Psycho-Pass Movie 1

This review contains minor spoilers, but really now, if you've watched the previous seasons you already know the plot to this one.

Psycho-Pass was one of those shows that was good on premise, but in execution was handled quite poorly, with the subtlety and writing of an angsty teen who thinks it's cool to see guts and explosions and who thinks it's good writing when a character randomly references old works of literature. Still, it was a fun and enjoyable show with some funny moments (Brains, Hyper-Oats, Spooky-Boogie etc). Psycho-Pass 2 on the other hand felt like an unnecessary cash-in that didn't bring anything new ... in terms of plot (and in fact recycled many of the plot points that kept the first one so interesting in the first place). Back then, I chalked it up to them not having the original writers onboard, perhaps the newer writers played it safe and didn't want to innovate and that since the movie brought back the old writers, surely they'd learn their lessons and bring something new to the table right? Or so I thought.

Boy howdy how wrong I was. If you've already watched the second half of Psycho Pass 1, you've pretty much already seen this one. It's pretty much the same premise, with the same plot twists and revelations only in Cambodia as opposed to Japan. And impressively, it manages to have even worse writing than the first anime.

Akane, once again, proves to the viewer that she's still a naive nutcase who thinks the system can change for the better (it doesn't) and is strangely easy to trust otherwise an obviously evil Colonel. When Mika of all people calls you out on your nativity, you seriously should consider retiring from the position of Main Protagonist. Kougami on the other hand is still the same old Kougami you've remembered from the first season, only cranked up in terms of OPness. This guy could take down an entire military with a sniper rifle without breaking a sweat. Because of that, most action scenes lose their sense of tension when your character is piratically invincible thanks to plot armor.

The other characters from previous seasons hardly make an appearance (understandable) apart from a terribly shoe-in cameo near the end (not understandable). As for the villains, we have Araragi Ko- I mean Colonel Wong who looks like he took a break from his usual harem anime shenanigans to try his luck at the Psycho-Pass-verse. At least that's what I remembered him doing. The other villains suffer from the strange syndrome of "looking cool but ultimately useless". I mean, you have a chick who can make wires grow out of her arms, how incompetent can you be to undersell this cool character? Of course nothing ends well for them, they also suffer from Bond Villain Stupidity so much you won't be the least bit surprised when Akane's friends show up at the precise moment to save them. Makishima wasn't the best villain in anime ever (face it, reciting quotes from random works of literature a good villain you don't make), but he was at least interesting and he had goals. Sybil System is less interesting now the viewer is aware of their true nature, and Araragi has no motive at all.

Really, that's pretty much the major things wrong with the film. I could go on about the other minor flaws plaguing the film (Engrish, Minor Inconsistencies, Plot Conveniences), but watching the film really wore me down, and nitpicking on minor issues would require me spoiling the whole film scene by scene.

Animation is good at least.

2/10
Spooky-Boogie couldn't save this.

Just to clarify: I am a huge fan of Psycho Pass. That is, the original series, written by Gen Urobuchi. Season 2 was a bit of a letdown but overall still enjoyable. But this? No. No excuses. This was just plain bad. Minor spoilers. Tl;dr at the bottom:

Story:
This was just a huge cluster of cheesy sci-fi-esque "plot twists" which you find out at the end of the film mean absolutely nothing. The so called "plot twists" themselves were about as predictable as a sunrise. The film starts out promising with an interesting hook of a terrorist plot in Tokyo which you soon find out involves ... another country in an experimental phase of integrating the Sybl system. But...that's it. Beyond the first 20 minutes is nothing but boring, bland and tasteless "plot" designed to try and make the entire situation seem a lot more complicated than it actually is, in a vain attempt to try and give the film the same depth that the original series had.

Art:
It's pretty. Nothing else really to say: the futuristic technology still looks as pretty as it did back in the original series.

Sound:
Again, nothing much to say, besides the fact that a few of the adrenaline pumping OSTs reappear in places. Aside from that, the OP was brand new, however done by the same artist who did the first two OPs, and the ED was a reused one, however one of my personal favourites.

Character:
Ugh. They messed up two of my favourite characters. The first half of this film tries to establish how strong our main heroine is, and to show just how much she's grown to when she first became an inspector. But around halfway through, she essentially becomes completely useless, serving no purpose but to convey the plot to the audience (which the audience already knows by this point, might I add). Kogami makes a reappearance and plays quite a key role in this movie. And by key role, I mean he was on the screen for a while. As for what he contributed to the film...pretty much nothing aside from a bit of fanservice and action.

Animation:
Oh my lord what happened?! I've made PowerPoint presentations with better animation than this! As a whole, the general animation was about average quality, however during particular scenes (such as a fight scene around 3/4 of the way through, or even a general talking scene around halfway through) the animation becomes extremely rough. Heck, there isn't even any animation. It's a slideshow with sound. Did they run out of money while making this?

Tl;dr
+gorgeous soundtrack
+pretty art style with cool, sci-fi backgrounds and technology present everywhere.

