Psycho-Pass

Urobuchi Gen certainly made name for himself during last couple seasons. Known for his dark and edgy, sometimes nihilistic approach to writing that leaves trail of bodies and broken characters, it's hard to overlook his works. His works of Fate/zero and Madoka, that definitively left impact on anime scene for better or worse, coupled with Production I.G. creative history of making Ghost in the Shell franchise, made me hope that we would get darker, more Urobuchi-like version of GitS, something I would definitively enjoy a lot. Unfortunately, it didn't take too long to me to get disillusioned that such dream wouldn't come true due to ... flawed logic and broken foundations of society that entire Psycho Pass world resides upon. Review will contain spoilers of series, so if you don't wish to be spoiled, turn away.

Psycho-Pass starts out nicely, introducing us to rookie Inspector Tsunemori Akane venturing into world of Public Safety Bureau, unit specialized for apprehending criminals and suspects judged by all seeing eye that is called Sibyl System. Under supervision of very same system, Bureau works to discover potential threats to society and solve various cases where rules of System have been broken. Hierarchy in Bureau is very clear; Inspectors, such as Akane supervise Enforcers such as Kougami Shinya, former convicts or outcasts of society that Sibyl System decided to recruit as manpower in upholding order.

Series continues in episodic way introducing us to world and some specifics in line of work of Bureau such as reliance on Enforcers' ways of solving cases; it takes a dog to hunt a dog. Another nice catch in dog-master relationship between Enforcers and Inspectors are Dominator guns, designed to target only people with high crime coefficient judged by Sibyl. That way it is ensured that dogs remain dogs and cannot rebel against System or endanger innocent people, while Inspector can always point gun towards Enforcer and pacify him due to his high crime coefficient. Psycho-Pass does a great job of introducing us to dystopian, or even utopian world, depending on interpretation, as well as people's concerns over it, both inside of Bureau and in outer world, such as when Akane's friends discuss about their concern with career that is predetermined by System.

Unfortunately, as series progresses it becomes clear that only way Psycho-Pass will hold viewer entertained is by adding body count. People we know nothing about, we care nothing about are killed by the same people we don't know/care, whose motives are vague and deluded, in horrible ways, kinda Urobuchi's trademark, but relevance of these events is practically nonexistent except perhaps explaining motives of Psycho-Pass main antagonist, Makishima Shogo and his views on current state of society. Show keeps on using shock elements, such as brutal murders, public chaos, blood and gore to keep up entertainment value. And it does its job well. On the flip side, it adds no intellectual or emotional value to story, but only pictures Sibyl System and Bureau as incompetent bunch, not being able to handle even minor riot started by bunch of renegades immune to Sibyl's judgment. Dominators, their first line of defense against chaos are worthless. Such system maintains lives of countless people across whole country and yet as very smallest problem and it becomes unsolvable until fatal damage has been dealt. But I'll get to juicy details of Sibyl being fundamentally flawed later. For now let's talk characters.

Series and Bureau have rather wealthy cast, and as such, it's not possible to fully develop every single one of them. There is more focus on our love triangle of Makishima, Akane and Kougami while rest of the cast are there merely to present view on Sibyl, or sometimes they even receive some development, but it's nothing to write home about, except Ginoza that receives some good development by the end of the series. Akane is easily best character in show and her development is well done. Transformation from rookie with shaking knees into full fledged Inspector with strength to stand for herself, being a guide to future generations of Inspectors to come is really impressive. Makishima would be so proud of how much she changed since their first meeting. Speaking of Makishima, I'm kinda iffy on him. He does represent man with strong sense of individuality, wanting to liberate people from System's *evil* control. If that's the case then what is point of enjoying watching people suffer and messing with others' lives? And on occasions he transforms from *poet* into mindless shounen antagonist wanting to kill everyone in his path. Inconsistent characterization much? What could have been great character was reduced to your random unmemorable guy. Kougami also received great deal of exposure throughout the series and his character is well built. As he degraded into state of mere hound he relies a lot on his instinct when solving cases giving series a lot of dynamics. Coupled with aggressive, if I may say rash approach in solving cases and strong believes towards his own justice rather than relying on Sibyl's judgment, he is definitively entertaining character to watch and works well as main male character overall. One character that I found to my liking despite having lack of screen time is Tomomi Masaoka. He represents the old way of thinking about detective business and due to him being unable to adapt to Sibyl he became Enforcer. High crime coefficient or not, he still remained good person despite Sibyl's tag on him and a good father. This is way to off character and have impact on viewer, (as well as Ginoza) not some nameless, faceless dolls that served no purpose in the first place.

That being said, there is one hidden gem in characters, one that deserves special mention for breaking the show. Yes, it's everyone's favorite Sibyl System itself. We can tag it as character, no? It is understandable that Sibyl wants to recruit people that they cannot judge as it would add another dimension to understanding similar type of people as well as lengthen duration of System itself. Brains don't last forever after all. But how in the world would such system came into existence in the first place? From what I see recruits and members of Sibyl are people with strong individuality, different view on world or in another words, social outcasts, people that must not exists in world by Sibyl standards. Such people, treated as junk, criminals and defects would then form a cornerstone of what is meant to watch over country and ensure that everyone is judged by same standards with fairness? Really? After all, same society treated them like trash, and now they are here to ensure those very same people live happily ever after? Did Urobuchi become too soft or what? If I were one of them I sure as hell know where I would send them to. And even if what I said is hypothetically not true, we have living recruit of the System. What did Makishima do when he was invited to join? Yeah, exactly that. Smacked Kasei, broke few bones or circuits and gtfo'd away. At this point in series I was actually hoping Makishima would join into Sibyl and work against it from the inside rather than trying one man army entire System himself. It would make sense seeing how much freedom is actually granted in system just by talking with Chief Kasei, who was his old apprentice. He could have noticed that man behind mask isn't collective mind of Sibyl but rather an individual that he actually knows and can recognize his personal traits. He could have easily seen that individuality still exists inside Sibyl and work from there, especially considering how much authority is given to you, going as far as to change Dominator readings, as seen when Ginoza was meant to shoot Kougami. Easy way to mess up entire system in eyes of common people, working from inside. But no, he decided to solo the world, and that task was pretty easy actually, considering 99% of food for country is produced on one field and he only needs to mess food production. What was purpose of this again? To make one mutation or one disease (or one Makishima) to wipe out entire food supply of a whole country? I call that sloppy writing. And how did Sibyl ever come into existence? Following the same trend – sloppy writing.

Sloppy writing aside, technical parts of the show are ok for the most part. Animation, albeit inconsistent at times does its job well by showing Psycho-Pass world as it is. Action sequences are well done, not much complains. Character designs are fitting to dark mood of series and technology is designed pretty well, especially Dominator guns. Sound is another strong point of series as all openings/endings are catchy themes with fitting lyrics to set mood of show and are also choreographed well. Sound throughout the series is good, from sound of bones breaking to musical background fitting to scenes and it's used well to improve overall atmosphere. Special award for best voice acting goes to Hanazawa Kana for voicing Akane. From her shaky starting lines all the way up to her confident self, voice acting remains great and always fitting Akane's character.

Ending of series was done very well with some things left open to interpret as seeing fit, but after dust settles all we have is another sci-fi anime that didn't use its premise well, but rather used fanservice named gorefest and Urobuchi's name to sell. If you like to see body count rising and people suffering, chances are you will end up loving Psycho-Pass a lot. Police business and individual cases are interesting, and it's fun to see how characters have to actually use brains here and there to solve cases. Action is decent throughout the whole show, and overall experience of show is pretty positive, but if you actually wanted something that can use full potential of given setting, you might be a bit disappointed in presentation. I only hope that Urobuchi becoming too mainstream won't affect his writing too much in his future works, but seeing trending of mainstream things, inside or outside anime industry, it feels like rather ominous sign. Then again, it might just be me reading into it too much...

Criminals who babble philosophically will always be present in fiction. It’s an acknowledgement that mere sadism isn’t enough. Even if a person is a sadist, there is more going on than plain cruelty there. If we can answer what makes a man start fires, maybe we won’t need fire extinguishers. Too often these stories are too fascinated with the idea of the underdog taking revenge at society. He may lose, but awareness that he’s wrong doesn’t make it any less of an escapist fantasy.

The person’s actions should follow his worldview. If they contradict that, then this contradiction must be addressed. People are messy so of ... course they will contradict themselves. If they do so in the story, it’s because the author made it so. If he made it so, he needs to connect it. Don’t put contradictions where they don’t belong. People don’t always contradict themselves.

There’s a scene where Makishima gets into a fight and we see he’s a professional. It’s like before he went to star in Psycho-Pass, he stopped at Naruto and learned the ways of the ninja. I was supposed to be impressed, though. Not only is Makishima pretty and can predict people’s actions, he’s a champion at MMA.

It’s hilarious. It reminded me how Lisbeth solve an equation in the middle of the climatic fight. It’s so easy to give your character skills. You just look up the cheat codes, write the lines that say “add 50 points to Melee Skill” and you’re done.

Just because your character is skilled at a lot of things doesn’t mean the author is skilled. Character skills are often substitutes for personality. Makishima is your stereotypical Pseudo-Philosophical Villain. Forget about how the series quotes a lot of books. None of Makishima’s speeches are related to his actions.

All of his actions involve death and destruction. He gives people who want to hurt others the means to do so. When Makishima does something of his own, it’s also to cause hurt. The dominating theme is hurting others. He gives them the freedom to hurt others, but that’s as far as it goes.

For freedom to be a theme, it needs to be expressed in different ways. The only freedom people gain is to hurt others. The violence is more varied. The characters include a bullied man, a girl sucked in her art and a person who loves the thrill of the hunt.

Makishima is not very differernt from the Jigsaw Killer. Despite talking about appreciating life, his traps were so dangerous (some can’t be complete without somebody dying) that it’s obvious he doesn’t value these people’s lives. Makishima babbles about freedom and the prison of the Sybil System, but he’s fine with killing an innocent person. There’s no worse way of ripping freedom from someone than killing them.

It’s all shock value without substance. The result is entertaining at first, but goes downhill fast. The anime goes south when it expected me to stare at a helpless, half-naked woman begging for mercy and take the villain seriously. It’s not dark, because true darkness is understandable. A villain whose motives we can comprehand and find reasonable is scarier.

If Makishima tells people to live free or die, how much of a choice is it?

What a shame. The series never chose whether it was a thoughtful story or a wild, exciting one. Either of these would’ve been fine. Being pretentious is the valley between the two.

The other side of the horseshoe fares better. The Sybil System is questioned, but it never becomes a strawman. The System is totalitarian, but it’s not an evil regime bent on oppressing everyone so the protagonist will have something to fight. Every system of government comes to power because it benefits someone.

The System doesn’t just benefit the Rich & Powerful. It benefits the simple people. The society has order, but it’s good order that leaves a lot of room for joy and wonder. Creativity may be restricted, but creativity isn’t everything. The artist may want to draw violence and the rocker wants to tell everyone to fuck off. Some would prefer to have a steady job and enough money to go for drinks with their friends.

The System also presents an alternative moral system to current society. We live in a society that praises people for getting money, having a lot of sex and being physically fit. Somehow all these promises of sex and money don’t prevent the high rates of suicide. So Sybil is not very friendly towards outcasts and has less room for creativity, but what if it’s a price worth paying for mental health?

It’s a society where you see advertisements for ways to improve your mental health. Everyone is talking about their Hue and Psycho-Pass. If you think this is going too far, then take a look at our own society. We do the same only for physical health. Physical health is a giant industry of protein shakes, gyms and promises of social status.

No system exists without its outcasts, and Sybil has its own. Only how it casts out people isn’t so different than ours. We rage against models who aren’t stick-thin, as if being fat is a moral offense. Later, we’ll hang out with sexual harassers just because they’re charismatic. Sybil is harsh to the mentally ill, but forgets about the actions.

For a series where mental health is a big issue, it’s surprising how lacking it is in character development. A flashback tries to develop one character. All it tells us is that she used to play guitar. Why did she take a different road than her friend? Why are their worldviews so different?

