, as the prison is located above the System's former nuclear waste dumping ground.

Shimotsuki returns as the chief of Unit 1 in Psycho-Pass 3, where she directs Arata Shinto and Kei Ignatov, along with multiple forces. The group clashes with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs team, who are dealing with two groups known as the Foxes and Biforst. In the 2020 film Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector, Shimotsuki's group is trapped inside a building by a terrorist who wants to kill the Tokyo governor, Karina Komiya. Unwilling to hand over Komiya, Shimotsuki and her team fight to defeat the terrorists.

As a new character, working as an Inspector, Mika Shimotsuki was given newcomer traits. During development, director Naoyoshi Shiotani was not able to explain the ways in which these traits differed from Akane Tsunemori's, because the series was still premiering. The staff described Shimotsuki's role as "extremely difficult". The staff were said to love Shimotsuki for the same reason that fans disliked her. Staff reported that, while Nobuchika Ginoza was used as an unlikable inspector in the first series, often the staff and the audience could not bring themselves to hate him. Given that reaction, they made Shimotsuki a less likable character.

The staff decided to create the impression that Shimotsuki undergoes a major change in the second series, and then have her start from that point in the 2015 movie. Tow Ubukata claimed he ended up liking Shimotsuki to the point of joking he would marry her. Gen Urobuchi agreed that Shimotsuki's characterization changed for the movie so that she became a likable character. Ubukata described her as a bureaucrat. Because Shimotsuki's character arc with regard to the Sybil System was so different from Tsunemori's, with Shimotsuki devoted to the Sybil and Tsunemori rejecting them, Ubukata called the two an unlikely duo. During the making of Psycho-Pass 2, Ubukata and Shiotani decided on a color code for the new character lineup centering on Akane Tsunemori and the Sibyl System. "White" was Shimotsuki, and "black" was Tougane, with Kamui as "clear".

For the first Sinners of the System film, Shiotani chose Nobuchika Ginoza and Mika Shimotsuki as the main characters because of their similarities to the protagonists of the first television series, Shinya Kogami and Akane Tsunemori respectively. But he noted that the new duo employed a different dynamic from Kogami and Akane, pointing out Ginoza's notable character arc across the previous projects related to Psycho-Pass, due mainly to his relationship with Masaoka and Kogami.