Psycho-Pass 3

With Urobuchi gone, I didn't expect much of this season. It still failed my expectations.

I expected to, much like the second season, for it to try and explore the themes set out by the first season at the base of Psycho Pass' world. Instead, we have a plot centered around the introduction of a completely new entity, Bifrost, that contradicts the position Sybil appeared to have when Urobuchi.

I expected it to remain grounded in the world set out by the previous seasons, but, after 8 double-length episodes, Arata still appears to come up just short of clairvoyance, the perfect control of the Sybil System is ... contradicted by the existance of intentional gaps in it's control, and the politics of Sybil controlled Japan, which were previously stated to be a sham, are suddenly an institution with actual power and influence, and all changes going unadressed.

I expected the main characters from the previous season to be a constant presence in order to continue their stories. Instead, Shimotsuki appears to have undergone significant development almost entirely offscreen, and, for the longest time, Ginoza, Akane, and Kogami occasionally show up as barely a cameo, mostly to hint at further developments.

I also found the plot overall harder to follow than when Makishima discoursed at length on philosophy and Sci-fi references for several minutes at a time. That might have to do with having to wrap my head around the inconsistencies in world building. The characters of season 3 can spend several minutes discussing the implications of a political elections and just leave me scratching my head, wondering why, under the totalitarian control of Sybil, that would be important.

As a minor gripe, I wish we had seen the Dominators being used more often, but I guess that's a symptom of the smaller presence of the Sybil System in the world of Season 3. We did get some nice looking fist fights, but it's jarring for the inspectors, representatives and arbiters of Sybil's ultimate will, to have to engage in punch ups when any intent to beat an inspector to death should cloud one's hue enough for them to be justifiably used. I'm not sure we even saw the non-lethal paralyzer being used at all.

In short, I doubt I'll be back to this series. My expectations were low, but the contradictions in worldbuilding, the lack of a concrete continuation of anything set by the previous seasons, and a complete lack of any conclusion amount to a complete lack of justification for the existence of another entry to the series. Considering the way the last episode felt, the post-credits scene, and the name of the next movie indicating that it might be a prequel, everything just make me feel like the intent here is to slap the Psycho Pass name on an unrelated sci-fi detective series rather than continuing what made it interesting back in 2012.

I was hoping this would be a witty, interesting detective spin-off with new characters to love and enough removal from the original source material to maintain fresh writing in the futuristic world of the Sibyl System I was enthralled with watching first season.

So far, at episode 5/8 (with twice the time per episode to develop plot and characters), I find myself incredibly disappointed with the trajectory of the show. Each episode is supposed to be its own detective story with some subtle hints at an overarching “grand finale” plot. However, NONE of the characters aside from the two leads have any personality at ... all. The writer opts for one-liner clichés and trope-heavy indirect characterization. When it’s alluded that a “mole” might be present in the Public Safety Bureau, it’s hard to even care, because we know so little about the characters IN the Public Safety Bureau. Any intrigue that might become available to the viewer feels hollow, as we don’t get to know the characters interacting with story developments (and because a lot of story developments happen in “round table” discussion format that is monotonous and long-winded to watch.)

There are several things about the writing that are cumbersome--we learn early on that Arata has special powers, but the viewer doesn’t have the pleasure of discovering more about how they work or his background. Instead, we get to see him collapse a bunch of times in a bunch of ways, all while his partner picks up the pieces. It makes the “detective genius with an odd quirk” trope get old REALLY fast. Sometimes you get a taste of maybe learning something new and fresh, but then it’s dropped or left unexplored. Part of the issue is the show opts for adding new characters or pieces to the puzzle for intrigue instead of using the core pieces it already has efficiently. What’s left is a confusing jumble of forgotten characters and vague tangents that promise more info with no follow through.

Social and political issues such as immigration and economic evil are referenced, but the exploration of these themes remains shallow at best. It feels like the social issues that are discussed and the world building run parallel—when the writer tries to intersect the two, it feels clunky. I’m still holding out hope for developments towards the end, but as it is now, the show already has quite a few problems.

I will say that the animation and music, particularly during the fight scenes, are entertaining and well executed (though few and far between). If you’re a completionist or die-hard fan, this is bearable content. But if you’re looking to get into the series this way, or are satisfied with how the last two seasons played out, it’s safe to say you can skip this storyline.

As I wrote in the first review of season 1; the intellectual level that contains the first work should have been maintained, this was of course the worst sequel of all.
Each chapter made visual remembrances to the first season, terrible.
The development was poor, the ridiculous bad comedy, the personality design of the characters was simply flat.
They close with scenes that we all expected to see at some point to get hooked, bad resource.
A disappointment.
To all this, they plan to make a sequel with the poor material that they left of that ridiculous end?
Undoubtedly, they ruined what began as an excellent original cyberpunk story (of course ... with most well-known elements of science fiction in the 50's literature but well executed).