-sloppily written plot
-virtually no character development past the opening 20 minutes
-incredibly low animation quality

If you're a fan of Psycho Pass, I'd definitely say steer clear: it will only make you start to dislike what was such an amazing series.

Personally, I try to avoid movies based on pre-existing series. Usually they come off as fanservice and do not further the main series in any way. And when said movie has tied into the main series, it is often very rushed and poorly structured(I’m looking at you Gundam 00). Sadly, the Psycho Pass movie is no exception. .

First off, this is a stand alone side story. It says that it’s a sequel to Psycho Pass 2, but that is pretty much a lie. The is basically zero connection the second season and most of the movie takes place outside of Japan. None of the characters ... other than Akane and Kogami makes a meaningful appearance in the movie. I guess the movie wants to stay away from the nonsense in the god awful Psycho Pass 2. The bad thing though, is that this basically makes the movie filler. Now, I wouldn’t actually mind this that much if the movie was good. But alas, it was not.

First and foremost, the thing rushed as all hell. The movie has approximately enough content to cover an entire season, but all of it is crammed into less than two hours. Everything goes by so fast that it becomes hard to care about anything that's happened. Characters come and go at a blink of an eye, ideas are dropped at a tip of a hat, and there is no theme that last long enough to matter. However, I don’t necessarily think the movie would be any better with a longer run time since the plot is contrive as the US tax system.

The plot for the Psycho Pass Movie is completely illogical and downright stupid. The entire point this movie trying to push the point that the Sybil system is actually a good system. This seems really obtuse and stupid, especially considering this is consider this movie technically take place after season two, where Sybil kills people for no reason. In this movie, Sybil killed thousands of innocent people, allows an army of megalomaniacs to oppress millions, replaces politicians with robots, and still expects the viewer to believe it is all done for the good of humanity. What a fucking joke. And they even throw in the dictatorial government in Cambodia to simply make Sybil look good in comparison. Gen, a slight smaller piece shit is still a piece of shit. And for the love of god, Akane somehow still believe that she can change the system from the inside. Really Akane? That is like trying to passing a bill through Congress, it will never happen.

None of the characters ever matter in this movie. All the villains suffer from “James Bond Syndrome” where they let the main characters live for no reason, explain their plan to them, and then finally proceed to kill them. As for the villains, they are just there for the sake of being cool. None of the villains ever come off interesting of meaningful. The army dudes are are just a bunch of one dimensional psychopaths and all the mercenaries that appear later in the film are just there to either look cool or to throw out pseudo intellectual quotes as if this was GITS Innocence.

Even the main characters don’t do much. Akane and Kougami are just passive observers who are just dragged along a series of events that they have no control over. And the part that pisses me off the most is that no one learn anything at the end. All the characters remain the same as if nothing ever happened. Akane is still a stoic observer, Kougami is still a bishonen rebel, and Sybil is still a bunch of hypocritical jerks. Everything remain at the status quo as if nothing ever happened.

If you want an action movie, I think this would satisfy you. It is very well polished and technically proficient and there is an abundant amount of big, blockbuster action scenes. However, if you want anything more that a dumb, action bust them up, you won’t find it here. All this movie really amounts to is an over the top gore fest that have no idea what it's doing.

The Psycho-Pass movie is extremely similar in quality to season 2, but for completely different reasons. In case you didn't read my season 2 review, I basically said it was a good effort on a misguided idea. This is a bad effort on a lazy idea. It's got a ridiculous budget so it gets higher scores on everything, but overall it's basically the same. It drops all the Psycho-Pass values of analyzing complex philosophical ideas and goes for a pure Die Hard and Rambo style action vibe. It's a pretty action movie. I don't have a whole lot more to say about it. This movie ... was not for me.

This is a generic American-styled action movie of the Michael Bay type, but with Urobuchi returning as the writer, so we get a few quotes from a book or two, and MAYBE a little bit of political subtext. Thanks for the enlightenment, man. The choice bits this time include name dropping a Proust book that a terrorist is reading—because there's no better encouragement to bust your gut with a bomb than to read turgid old French lit about irrelevancies—of which this entire film consists of; the other stuff Urobuchi was reading at the time was post-colonial literature—definitely not my thing, but it's pretty apt for ... a movie that is about colonialism, and not in the usual way of militancy or the slightly subtler debt-trap diplomacy—Sibyl is exporting its wonderful tech, starting with Southeast Asia.

To quickly summarize the story, Kougami is training guerrillas to fight an SE Asian dictator and smash his Sibyl smart city, and lovesick Akane follows after Kougami to be his groupie—I mean, to arrest him. The rest of the cast plays second fiddle and have only bit parts (Ginoza is treated better here than in S2 at least).

Sibyl replicating itself abroad actually would make for an interesting story. The problem is the structure of the film. An action film is not an adequate way to explore these ideas. There's no sense of world building like the original series had. It's just exoticism. A new locale to do the same thing, but instead of a low-crime, peaceful country like Japan, we're looking at a basket case country with a military dictatorship and the chaos of a civil war nearing its end.