Akane gets some development, but she’s an archetype they play with rather than a psychological portrait. Ginoza is slightly better, but everyone else spits exposition without modifying it. There’s a wild card, a bisexual analyst, a cliched noir dude who remains tough and an old geezer. Their personalities clash more than your average detective story, but there aren’t even hints towards a psychology they didn’t have time to develop.

Psycho-Pass has interesting ideas and a pretty fun story, but it has Makishima. It’s a pin in the tire that let all the air out. The ideas are too undeveloped and there aren’t enough of them to make up for this. It’s not a case of a series that’s too short, but a series that focuses on the less interesting parts.

3 dominators out of 5

Psycho Pass is another dark sci-fi - cyberpunk title from Production IG which became beloved by many since it came out and for good reason.. That reason being that we don't get enough cyberpunk titles in anime so I guess beggars can't be choosers.

I don't think too highly of this series, but hopefully fans will understand where I'm coming from. For a change, this review will be separated in to "Positive" and "Negative" parts since I think that's the best way to approach it.

There's gonna be some very subtle spoilers, but I'll try my best to keep them minimal. I'm certainly not spoiling anything ... major.

Quick synopsis;
The story takes place in a futuristic Japan where we follow a team of policemen dedicated to maintaining public order in a society where everything is run by the Sybil system. This system has the ability to scan your brain to see how likely you are to commit a crime and even figure out the careers you're suited for.

*Positive*

1. Great production values:

The sci fi setting looks very dark and cool. The lighting effects are very well done, the fights are generally smooth and well choreographed and the CGI is integrated nicely since it's limited to machines only. Even when the characters are just standing around there's often something interesting to look at in the background so it does a decent job in making the city feel alive. The only complaints I have is that from time to time there were some animation glitches and that the character designs are made by the creator of Hitman Reborn - which means she goes out of her way to design very handsome boys and cute girls, which doesn't fit the mature vibe this series has.

The soundtrack also has an interesting variety of tunes. Everything from classical music to rock with retarded Engrish lyrics and everything in between. I can't point at a single track that I particularly love, but it definitely has variety and its usually placed well. Voice acting is pretty good too since it has quite a few famous actors and they each fit their roles rather well. When they try to emote it does become a little over the top at points, but they still pull through. I also took a listen to the dub and it doesn't sound half bad.

2. It's cyberpunk:

This is kind of a personal thing, but we don't get much of this genre in anime and it's one that I'm very fond of.

3. It has a focused narrative:

Everything in the series begins and ends with the Sybil system. You can watch any episode of this show, look in to any event or character interaction and see that everything is related in some way to the core of the series. This is also the show's biggest downfall (I'll get to that), but at the same time it's kinda praiseworthy. You also have other interesting topics that are touched upon along the way like the benefits and dangers of Transhumanism, but these things aren't really relevant in the long run, they're just added in order to flavor the futuristic setting. I have no complaints though, it did its job and it's cool.


*Negative*

1. Questionable foundations and mixed messages:

Almost the entire series is dedicated to showing us how bad the Sybil system is. Right from the first episode we get a glimpse of that as we witness both a kidnapper and his victim sentenced to death by the system because their psycho pass became too clouded- and that's the entire narrative in a nutshell. You see, in this system even the victim gets punished because their mental health is damaged, therefore they become latent criminals. Depending on the level of damage they will either be executed or sent to rehabilitation (and it was explicitly stated that the latter doesn't recover most people). If creating a cruel world is all the series set out to do, that'd be fine (albeit very one sided and predictable) but no, at points it tries to convince the audience that this system is ultimately for the greater good and that there's no better alternative. Which I personally find insulting since it did very little to justify its existence or show its benefits.

I even came across a disturbing review of this series (by an American no less) - who'd love nothing more than to establish this system in real life... Because apparently living in a first world constitutional republic is not good enough for him. People need to have their civil rights stripped away, their brains examined 24/7 and victims should be punished... in exchange for what? There were many instances in the series which demonstrate that crime rates are still pretty high despite all that, and yet the public is still ignorant to what a crime actually is. So excuse me for not seeing the benefits here.

Even though it's tempting, I'm not gonna question how this system came to be in the first place since in reality we have some examples of unsustainable ways of life that came about, like Communism for example. But I'd still argue that if it wanted to take a favorable or even a neutral stance regarding it, then they should've shown us more of the benefits of this system and not just the flaws for the sake of superficial entertainment and gore.

2. The characters are defined by their beliefs:

The vast majority of screen time for the characters is focused on watching them do their jobs. We don't get to know them too well on a personal level and every action they take seems to be a commentary on what their beliefs are and not who they are as people. Every interaction they have seems to connect to the setting and the central theme in some way. For that reason, I find it hard to connect with them on a personal level. Their backstories are brief and mostly told through clunky exposition and their growth primarily has to do with their beliefs. Not to mention that many of them quote books quite often which further damages their characterization and makes them feel like mouthpieces for the scriptwriter rather than independent individuals (Nobody talks like that!). So no matter how much time I spent with these characters it rarely felt like I got to know them anymore than I already did in the first few episodes. I think they could've benefited greatly from a few more casual interactions.

To be fair though, we do get some personal insight on the main character, Tsunemori and we get to know who she hangs out with. But her reason for becoming a law enforcer looks almost like a whim since she could've chosen any line of work based on her clear psycho pass. She doesn't look like police material to me. Kougami is kinda cool I guess, even if his motive is the "avenge my partner" cliché and even if he solves mysteries way too quickly based on rather flimsy evidence. Makishima, the antagonist does his job ok, but he's also the most notorious quoting machine. Then there's another character who gets an entire episode dedicated to her backstory.. which ends up going to waste since she plays no role in the actual story and isn't fleshed out further afterwards (unless you include her sexual orientation) . She could've easily been replaced with an A.I or removed altogether and NOTHING would've changed. So it renders an entire episode (that was randomly interjected after an important revelation) completely pointless for characterization.

I'm having a hard time coming up with things to say about these characters and that's because there isn't much to them. If you remove the setting and their stances regarding it, there's not much left to talk about.. And unfortunately I can't side with any of them because of the negative nature of this system. Theoretically, the only one I can side with is the antagonist, but even he's a crazed murderer.

3. Apparent lack of planning in its story and awkward pacing:

The first half of the series is semi episodic in nature where the team chase various criminals. Like I said earlier, these episodes are not intended to flesh out the characters beyond their introduction, nor do they foreshadow the upcoming events in the second half (excluding the introduction to the main antagonist) they're mainly intended for world building and repeatedly showing us how flawed the system is. And even when there's a two/three episode arc, the beginning of each episode still feels disconnected from how the previous one ended to the point I had to double check if I'm watching the correct one.. It's as if there's something missing in between. This especially becomes noticeable when they shoehorn that pointless flashback episode with no relevance to whatever is happening in the present. This ends up making the series feel both slow and fast at the same time (in a bad way) - slow in the sense that not much of importance is happening - and fast in the sense that there's little breather room in between each mission.

In the second half there's more continuity and there's also a fairly exciting build up for the climax, but said climax uses an important aspect of the setting (that factory thingy) that was never mentioned or foreshadowed before the final few episodes and proceeds to use it as the main plot device that leads up to its conclusion. This is pretty bad, especially for a show where the setting is the main focus.

Furthermore, the ending itself is rubbish since it doesn't provide closure for most characters. Very little has changed and nothing was accomplished so it has "lazy writing" written all over it.
Now, I know that there's a second season, but even most fans seem to dislike it so excuse me for doubting that this has been fixed without actually watching it yet.


*Conclusion*

Despite all my complaints I did somewhat enjoy it for the cool factor. Was it bad? Nah, I think it's still a lot more interesting than most anime that come out these days. On the other hand, I don't think it's nearly as good as people make it out to be and I believe that even beggars should be choosers in some cases.

Dark and driven, Psycho-Pass was a smash hit in the 2012 anime season and went on to win numerous awards and accolades, spawning an entire series including a movie, a sequel and so on and so forth. Note that this review contains some minor spoilers: I'll mark down when those appear and stop.

The setting itself is appropriately dark and dystopian, with intentionally muted emotions and voice acting to fit in a world where suppression of stress and emotion is the norm. While the dystopian setting could be said to have some holes in it, it is for the most part well fit together...and more dystopian ... settings have some elements of logical flaws to begin with since they're usually exaggerated in order to discuss some kind of point. We'll talk more about some of the more character issues with it later, though. One difficulty the show faces is that because it is going for this kind of muted approach it can cause some of the worst episodes to really drag and be rather unenjoyable to watch, especially if the episode turns out to be irrelevant to the overall plot of the show. This is particularly an issue with some of the earlier episodes, which at times made it an actively unenjoyable experience.

The plot is set up pretty early and it gets into its overarching story involving Kogami, Akane and Makishima, which for the most part is good. But one unfortunate side effect is that the plot is so all consuming that other characters really don't get much of anything to do: Using some of the earlier episodes to add to the other characters would have been welcome and they could have been better integrated into the later plot. For example, the backstory "villain" from Episode 12 would have made a lot of sense to possibly show up during the events of Episode 14/15 which could have been used to give Yayoi any actual purpose in the squad.

I'll use that to divetail into the characters, which is the part where Psycho Pass really gets iffy. Makishima and Akane are pretty good, with Akane being a stand out for having a fairly solid character arc that avoids being focused on romance despite Kogami's involvement and having a solid viewpoint with a good deal of smart decisions...although sadly the ending really is a letdown for her. Makishima is solid, although I found him somewhat lacking. Part of this probably comes from the fact that the Sibyl System is so laughably evil and obviously terrible that taking Makishima as an "Evil vs. Evil" approach feels wrong, yet at the same time the show really wants to present him as this larger than life psychological villain. When he starts comparing the world around him to famous dystopian works, it is hard to not think that those works stand above the show...and it also isn't hard to think that it is trying to be a bit TOO on the nose. At the same time, his slick charm and reasonable yet effective plots combined with some memorable lines plus good combat sequences make him a memorable villain. He could have been so much more if he was shown in a more faceted way however, such as delving into him and Choe more (in fact, more of Choe in general would have been really interesting: He's wasted given he has some of the most unique viewpoints here!).

Kogami is the other big character and he is...okay. He is a bit of a one note character but his opposition of Makishima remains mostly interesting through the show. The rivalry can at times feel a bit stale and derivative, however: Despite not having finished Cowboy Bebop at the time of writing this review, the rivalry couldn't help but remind me of Spike and Vicious except somewhat less interesting. The final confrontation between the two also reminded me of Kiritsugu and Kotomine's from Fate/Zero...except less cool. I couldn't help but feel he was stuck in a story where the people around him tended to be the more interesting and better explored of the main trio.

But it is the other characters, especially in the squad, where the show runs into true difficulty: Kogami might have some issues, but he's still overall a solid character with good lines and who keeps us interested in what they do. Akane and Makishima are the best two, as mentioned. But the rest...eh. Kagari and Yayoi feel entirely superfluous to the story and show, easily removable without almost any effect on it. Yayoi gets a worthless backstory episode for Episode 12. Does it help us get to know her better? Not really. Will it be relevant in any way, despite an ambiguous ending? Of course not. Does Yayoi do anything else for the rest of the series? No, not really! She barely has any lines outside of that episode and isn't relevant to any of the events or other character's development. She feels like she was entirely included to have a salacious lesbian relationship with Shion, which itself barely pops up and basically just for fanservice, rather than to have an actual character. The character from her backstory could have casually come back during episodes like 14 and 15...but nah, lets just make it UTTERLY POINTLESS.

Kagari has a more interesting character basis than Yayoi, because his Psycho-Pass has been clouded since he was 5 and so he's been forced out of society since then (This isn't a spoiler, it is discussed very early). This is all you will get from Kagari, with no further discussion of what he might think of anything or him really affecting anything else until he gets a shock moment late in the series. All he does is get to be the joke-y one of the group. A total waste.