Looks like you can sell anything with brand names today.

I've just wasted 6 hours of my life thanks to this average anime baiting me in with the Psycho-pass title. Maybe I could take it if it advertised itself as a spinoff - which it really is - but the fact that it dares to masquerade as a sequel is just downright shameful and ridiculous. This is an average crime story which doesn't even try to or fails miserably at continuing with the themes and good qualities of its predecessors, which is unacceptable from a supposed sequel.

It doesn't deal with questions of morality and society in ... any meaningful way, has no charismatic characters or emotional intensity. Instead we get an average detective story with cliché cyberpunk themes we've seen a hundred times thrown in like immigrants, politics, a huge behind the shadows conspiracy, and boring, cookie-cutter characters from the current crime story trends. Add to this the edgy, fanfiction quality writing that tries to pretend it deals with meaningful themes by throwing in random, unfitting monologues about them every once in a while. I won't even get started about the retarded mentalist abilities with 0 explanation, which also makes no sense at all in the Psycho-pass world btw.

And on top of this all, somehow they ended the season without doing anything meaningful with the setting or the character at all, they literally cut without anything interesting happening, and dared to end with a garbage cliffhanger after all this. I would probably give this a 5 if it weren't selling itself as a Psycho-pass sequel, but this is just unacceptable for me.

I'm not even gonna watch anything Psycho-pass related in the future, unless Urobuchi is writing it. Fooled once, never again.

PSYCHO-PASS 3's gambit is an initially promising one, a soft reboot with a cast of fresh faces and a new attitude with respect to its approach to thrills and stakes. Those who found previous seasons' penchant for cheap shock-value in the form of exploitative violence will probably find the slower and more politically-driven nature of this season to be refreshing, with maybe only two or three people meeting a messy demise at the end of a Dominator. Our inspectors seem to prefer ye olde fisticuffs in their dealings with the Sybil-defying underbelly of Tokyo instead, impractical as it is.

Despite all this, PSYCHO-PASS 3 has ... very little of interest going on. The new inspectors are likable enough but don't add much to the proceedings. Arata Shindo has a cliche eccentric personality, quasi-supernatural "mentalist" abilities, and improbable intuitions that spoil the procedural setups. Kei Ignatov is the more stern and serious of the two, a family man. You've seen this stuff before. The overarching villains are opaque in their goals and methods. You get the sense they are finger-tenting puppetmasters and not much else. The animation and direction are as perfunctory as ever. Be prepared for lots of conventional scenes of talking, interrogating, and investigating. This all has the veneer of an intelligent procedural, but it is hollow.

Worse, the story is hardly finished by the end of the eighth episode and comes with lots of additional story threads hanging here and there, a number of them involving what the old members of Unit One have been up to. This makes this season feel no more consequential than the SS movies or really anything we've gotten out of PSYCHO-PASS since the first season. It's just another piece of the franchise puzzle with no clear sense of purposeful evolution.

SPOILER REVIEW :


' Too many cooks spoil the broth '
This proverb defines how things went by taking on too many concepts.
I'll be brutally honest and highly vocal since these guys made the 3rd sequel to my favourite franchise and messed it up .
They've drained the legacy carried out by Psycho pass down the gutter. I'm grossly enraged.
CRAP!
Season 3 was total crap, carrying the name of psycho pass it was utter rubbish.

... These guys did nothing but experimented on various topics starting from

Immigrants which proceeds to => Housing Bubble scam => Governor election and politics => Housing city for the immigrants and special zone => Religion => Justice .

I've never seen such crap in a long time.
Usually, I would drop this ASAP, but I wanted to watch out what these guys have offered.

Lame suspense carried out in the name of a supernatural power called mentalist, no brief reasoning, these guys have moved every episode from here to there with own speculations which were so unclear, the whole proceeding has been a mess.
The biggest missing has been the Sibyl system, for those who'll soon question my assessment :
1. Numerous Contradictions of the Sibyl system introduced to us in the 1st and 2nd season It would never allow the very crafts this show is based on .
Remember they control everything, so the very fact of everything shown in this season sure has sibyl's involvement but they've totally neglected it . Will the system remain quiet all throughout while waiting for the other in this case called Bifrost to grab a hand over them ? NEVER !
Remember they've killed every person who's tried to harm them or has known their secret except Tsunemori and Shimotsuki who's their puppet right now.