I had mixed feelings about this premise because Sibyl makes zero sense in Japan. They have such a low crime rate. Career selection is about the only use Sibyl has, and that could easily be supplementary or done away with. It's so easy to dislike Sibyl and be against it in the Japanese context.

Shamballa Float is a bit of a different story. It is a miniature country (I guess created for this purpose) to not only test the Sibyl system abroad, but to get the foot in the door in SE Asia. It seems like a relatively nice place, but outside, there are dead bodies hanging from beams and armed guerrilla fighters everywhere... yeah, so, if you wanted something like Sibyl to promote law and order, this would be the place to utilize it. Of course, once a government implements a policy, they will always keep it if they are able and it is beneficial to do so. Good old-fashioned militancy is probably the way to tackle the problem—Sibyl will ultimately end up being a burden.

At the very least, all of this talk about "democracy" doesn't make much sense in these conditions. The country obviously needs a military junta to bring order to what is a shambolic (pun intended) state. Akane was getting visibly upset when Colonel Wong was hunting down rebels who were spraying rifles and who had ISIS-styled Toyota trucks with machine gun mounts roaming around the cities! Like, are we really supposed to care? Before the modern age, most countries that are now peaceful KILLED OFF most of their criminals. It certainly happened in Europe. Arguably, you could call these "freedom fighters," but there's not really enough depth to this story to indicate they're any better other than they have a no-Sibyl platform—I couldn't care less that Kougami is training them.

A bit of a spoiler, but it's VERY predictable, anyway, and I think it's very important to note that Sibyl planned EVERYTHING out that happens. There are no real surprises and the whole situation was managed. Akane was probably just sent because Sibyl hates her, she sucks, and should die (I think Urobuchi does a lot of good and necessary things with Akane in S1, but she is generally kind of irritating). All of this was just a ruse to build up Sibyl in SE Asia, then massacre most of the military because of their (actually) high criminal coefficient scores. This is a lame revelation because the whole plot is just a bunch of cogs and wheels in a clock. Depending on the way you look at it, Sibyl probably caused a lot more unneeded deaths as well. Sibyl justifies it with an appeal to "human rights," not unlike NATO with Kosovo or whatever other hyped-up charge in other scenarios. There's a nice parallel.

What I've been pondering is whether or not the writer takes the promotion of democracy here seriously—or if it's meant to be cynical. The reason I say that is Akane manages—AGAIN—to twist Sybil's brain stems into holding elections instead of maintaining their puppet dictator by the end. Their guy wins, so then you have to question whether Sybil rigged the elections or the dictator won because he's popular. Western media has a tendency to call leaders dictators (even when they're not) and claim elections are rigged when there isn't any evidence. The way I interpreted the ending was that Sybil pretends to throw idiot Akane a bone, puts forward a good faith gesture to appear "democratic" and give the illusion of choice to the people, and all the while, Sybil makes sure to control everything and win. Democracy is not about choice—it's about using the media to manipulate a dumbed-down public.

The presumption that a dictatorship or military junta would necessarily have a higher criminal coefficient also seems dubious. Do soldiers in general have hue issues? It's a stressful profession that needs regular psychological maintenance, but most soldiers are law abiding citizens. I know these shows like to depict the "bad guy" military people blowing babies up in microwaves, but in most cases they are likely killing rival militants. A dictator and his bureaucracy would not necessarily have a higher criminal coefficient. Obviously, it was going to be the case that the dictator and his henchmen in this WOULD, but I just don't think Kougami's biases are correct.

Of course, I'm making it sound like the film is purely politics or the script is even half as interesting as S1, but it's mostly just one big action set piece. Certain fight scenes are kind of cool, but the animation is unremarkable other than these moments—even many of the fights have a surprisingly low amount of frames for a movie. The mercenaries are mildly entertaining, but they ultimately get dispatched too easily, and fall into James Bond villain mode and talk themselves into their own graves. They make a lot of wong choices with Wong as well—he is completely flat and has no motivation or reason for anything other than he's doing his job, I guess? The visuals are complimented often, but I think most of the surroundings look like a playstation 1 adventure game—loads of garbage CGI everywhere. The characters are all one-note, and they rely on past chemistry between Akane and Kougami to sell the whole thing, but it's just not there. Makishima even makes a pointless appearance as an illusion. There's very little substance, and there's much better style elsewhere. Just look at the cover and judge it by its cover. The movie is as bad as the cover. As much of a train wreck as S2 was, at least that did SOME interesting things.

Just watched the Psycho Pass movie and I have to say, I really dislike this series. The first season was okay, but after that it just keeps going downhill. Not only are the conflicts resolved without any real development, but the writing is unbearable. The show is made to be literally unwatchable due to how depressing it is the entire time. I'm not saying every show should play out like an episode of the teletubbies. Just don't go and make literally every minute of your show people exploding into horrifying goo piles. Is a little moderation too much to ask for?

I think what pisses me ... off even more are the people who praise it for being super deep. It's not really that deep. Maybe you would be able to tell that if you could watch the show with some mental release from the heavy, soul crushing atmosphere.