Ginoza and Masaoka are the two who get a bit more to them, but they aren't really utilized that much and Ginoza's character arc felt a bit expected and on top of that just kind of having meh execution. It felt a bit too back loaded and the fact Ginoza feels like he has little outside of things that directly impact his character development makes him fall a bit flat. Masaoka is the more interesting of the two, an old cop from before the Sybil System got implemented who doesn't really believe in it, he tends to give some interesting views on everything and has a more complex and complete view of the world which makes him feel like a deeper character. Like most of the squad, however, little attention is given to him except for when he's needed for "key moments". Personally, I would have loved to see an episode delving into his backstory: Say, a case from when Sybil is first being implemented and is clashing with his traditional detective abilities. It could have shown us both more about this society and him as a character and given the events of the ending would have been a hell of a lot more relevant than Yayoi's episode. Given the multitude of early episodes that are more to show off the world than to be part of a big plot, it would have made sense to show off more of the underutilized squad during this slower period in order to deepen our feelings for them when things get intense.

I'm going to try and talk some about the ending and some events from the mid points of the series, so some spoilers ahead (but I will try not to spoil more than a little).

The revelation of the Sybil System's true nature is actually pretty well done, but I take issue with Akane's response to it and the general character development of it. First off, Akane's speeches in the last episode are the kind of boring and trite garbage of just "Humanity will totally improve!" that requires a stronger thematic backup to have any effect. It also feels fairly weird character-wise for Akane, mostly in how bizarrely non-specific it is and how it is mostly blind hope. Akane never suggests she has any idea how humanity will continue or really gives any indication of how she will so to speak "fight Sybil" while working under it, and in general comes off as incredibly naive and foolish rather than defiant or hopeful like the series tries to frame it. When she's laughed at for it...it is difficult not to laugh at her as well. The fact it goes into some balance of law and chaos thing is also bizarre, as quite frankly the Sybil System is so blatantly evil and presented as such in an over the top way (Do we ever see the actual benefits of the system?) that it makes it hard to see this as a reasonable thought process, let alone the fact that the Sybil System should be considered "law" or "lawful" to begin with. It feels like a total non-starter.

Episode 14 has a gratuitously violent scene where people don't react to someone being horribly murdered because the Sybil System isn't showing their Psycho-Pass as clouded. This is utter nonsense and the show itself shows it. Yes, people put an insane amount of trust in the Sybil System and use it to determine crime and stuff. But they aren't idiots and as soon as the first episode it is shown that people still react to crime happening even if they don't know about the criminal's Psycho Pass level. On top of that given it takes a moment for reactions, people should have been running in terror like they do at other times when he first STARTED beating her up because they wouldn't know about his Psycho Pass level to begin with and it could have easily been in the "just about to go over" state. The people in universe are NOT the audience, they are not magically aware of the fact this guy isn't a clouded hue! On top of that, people are shown to react to this level of violence even aside from the Psycho Pass, even as soon as the start of the episode this event happens. Ignoring how wholly unbelievable this is in a real life context, it is entirely bizarre in the context the show provides, and it happens at least twice within the same episode despite not working that way elsewhere. It severely undermines the point of the episodes when the show throws its own logic out the window on a whim.

Spoilers end here.

Another thing that could have been interesting is a bit more challenge on Sybil prior to the end of the series. For example, we're told some nebulous global issue has caused countries to descend into chaos and how bad things are in Japan and how Sybil saved everyone. The country has returned to its closed status in the world of Psycho Pass, which begs the question...how true is this? We only ever hear it from people who are known to be willing to lie to protect themselves and/or the country's order in any reputable manner, and the Sybil System's enforcers have plenty of reason to spread misinformation on the subject.

Even leaving that aside though, what do other countries think of this insanely dystopian yet low crime area? If the world has descended into chaos, is it something they think is worth it, or do they still think of it as a poor thing? I bring this up because the idea of what people on the outside thing of this very insular system would have been very interesting and because the show had a perfect character to explore this idea: Makishima's right hand man Choe Gu-Sung, who is a Korean immigrant who is shown to be very smart like Makishima with his own differing yet similar views on the world...and yet we hardly get any thoughts from him on anything that really matters, although he does at least get one monologue. But I feel the show could have really benefited from making him a larger villainous presence and giving us a deep understanding of how differences and criticisms of the system in front of him. He felt like a potentially fascinating but bizarrely underutilized character.

On the whole, Psycho-Pass is a somewhat enjoyable but heavily flawed series. It reaches some good highs with specific episodes or Akane's development for example, the show looks really good (although it has some crazy off model or bizarre looking shots later, especially involving the Chief, which helped lower the score) and it does provide some thought provoking moments: I especially enjoyed Makishima in the ending and Kogami along with his mentor exploring Makishima's head and some logical places the society would go. But a multitude of boring or underused characters, logical hiccups and the fact that, honestly, I found a multitude of the early episodes pretty boring really caps how much I enjoyed it on the whole. I would recommend it to those who enjoy crime procedurals, dystopian fiction or high psycho-analysis kind of stuff...but in general, I would look for other stuff first.

Why am I writing this?

"I requested the anti-moe approach," declared Motohiro Katsuyuki, executive director of Psycho Pass, in an interview with Anime News Network. "That is because, we as children, as boys, we loved the high-tension, the man-dramas of Gundam and Patlabor. Those kind of dramas with the man-on-man action."

"To veer from moe," explained director Shiotani Naoyoshi, "we took the heroine and the hero, and to start we DIDN'T have Akane take her clothes off, and had Shinya take all of his clothes off."

Having cannily revealed moe as little more than crude attempts at titillation—unbelievably, the very first individuals to have EVER MADE this ... cutting insight in the nearly ten years since the moe bloom began—the directors and writers of Psycho Pass proceeded to wow us all with the story of Tsunemori Akane, a sleepy-eyed waif who doesn't know how computers work, runs like a K-On! character, and spends at least ten minutes per episode being condescended to by her pretty boy colleagues. She doesn't allow their dismissals to affect her high opinions of them; during an early episode involving hackers and internet celebrities (including the inauspiciously named "Spooky Boogie," the allegedly anarchist cat), she has her romantic fortune read and argues with her computer about the prospect of going on a date with her colleague and smexy model of masculinity, Kogami Shinya. Truly this anime has transcended the moe virus. The scales have fallen from my eyes. This is so much better than those shows where the female characters have meaningful friendships with each other and aren't routinely criticized for being insecure and incompetent.

This anime is barely worth talking about. The cast is a set of tortured caricatures who at best wish they were as interesting as Ghost In the Shell's Batou and Togusa. Most of the male characters look like they belong in high school, especially the orange-haired Kuroko no Basuke reject. There's two nearly identical tsundere guys, one of whom is Ginoza, the Inspector chiefly responsible for haranguing Akane.

"Fools learn from experience," he intones nasally in a way that no human has in the history of planet Earth, "while the wise learn from history. Are you a fool or are you wise?"

Akane does begin to hit back against this pretentious man after tolerating his patronizing platitudes one too many times, only to have it explained that he has a *dark history* that led him to his present state of inanity. He's just trying to protect her Psycho Pass and preserve her purity, you see! Have no fear, though: by the end of the season, Akane achieves her goal of becoming a halfway competent police officer and can even use all that complicated technowizardry without any exposition from Ginoza and Kogami, despite never overcoming that crippling unknown condition that leaves her unable to fully open her eyes. Ginoza, meanwhile, ends up declared a potential criminal and demoted to Enforcer, though I'm confident this demotion will not affect his ability to condescend to Akane. It certainly never stopped Kogami.

The plot makes an attempt at raising Minority Report-style questions about crime and precognition, which would be more effective if the show didn't descend into stylized melodrama and anime cliches about Akane's pure heart. At the end of the day, it's an Urobuchi show; the story is told well even if its individual components are awful. The seasonal arc concerns the police's hunt for a man who aims to bring down the Sibyl System (the network that measures the potential criminality of Japanese citizens), and is thrilling if not especially novel.

But hey, if you ever wanted a poor man's Ghost In the Shell, here's Psycho Pass! What a thoroughly pointless show.

Psycho Pass tries really hard to be a smart, dark show who will impress his viewers by how smart it is. Sadly, it fails.

Let’s get the good out of the way:
1. The two openings are pretty memorable, especially the first one.
2. The animation and the directing are competent, above your average show : you can tell that efforts and talents were put into it.
3. Psycho Pass also has an interesting premise and ideas, plus some very "atmospheric" first episodes
that will catch your attention and make you want to see more.

But unfortunately, the rest is a mess.
First, take a good look at the secondary characters ... and then forget all about them. Really. They are all pointless, bland, one-note characters. Now, I have seen way worse in other shows/movies (none of them are horribly written), but still, the show gives me no reason to care about them or to even bother remembering any of there names.

Psycho Pass, for his first season, focused only on three actual characters : Kougami the real protagonist, Shougo the main bad guy and Akane the pointless other protagonist.

Akane is easily the worst character of the entire show because of how infuriating and pointless she is. Despite the fact that she has a lot of scenes, she never do do much, always leaving Kougami to do all the real work. Akane is in fact so pointless that honestly, the show could have cut her character from the story and no one would have care or notice.
Her character arc is this : she starts as a rookie who is naive and "weak" but is supposed to grow up half way trough the show, in order to became a « badass ». On paper, it could be interesting but in execution, it doesn’t work at all. Without spoiling too much, Akane evolves into a massive hyprocrite and no one even dares to point that out.
She sides with one of the bad guys, defends the broken logic of « killing is always wrong » no matter the situation and the show makes almost no effort into defending her point of view (you know, unlike good shows like Trigun with Vash.). Now it could be interesting if the show choose to portray her as what she actually is : a weak-minded, hypocrite idiot who is easily manipulated. Or maybe have others characters confront her in order to give us something that is worth thinking over.
But no. Instead the show portrays her like she is a hero, asking us to like and care about her for reason.


Then you have the main bad guy, Shougo « I’m trying really hard to be Light Yagami » Makishima. Seriously, it’s both painful and hilarious how hard he tries and fails to be Light. Having your villain drinking wine, playing the piano, having everyone saying how smart he is or having him quoting stuff doesn’t make him smart. You have to actually show his cleverness in order to make us believe that he is a formidable threat but sadly, it never happens.
The only reason Shougo succeed at anything is because the story sides with him (most of the time)
but it never feels natural or logical, unlike with Light Yagami.
Shouga is in the end a bland vilain, as bland as his character design (which is something that I can say for every character in this show, they all look generic). The only good thing about him is how hard the show tries, relentlessly, to sell him as a major threat : it's actually pretty amusing at times. It never works but hot damn, the show keeps trying.

And finally, Kougami : the « best » of the trio but that’s not saying much. He moves the plot forward and actually has the right to do things that affect the story but outside of that, he really isn’t very interesting : just the deja-vu anti-hero cop who wants revenge. There is nothing more to him than that trope, nothing that help differentiate Kougami and make him worth remembering.

Psycho Pass is also a show that tries to ask important questions about good and evil, what justice really is, the nature of mankind but it doesn't actually say anything about those topics: it just mention them through mediocre characters, struggling and failing to say something of significance.

In conclusion, while I don’t hate Psycho Pass, I think it fail on achieving what it wanted, prefering to look deep and complex instead of actually being it.

A combination of some of my favorite things: cyberpunk, film noir, adult characters rather than high school protagonists, top-notch production values. But the execution, oh the execution, it takes would could have been something great and makes it merely OK. Premises are cheap, they can make a cool pilot episode, but from episode 2 onward it's what a series does with its premise that matters.

Psycho-Pass is licensed by Funimation.

-Story-

It's a bad sign when I'm rooting for a character who is clearly supposed to be the villain. How did I end up doing that? In any other story of this nature, SIBYL would the clear villain ... (a mind-reading computer that runs the judicial system without checks or balances and often hands down punishments before a crime has yet to actually been committed? There's only a million ways that could go wrong). But deconstruction is a critical part of any genre, and telling a story from the perspective of the stereotypical villain and making his view sympathetic is an entirely valid premise. However, P-P fails to make SIBYL sympathetic. It's established in the opening minutes of the show that SIBYL is fallible, willing to issue execution orders for people who any human could tell was under temporary, abnormal stress. It's also clear that the threat of being flagged by SIBYL causes people to overreact, the opening episode centers on an actual crime caused a person who freaked out because SIBYL tagged them as ''likely to commit a crime". Even worse, it can't tell 'thinking like a criminal' for the purposes of investigation from 'thinking like a criminal' for real- so police officers attempting to hunt down criminals are actually in constant danger of being flagged by the system and arrested. The 'Enforcers'- latent criminals who are kept as "hunting dogs" for the police- are the only people capable of doing real police work. The only people who can preserve the system are people who break its own rules- that seems like a pretty obvious logical flaw. And I haven't even mentioned the big late-series reveal of the inner workings of SIBYL. So we have a deeply flawed system, but are still expected to root for the characters supporting this dystopian social order? I know current society is a mess, but SIBYL hasn''t convinced me it can do better and gives me very good reasons to consider it a step backwards. The concept is enough to carry Episode 1, but from Episode 2 when the show actually has to develop its premise it flunked.

The flow and pacing are fine. The first third of the show is mostly small arcs designed to introduce characters and develop the world, with the last two thirds being taken up by confrontation with the main antagonist.

-Art-

Bright neon colors against dark backgrounds is an aesthetic I absolutely adore, and Psycho-Pass brought it in spades. Movements are fluid and the CGI is well integrated. Character designs are good- the standout is Inspector Tsunemori. Her design didn't go for any obvious, fan-service-y archetype. She wasn't designed to look overly pretty or sexy, but actually comes across as a professional grown woman you would see working in a position of public trust in real life. That's a rarity in an industry where it seems every female character needs to blatantly fulfill one fetish or another. And there's something disconcertingly creepy about those smiling police drones used to secure an area. Visually this anime is excellent, hands down.

-Sound-

When I go so far as to buy a song from an anime and download it to my smartphone, the soundtrack has done something right. Both the OPs were stylish and fit the tone of Psycho-Pass very well. The first ED is so good that it I bought it, with the second ED being fine but forgettable. With all the heavy dialogue in this series I would recommend the English dub to make following along much easier. Funimation has a reputation for providing high-quality dubs and they didn't disappoint. Production values are very high in this series, if only they had something better to display....

-Characters-

When analyzing any story- anime or not- ask yourself "What do the characters want?" For example, in Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric is driven by the desire to return his younger brother to his proper body, blaming himself for the taboo ritual that stuck Alphonse's soul in a suit of armor. Rurouni Kenshin wants to make amends for the lives he took during the Bakumatsu. The protagonists of Psycho-Pass want... what? OK, they could just want to uphold law and order, but given that law and order are controlled by a deeply unsympathetic supercomputer that doesn't make for a compelling reason to hope they succeed. Enforcer Kogame wants to kill the man who killed his partner, but tell me what anyone else wants? Inspector Tsunemori is the main protagonist, but does she have any distinct personal goal? Meanwhile, the main villain is out to destroy SIBYL because he believes it is an unjust social system that degrades humanity to little more than cattle who go about their scripted lives in a state of blank-mined indifference. OK, a distinct personal goal, and a sympathetic one given how we've seen the faults of SIBYL. Frankly, if the story didn't make him an utterly sociopathic serial killer who enjoyed putting people in mortal danger just to see how they would react, he would be the obvious hero- and part of me STILL wanted him to win in spite of all that. I've seen other reviewers deride Gen Urobuchi for writing characters who are little more than cardboard cutouts designed only to express certain ideological positions, lacking any distinct personality of their own. While I haven't seen enough of his work to make an overall judgement, he undoubtedly falls into that trap here- the characters often drop cool quotes from classic political and philosophical writings, but have no personality behind those quotes to explain why they chose to use them or what would drive them to that conclusion.

-Enjoyment-

I enjoyed looking at and listening to this show, but it never gave me a real emotional hook. Once the 'cool' factor wore off I had few reasons to care and was largely finishing it just because I was already invested and wanted to see how it ends.

-Overall-

Oh, what could have been. A series practically tailor-made for my enjoyment, with a real chance to become something widely appreciated (sci-fi tends to translate well to Western audiences, and this show looks a lot like 'Blade Runner' or 'The Matrix'. I truly think this could have become a top-notch gateway anime). Unfortunately, great positives in production are undermined by great mistakes in story and characters. They cancel each other out and for all its potential, Psycho-Pass' end result is disappointingly average.

• My grasp on why people consider Psycho-Pass very good.

Psycho-Pass presents a seemingly ideal society where the law and technology has been perfected to such an extent, that now people's capacity of commiting crime can be measured. It presents a society where the law has been perfected to such an extent that the needs of most individuals are able to be kept stable and any criminal or potential criminal can be known ahead of any proof or cause. And then it explores to which extent this could be a good idea, while also being able to present a story about the bigger picture, the establishment ... of the world they live in and how it works, and the smaller picture, the personal conflict between two people the system can't grasp.

The story's premise and the characters make use of each other well to create a compelling narrative. The desires of the characters that conflict with the demands of the social order are seen as chaotic and unwanted, while those who can maintain a clear head to the standards of the system are seen as an ideal person and are treat as such. This is used to create a conflict between chaos and order, rather than necesarily about good vs evil, keeping the story more grounded in reality, as people have come to understand, that things aren't always simple enough to just have a single label put on them.

But that doesn't mean that morality and personal values are simply thrown out of the picture either, but rather that characters have their own views on what is moral or of value, separate of the ideals of the system forced upon them, but definitely influenced by it. It shows how the system can be oppresive and alienating for some, while showing how it maintains their safety and well-being by keeping them accomodating to the people around them and by managing their stress.

It does a good job at representing what a truly lawful society would be, a society where the system serves its people so that the people can serve the system. What needs it satisfies. What needs it creates. What needs it abolishes.

• What I think of Psycho-Pass.

The world is poorly written.

The society of Psycho-Pass is far from being perfect, even by their own standards. The process of finding criminals and potential criminals makes very little sense, in the sense that these people don't seem to be monitored well enough or logically. A good example is a guy that works in a factory where the Sybil System can't operate and identify the state of the workers, because it is outside of the range of its wifi, I guess. Lets exclude the fact that this is obviously poorly thought out but instead focus on the situation. Keep in mind they get periodical checkups on their mental state. There seems to be a tradition in that factory of at least one guy being schoolyard bullied there, being pushed on the floor, their food thrown on the floor, you know, that type of stuff. How does the guy keep his job and his mental state not rise to an extent where he is just thrown out of the facility? How are the workers doing that, simply not considered inadequate for the job. The system also allocates accurately where you are best suited to work. Does it not evaluate safety? Sure, it makes you ask the question of whether or not this system is a good thing, but, based on the proof you get later in the series, the system is indeed logical. And there is nothing logical about having your workforce in conflict and fucking up a guy for fun, as that can result into conflict. It's pointless to be capable of predicting and stopping any potential criminal if you are incapable of acting on it. It would be acceptable here if you sent trustworthy people, who you know would hold out well and would cause no trouble with each other. Too bad that doesn't happen.

While Psycho-Pass does a have solid understanding of how the society they're in can influence the characters, it doesn't really have strong intuition on how it would change the criterias through which companies would work, criterias by which people would get hired, and even how the law would be upheld, as another example.

For instance, lets say that there are drones that are capable of analyzing the body of people to determine the cause of death, their state, and other such things, notably, things that are inside their bodies. So, how would these drones be programmed logically. Analyze the body AS SOON AS THEY GOT INTO THE CRIME SCENE FOR CLUES or do nothing until asked. I will give you some time to conjure up the CORRECT ANSWER. Yeah, there's this moment that I suppose is meant to be meaningful where a character thinks of checking the body for clues. Where I was dumbfounded that the series even fucking tried to claim that was smart. Because analyzing the body is one of the most important parts in determining clues about a crime. Who would praise standard procedure as smart. It's a fucking demand.

So the system is clearly flawed in ways I doubt were intended. This sounds really bad, but in an ironic twist of events, for once, in the case of Psycho-Pass it works in its favor. All these unintended flaws can be plausible and explained once you understand how the system works, which is explained. If you want to like this series, you can conjure up enough explanations to fill up any holes you see in the way the society was held up. Note that for some things you'd have to put in some really solid effort from your part, but it is possible to overlook a lot of unintended flaws, due to a single twist, if you can survive the series until you get there. In my case, it didn't make the flaws up to that point seem like anything other than bad writing, but it made me appreciate at least the current events unfolding. To sum up my impression of the world, it starts by making no sense from the standard of enforcement of law and employment, to being like I get it, but still, seriously?

I'll have to make you aware of something that is a minor spoiler, in order for me to be as concise as possible as to why the explanation given afterwards about the system doesn't solve everything. I won't spoil neither the system overview explanation or any of the events, but rather talk about a single element that the series will make visible and might make you speculate some things and deduce some things correctly about a character. So skip this paragraph if you want to avoid that. This is your last chance. The system has people it can't process as criminals and simply constantly sees as good people, defined as criminally asymptomatic. What doesn't make sense about the system is that it has no failsafe against these kinds of people, which it has a goal of capturing, once their identity is known. Note, it makes sense that it can't find these people on their own, based on their mental state only. The fact that these people simply can't be made as an exception by the system or have some special force sent after them is quite puzzling, and quite illogical as well. There are some things that can excuse it a bit, but not fully defend it.

The world of Psycho-Pass may be flawed, but the portrayal of the characters and their desires, is okay. There's one aspect on which the characters in Psycho-Pass can be criticized, and that is that none of them are actually interesting people on their own. All of them are only seen in the context of their work and don't really exhibit any traits or interests outside of work outside of randomly quoting philosophers and literature. While I praise it that every time a character gets screentime, there is a point for them being there at all, I think the characters lack charisma, and don't seem to have a lot of individuality outside of the fact that they have goals, and I think it's because of the fact all the characters spend their time reacting to each other. I do agree that the characters drive the world forward and the points it wants to deliver across, which makes their actions interesting, not they themselves, as well as the motivations behind their actions. While I don't think the characters are particularly charismatic, I do think that none of them are irrational, and all of them are well defined, and to me, all of their motivations made sense and were enjoyable to observe.

Due to that, the conflict of the characters was actually quite enjoyable to see. The divergence created by their mindsets produced an interesting chain of events, one character desiring maintaining the order, because that's the safest option possible, one character desiring fulfilling their personal goals, and one character desiring chaos. All of these characters interests, aligning amongst each other and creating an interesting conflict, representing both a point, and feeling personal. I'm afraid I am supposed to remain ambigue here, as to not give any spoilers, but I've quite enjoyed the final/overarching conflict. Everyone had a point and a purpose. It is a well defined chaos vs order conflict, with an element independent of that purpose. Self-interest.

And while yes, the setting may be poorly built, due to the system on which the world operates is flawed and questionable, I can at least praise the anime that it makes use of its setting quite well, to create interesting conflicts and present interesting mindsets. Crime isn't just crime anymore. It is a method of expressing yourself after you've willingly censored yourself to fit in the world. Law isn't just law anymore. You don't respect the law to maintain everyone safe and avoid punishment. You respect the law and follow its ideals to be rewarded and keep yourself safe and sane. Despite the occasional questionable stuff, it is still genuinely interesting because it creates a world different from ours, which characters with goals different with ours, that are still relatable.

• Who I would recommend Psycho-Pass to and who I would tell to avoid the series.

Psycho-Pass is a good choice for you if you're looking for a series exploring the conflict between order and chaos, the philosophy behind criminalism in a world heavily limited by the societal system in place and the effects a system focusing strictly on creating a perfect system that works for everyone, so that everyone can work for it too. I think Psycho-Pass would be a bad choice if you have no interest in such things, as it has nothing to offer outside its premises and the influence it has on its characters. I also would say to avoid it if you have more interest in the world building itself than the conflicts it could present. Please also note, that part of why I consider Psycho-Pass just fine, and not worse, is because its flaws worked in its favor, due to the fact that the anime tries to show its establishment as both favorable and infavorable. While those flaws are indeed signs of bad writing, they didn't influence my experience of the show to much, so you should reconsider the actual quality of the show, past how I've experienced it.

Psycho-Pass is a very good anime if you have no intention of looking for a deeper meaning. The OST could use some extra tracks, but it's very beautiful. Visually, this anime was a pleasure to watch!
But, this is a dystopian anime, no? ... No.
I kinda expect a little more depth to an anime that wants to scratch at this sore point of the human condition... "We live in a society"
The writers of this show were not shy about the "dystopia" aspect, it was very blunt. I suppose if you're a total bootlicker, they might have u fooled for a second... And the entire time ... watching the show, I felt greater and greater desire for the characters to rise above their circumstances and to find a way to a better world, together, but the finale of the show felt like an emotional disappointment. Oh well, I cannot blame the writing team for struggling to have the philosophical wherewithall of Noam friking Chomsky. They put their effort into making an exciting action show and they absolutely succeeded!

Overall recommendation: Give it a try if you enjoy action and body horror! Skip it if you hate the flamboyant tortured male genius trope!

Details... oh i am gonna rip this one a new one
Sound: 5/10
At first I loved the OST, I like egoist, and I liked the sound design too. But it just felt very.. canned.. They were running scenes like 4 minutes long looping a 1 minute guitar/violin riff.... noo no no no . it was annoying by the end.
Animation visuals: 7/10
flashy flash bang! And shiny!! Gradients and backgrounds looked great. The animation team did great with the digital animation! Unfortunately, as a product of its time, the CGI did not blend in very well when they did make use of it. Fitting for the dystopian setting, the colors were rather muted, except.. except when our female lead is off-the-clock chatting with her friends at the same cafe. Is there a writing purpose for this choice? It didn't appear so, they never took advantage of this interesting dichotomy. It feels more like we are supposed to empathize with this police supervisor. But why? I felt the animation failed to contribute to the writing in a meaningful way.
Plot/Writing: 4/10
There were some fun twists, and it was so interesting to see the world that they had built for the show... But in showing us every piece of the world, there were more and more loose ends that were left untied. The dialectic back-and-forth about philosophy all thru the show felt like fluff, never really examining what a human connection REALLY is, never really examining what our hearts or wills REALLY could be.. Instead, the characters have stoic monologues while edging themselves on a switchblade in front of a velvet-clad bookcase to the sound of Austrian viola music. IT'S ALL VERY WEIRD!!!!! For a show where the characters are obsessed with human soul, the writing is shockingly lacking soul as well.
Characters: 3/10
fucking uncreative next

This show did such a bad fucking job that I thought maybe the manga would be better. Turns out,,, NO, THEY WROTE IT THIS WAY. Psycho-Pass is an original story written specifically for this Production IG to animate. It's just a cash grab. If you tried to discern a theme or message of this show, you would either be delightfully soothed or you would be horrified by the cynicism of it all.

Overall enjoyment: 6 but I gave it a 7 anyways. fuck this show

Review in brief:

Psycho-Pass is dark, brooding, and surprisingly slow in its first season. It presents the viewer with a lot to reflect on both during and after each episode, making it a fine show to discuss in a group, but it sacrifices the quality of its story & characters to do so. Combined with its questionable pacing & direction, Psycho-Pass is difficult to recommend, especially if you want action, novelty, or a memorable story.

Review in full:

Is Psycho-Pass for you? For all that it is and does, you need to know what Psycho-Pass isn't to figure that out. Don't watch this if ... you want lots of action, substantial character growth, any sort of novelty, or an intense thrill-ride. Aside from the infrequent action scenes (which are mainly just the climaxes for each scenario) Psycho-Pass never so much as intends to possess any of those traits. Instead its primary goal is to be a dystopian sci-fi crime drama that takes plenty of time to analyze the nature of criminals, stress, and emotional (in)stability within a society that's set up to eliminate these things before they even exist (via the Sibyl system) and what that means for said society. If you're still interested, know that while this ride does reach its destination, its creators missed many of the aspects that would have made it a memorable experience. It’s better explained with some mind to the order each point became apparent in, so this review will mix the good and the bad.

Despite what I’ve said, the first episode could easily fool you into thinking this is set to become a fast-paced action-thriller. It utilizes one of its simpler yet darker crime cases as a means to introduce the main characters and the Sibyl system, which their jobs and lives revolve around. It also flaunts its visual design with plenty of action and gore (more than a typical case in the season does anyhow). After that first case, much more time is devoted towards piecing together why the criminals do what they do (mainly as a reflection of the Sibyl system and the society it has created). Much of this is initially done through the investigation of many “smaller” criminals whose cases get about two episodes each, though there are also a few episodes that focus on members of the investigation team instead. Eventually this leads to an overarching conflict with the main antagonist that spans multiple cases.

This brings up one of the more questionable decisions made in Psycho Pass’ production: for all of the character driven plotlines, flashbacks, and monologues, there is little in the way of character development or even definition for much of the cast. Most of the characters remain the same throughout the show, and some hardly display any sort of character during segments focusing on them. Instead, it's nearly all used to flesh out the setting (Sibyl's society) or present a dilemma/topic regarding the scenario the characters are in for the audience to ponder over. This is alright for many of the criminals, as their dilemmas (the crimes they're committing) often say enough about their characters anyhow, but the recurring characters suffer for it. For instance, the enforcer Yayoi has an entire episode revolving around her backstory, and all we learn about her is that she's an ex-musician who developed a taste for music Sibyl disapproves of. Learning that Sibyl holds such strict regulations over artistry helped flesh out the setting, but definitely was not something that needed over 20 minutes to explain. That information doesn't ever play into Yayoi's role either, it's just background fluff and renders her as little more than background fluff to the story.

As such, Psycho-Pass' generally slow pace isn't the product of a show that seeks to provoke thought or build a mystery around its setting, despite the fact that it does those things. It is instead caused by its insistence to indirectly present itself from the perspective of oft-shallow characters, rather than directly focusing on its setting and criminal cases with the characters simply existing within the space created therein. Perhaps this inefficient method of storytelling was used to justify the awkward 22-episode runtime, which leaves some episodes & segments (including the aforementioned Yayoi episode) sticking out like infectious growths from the anime as a whole. At its worst this causes this season to skip over what would appear to be important plot details in favor of providing dialogue, leading to overcomplexity when raw exposition is inevitably needed to explain some things and even a few minor plot-holes in its conclusion (more on that later).

Plain characters aside, Psycho-Pass' setting does end up well defined. A lot of information about the society built around the Sibyl System is given, but slowly and evenly, making it all easily digestible. Many details regarding everyday life in this world are briefly shown multiple times (such as the use of holograms to decorate rooms, structures, and even clothing, or the numerous cameras & checkpoints where one's Psycho Pass is checked, updated, and used to determine access rights) which goes a long way in cementing this world as its own society rather than just "Generic Sci-Fi City #43".

Such interactions allow the few standout members of the investigation crew to display development and growth outside of dialogue as their reactions towards societal elements change over time. They also lead to later criminals leaving bigger impressions than earlier ones, as the viewer can better understand the conditions that led them to their criminal intent and more clearly see which of society's roots they've chosen to tear at. It’s likely why the main antagonist, Shougo Makishima, is remembered fondly by series fans. While his actual character is rather simple, what he does and why raises (and answers) major questions with many potential standpoints that lead to engaging dialogue both within the show and outside of it (i.e. amongst the audience).

Speaking of discussion, Psycho-Pass loves to present moral quandaries and bits of philosophy to the viewers as bluntly as it can. While those who profess to be intellectuals may find the over-the-head delivery of famous dilemmas and quotes from literature & philosophical works dry or pretentious, the laymen won't have to worry so much about understanding what the show is trying to tell them and will have a few sources of further reading on certain plot specifics should they wish to dig deeper. This is what makes Psycho-Pass better as a group watch versus a solo experience, as the dialogue & issues presented in each situation comes prearranged for discourse between people with different levels of expertise or sources of reference.

Whether the characters are having a philosophical discourse or gorily killing each other, the visual artistry is of decent quality, but for a strange reason. With a clear & clean style befitting a sci-fi nation’s attempt at utopia chained to the basic expectations for Japanese animation (and rarely more) this anime can provide good wallpapers and some visually engaging static moments but doesn’t manage to do anything out of the ordinary when in motion (except for the OPs and EDs, which have the highest production quality out of anything in this anime). Fortunately, the sound quality is consistently both excellent and fitting. The soundtrack has memorable pieces and can carry the visually unimpressive moments while the voices are distinct, clear, and match their characters. I’m convinced you could just close your eyes and listen to this anime while still understanding almost everything that’s going on.

Earlier I said that this ride reaches its destination, but I would be remiss to say it reached a smooth stop. While the story around Shougo Makishima serves as an appreciable high point for the show (even alongside the previously mentioned issues), the final case is poorly executed in many ways. In this arc, the characters involved make numerous awkward decisions, often as though they know things they shouldn’t if the story thus far is to be believed, which makes some scenes appear forced and opens up a few plot-holes at critical plot points. At the same time many conclusions the plot reaches are disappointingly predictable, passive, and shallow, seemingly just so that the old conflicts would still exist in the sequel. This predictability also draws out the ending, reinforcing the notion that this story never needed 22 episodes to be properly told.

Verdict:

All in all, Psycho-Pass’ 1st season is a brooding & generally enjoyable sci-fi crime drama but it’s also thin and lethargic in certain aspects and that keeps it from being a consistently good ride, especially at the end. Still, it does a passable job of doing what it set out to do while providing a neat sampler plate of intellectual topics to reflect upon afterwards.

I was torn between giving Psycho-Pass a 5 or a 6 and finally settled on a low 6.
Let's start with the thing that really detractred from my enjoyment: the art style. I can't stress enough how bland and dull the setting is, it is all washed out colours with grey being the one that stands out the most.

Now, I understand you must be thinking: the art? really? That's one of the worst reasons to judge so harshly a show! But you haven't considered how frequently this anime relies on the classic "tell but not show." So while we are gifted with endless psychological ramblings ... that are delivered in the most boring way imaginable, we find ourselves looking at this ugly setting time and time again. It really gets on your nerves after a while.

This is part of the reason I dropped this anime for sometime and then retook it again from the beginning because it was a struggle going from episode to episode through these thick lectures I more often than not couldn't care less about.

Why then, did I settle on a 6? Because of the cast of characters. Pretty surprised by how tame they were, not at all these bombastic characters we know from anime but actual subdued people I could believe were detectives trying their best. Shout out to Akane, a really outstanding strong female lead, filled with vulnerabilities and little quirks that flesh out her character.

The future setting is also really well done when we are actually shown tidbits of it, leaving the viewer to understand what they are being shown and not jamming exposition down our throats. The morality and system themes the show really dwells on can be pretty interesting too when done right, and makes you actually think and join in the whole mentality, choosing a side and understanding their arguments.

An interesting idea with good characters, executed in a bad way.

This is a short and spoiler free review.

Psycho Pass had a great premise and it could have been an excellent series, if only the writers had focused more on the technologies of the future and how they were misused by people for their own purposes. However, the technology took a back seat and the focus was mostly on solving crimes, which in essence doesn't make it any different from other crime/detective animes.

The biggest drawback of this show is its characters. Except 2 villains, NONE of the characters have any character development. They are fairly one (or is it two?) dimensional. The female MC ... (Akane Tsunamori) is fuking annoying. How the fuk did she even manage to pass her psychological exams (I'm assuming they had those) when she's so fuking naive and stupid? How can a police officer have the luxury of maintaining such ideals, seeing the type of people and crimes her department deals in? And she's so useless even as an inspector. If the woman cannot kill someone who threatens the life of a person she loves, then what the fuk type of a police woman (term used very loosely here) is she? What was all her training for if not to defend the innocent at the expense of her stupid fuking ideals and emotional confusion?????

From what I've observed, this is the biggest drawback with the female characters in anime -
They're either tsunderes or unbelievably meek/naive/stupid/gaily/feminine women who don't seem to possess a brain. I guess the men in Japan fail to realize that women can, in fact, be.....*gasp* multi dimensional creatures that can't easily be put into boxes.

Akane was the WORST thing about the anime. And she isn't even cute. Why do people call her that? Her doe eyes add to her "naivety" and made her appear even more unattractive to me. She also did pretty much nothing in the anime. Remove her from it and things would have progressed EXACTLY like they would have. Another useless female "protagonist" by male animators. What a surprise.

PS. The other two female characters were meant to be eye candy. They too had no roles whatsoever in the series. At least up until season 1. Because that's when I stopped watching Psycho Pass.

PPS. Annoyed because my typos (now corrected) aren't being updated

what is justice? what is the line that separates the 'good' & the 'bad'? what is truth, how much impact does it put on a society, and how does one deal with it? do you take it upon yourself to deal with it as a prisoner of a system that governs the world or do you stray off the 'intended' path & take a matter into your own hands, like a lone wolf, even though there are consequences that follow? common questions presented by a series that might be just as common.

psycho-pass is your run-of-the-mill dark-themed series but with a futuristic twist. it's not a ... society that runs a country by themselves, it's a system that governs the society instead, interesting concept. there's a person who believes in justice and wishes to uphold it but when she gets paired along with veteran subordinates & starts discovering the truth of the system that served both as a guidebook & scanbot for the world in the 22nd century, she starts questioning what justice truly is & whether it can be upheld or not with a system that might or might not be faulty itself. tl;dr - nothing out of the ordinary but not utterly unsatisfying, which can depend from person to person in a way, but some events did drag out the series and feel irrelevant to the plot at times.

the art can pass for its time but it could've been better, it's shallow.

there is nothing special about the soundtrack, if i can be blunt. it's just there when things happen and it is not outstanding by any means.

the characters are nothing out of the ordinary. a female mc who appears to be naive but has a strong sense of righteousness & justice, doesn't really have any background prior to joining the bureau and has only one instance in which you could say her character was developed, which is rather sudden & happens in a very short time, and i don't mean it in a good way. otherwise, she's just the type who tags along. the male mc is the lone wolf of the series, has some background and just does what he wants most of the time. he is usually the center of this series due to his ability and background and has a score to settle with the man who turned him into what he is now. the antagonist of this series is a peculiar character. charismatic & intelligent individual who is probably the best character of the series, logically. overall, nothing grand. everyone's shallow except for the antagonist.

i can't say for sure whether i've enjoyed this series or not. i've had somewhat high expectations for it since it is the majority of mal community's sweetheart in the police/psychological genre, after death note, and it is popular to a degree, but i wasn't utterly annoyed by it because despite its flaws, there is still logic & common sense behind this title, and because of my peaking interest recently i just had to see it to the end. i don't know whether i'm going to be interested enough to follow it up with season 2 though.

overall, this show could've been a lot better if not for the unnecessary plot drag in the later episodes, the characters that were shallow and weren't portrayed with enough feeling and realism as possible and the amount of plot devices involved.

Alright, here I go...
I'll be honest here, starting from episode one I had a feeling that I would not like this series... people can go on and on about how good it is, but to me that's nothing but a lie.

The idea of the Psycho-Pass and such was interesting. Checking the mentality of a person and finding a compatible lifestyle and career all controlled by what is called the Sibyl system, which turns out to be more messed up than we originally thought.

What isn't interesting is the cliche character and the cliche story we have to follow instead.

Main female character in a situation where she ... is new to her job, wanting to prove herself but lacks confidence and doesn't think she is fit for her job.

Main male character is a talented ex cop kind of guy who seeks revenge and does his job in a cool and cold manner.

Bad guy is a someone that thinks the system is a mistake and sees the lives of people as nothing but a game, so using his superior intelligence, he controls the people around him.

The story is basically about strange crimes happening all around the city that we follow episode by episode only to realize all the crimes are actually connected by one mastermind. WHOA, HOW ORIGINAL!!!!! NO OTHER POLICE SERIES HAS EVER USED SUCH A PLOT BEFORE!!! I hope you can feel the sarcasm in that cap sentence. It isn't later until we are told exactly what the Sibyl system is but that hardly matters in the series, in fact we have to leave that juicy bit alone and just continue to watch the bad guy and the good guy play tag.
Majority of the series I felt like the female character was in the way, sure she had character growth but exactly what has she done right in this series? She hasn't done much at all, majority of the time she was merely a noisy bystander that was helpless and couldn't anything to change a situation. She makes rational and reasonable decisions but what fun is that? Why would we want to watch through the eyes of something just "reasonable" when it's far more interesting to watch through the eyes of someone passionate about their goals and their term of justice? So we could make the decision of what is right or wrong ourselves? Is that the psychological aspect of this series? If that's the case, I think they completely missed on the true potential of what Psycho-Pass could have been.

If the series was more focused on the Sibyl System and changing the way it controls society and giving characters more of a voice, then I think the series would have had more impact. Instead, like I said, we have to ignore all that and just watch the bad guy and good guy fight things out, but when you already see the bigger picture, their battle hardly seems to matter.

Enough of that... moving onto the art...
The character design was done by the mangaka of Reborn! and I do not like the way she draws girls, she draws beautiful men but girls are just not her thing, I really hate how stuck up their noses are and how they literally right in between the eyes. Other than wanting to rearrange the main female characters face, I had no other problems with it... unless you count the fact that she's recycled her old art to make these designs.

Background and such were well done, the animation itself was not at all sloppy and they did a great job.

Sound was good, nothing more to say...

Overall, I thought this series was mediocre... it had great potential but in the end it was just a let out. In fact a lot of it reminded me of Sherlock Holmes, and I can't say that's a good thing because just copying something great isn't enough. I don't really recommend this series, but a lot of people seem to enjoy the cheap thrill of it, so hell, if you aren't into a good quality series then go ahead and watch it.

This is the anime that has one of my favourite villains but also my most hated protagonist.

The Story was definitely one with a lot of potential. A dystopian world that tries to come off as utopia was interesting but what ruined it for me was the absolutely bland protagonist. From the first episode the viewer is told that Tsunemori Akane is a genius, who could have joined any ministry of her choice because of her beyond brilliant scores. On top of that she was the highest ranking student in her training academy, but her first day at the job shows the viewer that she is ... not at all smart.

Throughout the anime, I could not help but ask, how much would this anime change if she was not here, and the every time the answer was, IT WOULD NOT CHANGE ONE BIT! She fails to generate any sympathy, comes off as incompetent and hypocritical. She does go through a major personality change in the last few episodes but still fails do anything worthwhile.

The only reason you could even come close to consider watching this series is because of Makishima Shougo, the villain.

THE STAFF
- Animated by Production I.G. a studio which does wonders when it comes to science fiction but has otherwise a very hard time to make characters who don’t act like robots. And indeed, all the characters have cartoony personalities, that is simplistic and over the top. They are closer to plot devices than real people; a thing that makes them very hard to be likable.
- The show is also airing on the NoitanimA slot, which has middle aged women as its target audience. They usually create decent romances but when it comes to science fiction they fail miserably every single time. And guess what, ... this show is science fiction.
- I have nothing to say about the directors, who are people with very little experience in anime shows and no significant results. They are overshadowed by the writer anyway, who is Uroboshi Gen, famous for stories full of weird concepts and shock factor (Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero, Saya no Uta). I personally don’t like his style, since he presents things superficially and with cop-out solutions.

PRODUCTION VALUES
Very good, especially in building up atmosphere at how the futuristic setting is supposed to make its denizens feel. The character designs in particular are drawn by the maker of Hitman Reborn, so expect a lot of cool factor and black suits. Aesthetically though it has hiccups, such as the soundtrack being rather passable, the heroine having WAY too big eyes, everybody talking like they need to explain something on every step of the way, and above all, everything having double standards that contradict and support both ends of the spectrum all the time.

The presentation of the setting has interesting sci-fi ideas that are affiliated with the morality of the show. Most appearances in this futuristic society are based on holograms. People can dress with “fake” exterior looks, such as appearing to have any clothes try like, or look as internet avatars, and even mask themselves as other people. Even crude machinery and old furniture can be masked to look like cute mascots or luxury hotels. All that are done so the citizens can feel tranquillity all the time. It is an interesting story generator, as it messes around with how external looks can be very different from what you really are inside.

What is rather distasteful is how the show makes dozens of tributes to other dystopian works of fiction. Every 5 minutes you get a reference to some book or movie or writer that is supposed to make everything mature, when in reality it makes it derivative and pretentious. It’s as if it steals quotes from famous people and doesn’t even try to hide it, instead of trying to be itself.

CAST
Basically, this show is an attempt to create a second Ghost in the Shell, where every dialogue is supposed to address some really heavy existentialism issues, but the result is definitely weaker and sillier. The GitS cast was all mature and cynical, while the Psycho-pass one is a bunch of psychopaths and girl scouts, too emotional or acting in a way that is highly unfit to their age or line of work.

There is no room for the characters to be anything more than caricatures for the same reason. The criminal cases are stand-alones, so they leave no room to develop a character or theme before they are thrown to the side. You are not supposed to get a clear answer to the moral questions, or even a rightful catharsis to the characters. You are supposed to feel shocked with all that and start thinking yourself where will all that lead. Meaning, it’s the usual Uroboshi style of mentioning something but never elaborating, as means to get an emotional and mental reaction. It’s just cheap and leaves no room for characterization. And it is not even presented so well, since eventually there are several plot holes in the core rules of the show.

CONCEPT
The setting is the future, when technology can now measure a person’s stress levels as means to estimate if it’s unstable and violent. Basically you get this numeric scale, if you pass the safety limit you need medical treatment, and if you refuse it or get to danger zones, they send people after you to capture or kill you. The police are using such people with high numbers in their missions, as means to fight fire with fire. And said people are armed with specially designed guns that measure the target and decide the proper course of action. It sure has some very interesting themes regarding morality in it. Here are some I have pinpointed.
- Is it ok to treat someone as a criminal without having committed a crime, just because his “soul” reads negative?
- Is it ok to shoot at people just because you are ordered to?
- Won’t a criminal be pushed into doing far more violent actions if he is told he can’t be treated as a citizen anymore?
- Is it ok to treat other people in an inhumane way, as long as you manage to keep your head cool?
- Does life have any significance if it’s devoid of pain and suffering?

And that is pretty much all there is to it. It addresses all its themes in a superficial and pretentious way. Although it does manage to make you wonder a lot about them, it is otherwise not doing anything besides scratching the surface and trying to scare you with gore and mystery.

The setting is dystopian, so nothing is really rosy in it. The society depicted in the show is messed up and the security system is all full of loop holes and things that make no sense. Basically, you see lots of neat stuff regarding “how they work” but very little regarding “why they are as such”. And that is why I never liked Uroboshi’s plot-driven/shock factor overflow stories. Everything may sound nice on paper and shinny on screen but when you try to analyze them, they are all confusing and contradictory. They are never elaborated past the obvious, since as soon as one case is over, so are its themes. I especially don’t like how he never gives free will to his characters and strives mostly to manipulate the emotions of the superficial viewers instead of elaborating upon his concepts. The result is a show full of annoyance and derp moments for not having characters with an actual opinion of the world they are living in. What follows is an analysis of all the interesting stuff you can find in this show and how they fare when analyzed.

1) Concept: The police are using criminals to capture other criminals. They don’t want the police officers to experience too much stress that will raise them to dangerous levels. But it’s ok to use those that have already crossed the limit, since there is no salvation for them. Technically, the police is fighting fire with fire by letting someone else to lit the fuse, not risking to think or act like those that it tries to lock away.
Analysis: That is a bit silly of course, since the criminals are unstable to be considered trustworthy, forced like slaves to capture others like them. Plus it is stressful to have police officers LOOKING at these atrocious crimes, even if they don’t need to personally press the trigger against the criminals. In fact some of them end up becoming criminals because of that. One could say that the present police force is not any better, as many police officers are corrupt or become too violent because of their jobs, and there are many cases where they use criminals in order to uncover and arrest other criminals. The investigators of the show are not a better variant, just a different one.

2) Concept: New police officers are completely oblivious to what they are supposed to do. They don’t even know how to hold a gun.
Analysis: A rookie that doesn’t even know the fundamentals is bound to cause more trouble than help in a job that required a lot of cunningness and readiness. But that is the thing with the society of the series; it doesn’t really prepare you for violence since it keeps its citizens in complete bliss, as means to protect their sanity. Most of them don’t even recognize a crime even when they see it happening. Police officers are just observers; it is the criminal executioners who are supposed to do all the work, like profiling each case or shooting. The police officers are of course still exposed to violence and death but supposed they are kept safe if they do close to nothing. In fact, even when they need to shoot, they first need to get authorization from the computer that controls their society. This way they don’t even need to feel stress for if the criminal deserves to be shot or even killed. They obey without having to worry about making the wrong decision. Even so, there are cases where the computer made mistakes in its evaluation; thus even the whole concept of a computer helping you becomes pointless. It is not better to our system, just different.

3) Concept: The educational system of such a society is useless outside of academics and theoretical knowledge. It is hard to be so advanced in the first place, if its citizens are incapable of doing anything after they graduate.
Analysis: Machines are supposed to do all the actual labour and dangerous parts in any profession, leaving the human factor as an observer who just presses buttons. This is why everybody acts in a very simple way, like they are mentally challenged. It is not better to our system, just different. This is even used in a smart way for narrative purposes, as the heroine is so oblivious; the others need to explain the tiniest detail to her. Indirectly this expands to the audience and thus we get a sort of excused infodump about everything that is going on.

4) Concept: The heroine decided to be a police officer even when she could have become anything else she liked. Her mental stability, combined with her will to help her society and learn more about how it works fundamentally made her the ideal candidate.
Analysis: Well, that is sort of weak, since she literally acts like a scared girl scout amongst ruthless murderers and rapists. We never get any more reasoning than “Well I want to help my society so I might as well expose myself to violence and death.” In our society, nobody would agree to that if he wasn’t in for the money or the action. The nihilistic way of life in the series just leaves this to be sort of like deciding to become a criminal hunter instead of a florist just because your brain can take the heat. Where is the motivation in that? Nowhere.

Now if you ask me, is there really something wrong in this sort of a concept, when to the most part it is so well presented and excused to the most part? Well, the most basic problem it has is the same most dystopian stories have. Instead of being presented as a society that is different to our own but still viable, it is presented as a fake paradise that ends up being worse than our own. They are presented as if their systems of government are pure evil or amoral to the point they become hated from the average person of today. The ones that manage to get over this snag are those that manage to excuse themselves as being grey (not good or evil) or at least trying to maintain their control even after their usage is over (clinging to the past out of fear of change). Anime like Ghost in the Shell and Shinsekai Yori manage to succeed at that, Psycho-pass doesn’t; it feels so evil and non-viable it becomes loathed very fast. Especially after they reveal what the Sybil system really is and how it works; it is making you think the leaders of this society are all devilish paedophiles who drink the blood of the dead and kick puppies when bored. And then they expect you to believe it is a system that works purely on rationality and that it was established with little to no problem. This also becomes evident when you realize how each case the characters face is a crime based on the weaknesses of the system. It is constantly showing us how it DOESN’T work, instead of how it helps its people to live a happy life when it works. It is a sort of a farce, unreal and impossible to appreciate as an alternative lifestyle. They are telling you to hate it on every step of the way and thus make you lose interest in thinking about its possible beneficial aspects.

- Episode 1: If someone is branded as an incurable latent criminal, then he is almost forced into committing actual crimes, since that is the only thing his society will expect from him to do, instead of trying to make use of his talents. Many would rather die than accept to spend a life in isolation, constantly drugged, or working as hounds of other criminals.

- Episodes 3 & 14: The system’s refusal to teach its citizens the concept of crime leads to them not recognizing it or even knowing how to react to it. Some will be literally torturing a weaker person than themselves as means of entertainment or stress relief, and won’t even know that what they are doing is wrong. Others will be looking at a person being beaten to death in the middle of the street and will be unable to understand if they are supposed to call the police or try to stop the crime. And in effect, they are helpless if they are ever the victims of a crime, since nobody will know how to help them.

- Episodes 1, 3, & 15: The victims of any crime are usually not treated with care but as criminals themselves. The terror, or pain, or hopelessness, will usually increase their crime rates to dangerous levels, turning them to latent criminals or even actual criminals for things that they never intended. The system treats you nicely only as long as your mental health is ok; if you snap you will be branded as a scum of society for the rest of your life, even if you didn’t cause the initial snapping.

- Episodes 3, 4, & 11: The only way for you to be branded as a criminal is to have a high crime potential score. That indirectly means that you can say or do any horrible things you like, as long as it doesn’t show on specs. If you don’t know that what you are doing is a crime or believe that what you are doing is right, then you are not a criminal. For example if a group of people torture an innocent co-worker just for the sake of steaming out their stress from work, this is not a crime. But if said co-worker fights back in desperation, then he will be arrested and treated as a criminal for crossing the line. Something which of course wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t mistreated in the first place. There are no means to punish those who indirectly push others to the danger zone, or even to excuse the victims of misuse and don’t place them on the same level as other criminals.

- Episodes 3, 6, 10 & 15: There are supposed to be scanners and droids in every street of the city, measuring the population for possible high crime rates. Yet there is actually very little monitoring done, to the point it is extremely easy to do a crime and move around unnoticed. For a system that is based on making everything measurable and controllable, it is doing a very crappy job. In effect, it doesn’t really matter what kind of a system of justice this show has; it all comes down to failing for not having complete surveillance of the city. Just imagine how much better it would be if every person had a GPS implant in his body or there were scanners in every house. And yes, it would happen without anyone complaining about personal life; since they are all midless sheep who believe everything they are told. They agreed to create a society where they are treated as morons, they will agree to have no personal space too. The funny part is that the same studio had created Loups=Garous back in 2010, which had the EXACT surveillance system I describe and also shared many similarities regarding a highly monitored world ruled by assholes.

- Episode 6 has a murderer that is killing someone every few days. Nothing is leaked to the population, since this way it keeps everyone happy in his bliss, while people continue to get murdered. So once again, the system is trying to work by not working.

- Episodes 6 & 10: They pretty much tell us how too much safety and bliss turns life meaningless and the only way to feel alive is to start killing others for the excitement. So much for a peaceful way of living.

- Episode 11: There is a man whose crime levels are low no matter what he does. He is supposed to judge the system and even to seek its destruction but in effect he is one big asspull, since he can do anything he likes by magically not being subjected to the universal laws of the show. He is supposed to be the cruel but true voice of reason in the show but it is kind of pointless to hear “drugs are bad” from someone who is immune to a mountain of dope. It’s like that asshole Touma in Toaru Majitsu no Index, who has the liberty to throw around morality speeches and hoard all the chicks, just because he is the only one who can cancel out any superpower. No shit smarty pants, I can too challenge the universe if I can defy gravity or friction. Also, despite the attempt to make all cases to have a connection thanks to this ringleader, they still are pointless in the longrun. You see, he wants to destroy the status quo by handing over helmets to average civilians that trick crime score scouters. If that was his plan, then he didn’t need those one-episode villains to begin with. Or skip that; he just needed to go to the food refinery and blow it up. Any reason he didn’t do that since episode 1? Of course and there is; you wouldn’t be bombarded with shallow morality and pretentious quoting ala Uroboshi style if the characters in this show weren’t plot devises and had common sense.

- Episode 17: The Sybil system is run by amoral assholes with a God complex. Because what better candidates can there be for monitoring humanity than those who don’t consider themselves human anymore? It makes no sense as you can easily realize. How can you understand the needs of everyday people if you consider yourself a superior being who has no qualms to kill a few thousand for management issues? It’s like telling a nuclear physicist to become a manager of a football team.

Another grip I have with the show is how they are using those fancy guns. It is pretty clear from the numeric value what they have to do instead of waiting several seconds for the computer in the guns to explain the obvious and unlock the safety trigger. If the criminal is running away or is attacking them, this proves highly impractical and problematic. Of course, the truth is the criminals mysteriously stand still for several minutes while the gun is talking, so there is still plenty of time to shoot them. This lazy cop-out solution to the above problem kind of ruins the whole point of the gun talking in the first place and in turn trashes the plausibility of the whole series.

And why must the gun blow up its targets like that? A simple bullet would be more than enough to stop those criminals. Ok, some of them are beyond salvation and need to be disposed of with the most direct way possible. Some others may be wearing armours or be cyborgs that need extra firepower to be sure they die in one shot. But don’t tell me it is a lot healthier for the spectators’ mentality to see people turning to ground beef just like that. Looks like it is gore for the sake of gore, thrown there purely as shock factor. And that in a setting that is LITERALLY against shocking its population.

As the show goes on, you keep realizing more things that are wrong with it, such as the investigators doing some spying-around for suspicious-looking people in each case, instead of just scanning them all for high crime levels, thus saving precious time and lives. Or the population acting completely different in some episodes, like they don’t recognize violence when they see it in the middle of the street but otherwise are used to bullying, or being in touch with online anti-government teams, or watch a lot of violent videos on the net. There are many scenes where someone gets shot or a fire breaks out and everybody is very aware of the danger and runs away panicked. That shouldn’t be happening if they were truly ignorant to danger as they want us to believe. There is even a scene where thousands of people went to get helmets with the purpose to kill others and that didn’t show in any street scanner. The show is full of plot holes and inconsistencies such as these.

And let’s not forget the ending. Or the lack of it. If you expect some sort of resolution to all this mess, stop hoping; for the finale is as simple and expected as it can get without anything really going anywhere. There is no end result to all the fuss you went through all these episodes, no retribution, no catharsis, and no point. All you see is the characters shovelling one pretentious monologue after another in the typical Uroboshi style; shock for the sake of shock.

LEGACY
In all, it is a nice time-spender that may even make you think of a few things but it plays out in a very superficial way compared to older works like SE Lain or Ergo Proxy. Not bad but far from great. Uroboshi is good at creating interesting concepts and manipulating your emotions but he is otherwise a hax. Good concept, shitty presentation, the idiots will love it, the smart ones will forget it in a week.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 8/10
General Artwork 2/2 (gritty sci-fi)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (detailed and fitting with the feeling of the series)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 2/2 (funky holograms all over the place)

SOUND SECTION: 8/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 4/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 0/2 (messy and disjoined)
Complexity 2/2 (rich context)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (pointless)

CHARACTER SECTION: 5/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 2/2 (everyone is a plot devise but is well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)
Catharsis 0/2 (none)

VALUE SECTION: 3/10
Historical Value 1/3 (a bit famous)
Rewatchability 1/3 (low because of too much bs)
Memorability 1/4 (the only memorable thing in it is the concept, and even that is presented in a shitty way)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 3/10
Art 1/1 (looks nice)
Sound 1/2 (nothing bad, just ok)
Story 1/3 (good ideas but bad presentation)
Characters 0/4 (meh dull and unrealistic plot devises)

VERDICT: 5/10

"A world where humans’ state of mind and the tendency of their personalities can be quantified. While all sorts of inclinations are recorded and policed, these measured numbers used to judge people’s souls are commonly called ‘Psycho Pass.’"

Psycho-Pass has the most interesting and revolutionary premise of any anime I've ever seen. It's comparable to that of The Matrix or Texhnolyze. Simply better than The Matrix and about as interesting as Texhnolyze. Except Texhnolyze didn't emphasize its premise much. In this review, I will make short comments on the execution of the anime and focus primarily on the ramifications of the premise.

The execution in this anime ... is average at best. The characters are sometimes interesting but not particularly well written. It looks and sounds meh. Given, I did not see the extended version which is supposed to fix some of these issues I had with the anime. Now to the interesting part, the premise:

What does a world look like where the government can look into your soul and determine your "crime coefficient?" In Psycho-Pass, there are street scanners that can determine an individual's stress levels, or "hue." The police have guns that measure your probability to commit a crime, or "crime coefficient." This gun, or "dominator," determines your crime coefficient and your probability of rehabilitation. If it determines that you are not likely to commit a crime, it locks the trigger. If it decides you can recover and "lighten your hue," then it activates under "non-lethal paralyzer mode." And if it determines you are not likely to rehabilitate, it activates under "lethal eliminator mode." The implications of that should scare any human being with little to no explanation. There are two sides to that horror. The side that the main character Akane Tsunemori sees and existentially struggles to accept, and the side where we look at how close that reality is to our own.

I will talk about Akane, but I will only spoil the first episode so I don't feel like adding a big spoiler warning. I will also talk about other aspects of the anime in vague terms as to not spoil anything. If you don't see a problem with that premise becoming a reality, the anime sure highlights it for you in the first episode. On Akane's first day on the job, she is tasked with finding a stock crazy dude holding an innocent girl hostage. Stock crazy guy rapes girl before being caught and killed by the dominator. When they find the girl, the dominator tells them that her crime coefficient is too high and that she is a "target for enforcement." She is so traumatized that the gun activates in lethal eliminator mode. What did this girl do to deserve execution? That is primarily the dilemma with proactive law enforcement. It punishes people before they actually commit any crime. Sure, the raped girl probably wanted to kill her rapist, but how is that not to be expected? That does not make her a criminal, not in today's view of ethics. She will most likely not become a criminal from her trauma, nor will she become a threat to society. But her mental state is so shaken up at the moment, that any psychological, or "Psycho-Pass" analysis will tell you she's not okay. Another issue with this approach comes about judging psychopaths, or people that do not believe that they're doing anything bad when committing a crime. Look up Gary Leon Ridgway, a man who killed 48 women and passed all forms of lie detector tests and multiple interrogations. "If you put him in a room with 20 other people you would not be able to pick him out as anything out of the ordinary." The dominator would give these people a low crime coefficient, even as they kill someone. These people would then be immune to the law, being unable to get picked up by street scanners and would never be a subject for enforcement. The last pointed out issue with this system comes about the influence of knowledge or other people being able to influence other's crime coefficient. There is a character who used to be a teacher until he started turning all of his students into "latent criminals," people with high crime coefficients that have not committed a crime. Not to mention the effect of studying and catching criminals would have on law enforcement's crime coefficients. To catch a criminal you need to be able to empathize and understand them to predict their actions through their motives. Empathizing with a criminal is not much different from becoming one.

The truly terrifying realization I had with this premise, however, was how close our reality and our government is to become that of Psycho-Pass. I'll go through each point I brought up above and compare them to our system. If someone suffers serious trauma, what exactly happens to that individual? If they're messed up enough they end up locked up in an insane asylum (or Mental Health facility), which by the way exists in Psycho-Pass kind of the same as they are now. He is restrained from society, locked up as if they themselves were criminals. Next, psychopaths. Psychopaths pass lie detector tests and fool law enforcement on a day to day basis. Lastly, take a close look at what solitary confinement actually means. Look at the case of the Man in the Iron Mask. This next exact quote is from Wikipedia, though I have cross-referenced it with multiple sources which I am too lazy to find quotes from. "Louvois instructed Saint-Mars to prepare a cell with multiple doors, one closing upon the other, which were to prevent anyone from the outside listening in. Saint-Mars himself was to see Dauger only once a day to provide food and whatever else he needed. Dauger was also to be told that if he, Dauger, spoke of anything other than his immediate needs he would be killed." These extreme criminals are not allowed to talk or communicate with others. Sure, it's usually because they broke some rule of their imprisonment, but the effect is the same. These criminals are not allowed to influence others into committing crimes, e.g. rioting, etc.

However, the only road to this premise is through technology. We already have one aspect of this premise being used effectively in our society. Street scanners. Sure, right now they can only be used to give people tickets for passing red lights, but how is that any different? This posted machine records you without human input and determines whether or not you are a target for enforcement. How does it know if you were forced into crossing the red light? Maybe your brakes aren't very good or your vehicle is overloaded and can't brake fast. Maybe the guy behind you was really on you and if you stopped you would've gotten in an accident. The machine doesn't care about your circumstances. I already mentioned lie detector tests, but they're another great example. Think about this: If the police had a 100% lie detector test and asked you if you wanted to kill someone, what would happen if you said yes? That's the same as measuring your Psycho-Pass. If law enforcement had dominators, they would most certainly use them. The only thing keeping us from that reality is the government's lack of technology.

Final thoughts: Psycho-Pass successfully presents an extraordinary premise to us using its medium. It's not well done like Texhnolyze, but it's good enough to emphasize and take full advantage of the ethical implications of its premise. Psycho-Pass is an absolute must-watch for anyone slightly interested in the philosophy of law enforcement and ethics. It's hard to imagine someone that wouldn't enjoy watching it.

=====Introduction=====
Psycho-Pass was an anime sitting on my 'Plan to Watch' list for a long time and I finally got around to watching it. I didn't realize how big the franchise was, spanning four movies and three seasons. I can attribute a lot of it to the amazing plot setting and universe that this anime brought to the table. I can also see this anime attracting a largely western audience since it doesn't have several anime tropes. Psycho-Pass has some aspects that are of plain brilliance but also falls short in some key areas. It's a shame because I concluded that an opportunity to create a ... masterpiece was wasted. It's still a great anime, but because of these 'shortfalls,' it becomes harder to recommend it.

=====Story===== 7/10
Personally, the story is the most important aspect of an anime. The story in Psycho-pass is heavily reliant on the action of its characters. It's not a negative per se, but that would mean the story is more enjoyable if you can resonate with the characters presented or if you like them. The serious tone of the anime can be too heavy for some people since unlike many anime it doesn't have a comedic break-off from time to time. This increases realism but makes it harder to binge or watch when you're not in the mood. The plot setting is well-presented and unique, futuristic theme done right. It even makes you ponder if it's a dystopia or utopia. There's not much to say about the story since it heavily depends on its characters.

=====Characters===== 5/10
First, let's talk about the elephant in the room, inspector Tsunemori Akane. I didn't have much of an issue with her compared to several others. I didn't mind her design or her personality. She had this outsider vibe that didn't fit into the 'family' of enforcers. She was curious and asked several questions, most of which were fine by me. The problem I had was she had received very high scores in her education but had issues connecting simple dots and coming to conclusions herself. As an outsider, some things were pretty obvious to put together with some simple contemplation but, she requires help from others to arrive at that conclusion. As others stated, she gets her head straight as it gets closer to the end, but it's too late to change much at that point.

A lot of my boredom and feeling of wasted opportunity came from the 'villains' in the show. It seemed like they were all interested in competing to see who was the bigger psycho. You would think in a futuristic setting, villains would arrive based on some form of logic or interested in some net gain, but no, most of the trouble occurred because of some twisted fantasizing idiot. And I wouldn't have thought it was an issue if they didn't bother giving them so much unnecessary screen time. Several people thought Makishima was a great villain, but I disagree. Maybe this trope of 'rejecting the system' was tried several times before, but I didn't think it was a unique approach. Instead, I thought it was more obvious than most other directions the anime could've gone.

Kougami was my favorite character, but that's primarily because they didn't bother developing all the characters in the agency. They were super biased in character screen time. Again, I would've enjoyed it if they took the time to develop characters better instead of using flashbacks or past events to glaze through events and give psycho idiots screen time to explain why they are psycho.

=====Art, animation & sound===== 9/10
Ok, if there's one thing they nailed, it has to be this department. I liked the art style of the anime though they could've gone with a slightly darker tone. The main soundtrack that plays when the 'action' scene hits is a banger. I never got tired of listening to it every time it triggered. I wished the action scene itself was longer in many cases. They could've sacrificed a lot of screentime of pointless dialogues by the villains and replaced it with more action scenes. Well, it's all wishful thinking.

=====Reasons not to Watch=====
There are many reasons to suggest why you may not enjoy Psycho-pass. The main reason being, it's serious in tone but doesn't have the same level of action to balance it out. The 'villains' in the anime are all idiots. I love it when there's rivalry or some form of a two-way standoff, but it just doesn't exist. The main character, Akane, might be too naive and cringe to watch for you. The overall story is pretty shallow and if you're a story fanatic like myself, you might be disappointed.

=====Overall===== 7/10
Would I recommend this anime? It's pretty hard to. This anime requires you to hit several unique boxes to truly enjoy it. Some might and some don't. For me, it's a swing and a whiff. Though, I'll still look forward to watching the remainder of the franchise. I think the psycho-pass world is decent enough that I can look beyond the first season and give it another opportunity to nail a banger.

*this is mostly spoiler free :D*

Love this anime no matter how many times I watch it.
You can see the similarities to their society, who have false Peace and fake freedom,
And our society, who has the same principles, just less dramatic.
the art and everything is really great I really recommend this anime its a really good anime mostly the big brain type

In the end, this anime teaches us that society is wrong and unless we realize that then we'll just-
Nevermind, I won't wait for anyone to make the change we need to advance, but instead, I'll do it myself.
Well put together anime
the ending was good ... as well

Psycho-Pass is an ambitious and technically well-made anime tragically ruined by a handling of the setting and the ethical questions it raises that is either incompetent, deliberately fascistic, or both.

First, the positives. Visually, Production I.G. does a great job in all areas. The animation is nice and smooth, the world design rich, the character designs memorable without being too flamboyant. The more elaborate setpieces also showcase some pretty nice cinematography.

Sound-wise I'm also a fan, not just because I love Rin Toshite Shigure, the background music is also pretty decent and the voice performances are good. As a long-time fan of HanaKana I especially enjoyed seeing ... her in a more serious role, and she delivers competently as Akane Tsunemori. The rest of the cast is quite star-studded, and none of them disappoint.

The characters are for the most part well-written as well. The cast size seems just right, and the show does a good job of focusing mostly on developing the central characters and giving them engaging arcs without sacrificing pace or world building. The significant exception is the main antagonist, who I will get back to.

Now, for the main part of my review and where the problems lie: the writing. This will be difficult to go into detail on without spoilers, so be warned. First of all, let me say that I consider Urobuchi Gen to be a very competent writer, and loved his work on Madoka and Fate/Zero, which just makes his failings here so much more frustrating.

First, the setting. The dystopian sci-fi is one of my favorite genres, as it's a great medium for looking at contemporary social issues in a more removed way making it easier to recognize (in Psycho-Pass, for example, the idea of digital surveillance is taken to extreme lengths), as well as a tool for examining current technological progress and the potential implications of it. While Psycho-Pass' setting is not the most unique one (the "stopping crime before it occurs" bit is probably most famously explored in Minority Report), it seems like one that should be ideal for exploring a wide range of interesting questions around technology, ethics, crime, surveillance, mental health and a wealth of other areas.

However, for the most part the show just ignores that it's set in an oppressive police state dystopia, and is more concerned with run-of-the-mill cop and robber stories that just happen to involve the sci-fi technology. There is some hinting at government corruption, and at times it looks like Tsunemori is going to bring down the insane brain scanning system and change the world, but ultimately the only thing she does is give the system an upgrade and continue being a cog in it. Unlike the finale of 1984 (one of the many classic dystopian sci-fi works namedropped during the show), where the surrender to to Big Brother reads as a tragedy, as the protagonist being crushed by the oppressive system, Psycho-Pass' protagonist only ever takes issue with specific details of how the system operates and even when confronted with real criticism flat-out ignores it and continues happily maintaining the system.

But hey, at least the criticism is present, right? Well, kind of, but not in a way that supports a reading that the protagonist is not the moral center of the story. As an example, when Tsunemori has a problem with the indiscriminate murder of would-be criminals as defined by the Sibyl system, her solution is to set her own gun to stun mode. This tells us a lot about the views of the person who wrote it: The moral thing to do in a situation like this is to take the most ethical action you can while never breaking any rules or challenging existing power structures in any way.

To be fair, there is one source of actual scathing criticism of the system itself: Makishima Shougo, the main antagonist. However, the way this character is presented is probably the most damning aspect of the entire show. Before we're even properly introduced to his ideology, he's shown as a cackling psychopath who happily kills random people just to prove that he's able to. Contrasted to Tsunemori's calm, composed and by-the-books demeanor, it's made ridiculously explicit that this is an insane villain whose ideas are not worth entertaining.

Overall, the moral lesson of Psycho-Pass seems to be that radical change is never an option, and the only way to improve the world is by working within the system and never breaking any rules, no matter how oppressive the system becomes and how little room you have to maneuver. Also, anyone who threatens the current order needs to be destroyed, preferably with a bullet which makes your entire body blow up in an almost comically gory fashion. What implications this ideology has for contemporary politics should be obvious.

Finally, it's hard to look at Psycho-Pass and not compare it to Ghost in the Shell, another Production I.G. franchise. Both are dystopian sci-fi settings featuring a female cop who leads an elite squad of special enforcers (and both love quoting/namedropping texts it's supposedly inspired by). However, GitS, in every iteration of the franchise, has always shown a willingness to explore the interesting ethical questions surrounding the technology and world it presents. Psycho-Pass' unwillingness to do the same does not make it look good in comparison.