2. Character sketch, the new inspectors and enforcer have zero originality and character development as compared to the earlier season.
It's an utter disgrace to carry out the legacy of psycho pass.

3. And here comes the biggest bluff Criminally Asymptomatic people are those who are different and insane thinking as compared to the society, hence the system is unable to comprehend them and they showed that Arata is criminally asymptomatic.
What a joke! In what sense?
A highly empathetic character would be the last person ever to be shown as criminally asymptomatic.
He's a pathetic lousy empathetic character who can be judged easily and adding Yuki kaji's voice to it is a prime example of what type of characters psycho pass doesn't need.

4. Uncertainty , till the last episode the whole investigation is random and nothing else .
What is happening , why is it happening , it's so vague that makes it a snooze fest .
Zero explanation of the Sci-Fi used.

Episode 4 , 12:44 has a dialogue by yayoi san which says :
' The more I learn about journalism , the more I realize how easy it is for people to accept information(plot) without critical thought '

This dialogue is the reality of the whole season , if viewers don't have a critical thought , they won't find what I'm saying as true .

The writer do has invested a very mount of skills in writing this as the title for every episode portrays what the episode is about , but if you have gold in your hand , and lots of shit in the other hand.
Mixing them won't do any good .
In the end , gold looses the value and what's left is SHIT !
5. Highstake ideologies , season 1 was the master of it , season 2 was very good at it and season 3 is bullshit and totally abandoned the idea .

6 . Scouting potential criminals You see , the anime was itself about Crime in opposition to the system that's controlling the society by scouting potential criminals .
And when you abandon that concept , you've no right to proceed with a sequel that leaves the system , returns to old school detective style with combat skills , baseless violence with zero justified motive , mercenaries , ridiculous action , jumping around the buildings, forced heroism and a human system of assessment which gambles politically to go against the system .
Too many zones where sibyl couldn't reach , a public stage blast acompained by an idol politician .
Lol ! I don't even wanna write anymore . This whole season is a bad joke .

7. Collective Psycho theory of season 2 : The biggest loophole in season 3 plot has been this .
The sibyl system clearly said it has now adopted the collective psycho pass system and in future Tsunemori will be responsible if they judge a group psycho pass rather than an individual .
Now if they applied this in season 3 all those group attack in the fighting and abandoned area and the religious cult .
All of the would've been declared potential latent criminals .

8. Zero charm . The biggest deficit is lack of charm , not even a single episode made it convincing for me to look forward to the plot , the character has zero charm .
The bifrost organization did had a charm but nearly 1% of the screenplay .
In fact the most interesting character which I found in the entire series are the 1st inspector and the congressman who scouted Kei as 12th Inspector .
Ughhh ! I feel so frustrated to have waste my time and energy at watching it .

I would've accepted it , had it been an anime carrying someone else name or a name of it's own .
But carrying Psycho-pass's name is a taint which i'll never accept .

1/10 .
This anime shouldn't exist and it's a waste of time . And people who've accepted this story and moreover enjoyed it .You never really understood what psycho pass was all about . Pity you !

A little premise as It's my first review on MAL.

Anime has been a part of me since childhood and I watched so many of them, and rarely bothered with the reviews of any, just lucky to find so many of the best that Japan has put lot of effort into, inspiring generations and our real lives.

Personally Sci-fi is the best from them and it has been and this post will be revolving more on them only. I first watched Full Metal Alchemist 2003 & grew up with DBZ. From there on I discovered Ghost in the Shell movie Which was a pinnacle of achievement for ... Japan and Mr Oshii, Kenji Kawai. Later the SAC and SAC 2nd GiG completely blew me away with their stunning execution and memorable characters that one can never forget, truly legendary anime. I found Production I.G to be one of the legendary studios that Japan has aside from the Ghibli.

The Psycho Pass review ---

So yeah through there I found Psycho Pass, The Season one was one of the series where I couldn't just move out and the OST, direction, character design and the story, art of perfection just like GiTS, I loved how they handled the Sybil system and every single episode had so much of cerebral experience that got me into this IP. The movie explored many facets of the society that Psycho pass universe has been set up and explores characters more. I felt it was great and the animation of course top notch from I.G, I was excited for Season 2 and how they will move ahead. Initially the characters deaths (As expected from Urobuchi from S1) was disappointing, especially Aoyanagi. And the way they handled Shimotsuki felt way rushed however the villian and the ending of Season 2 was fine as I felt it was an okay expansion of Psycho Pass universe even though the length was very short and rushed.

Sinners of System was announced I was again excited to see if they improvise and offer more depth to the characters this time since the season 2's luke warm reviews, the case 1was handled very bad and too much of exposition and predictable plot ruined it however the animation quality was top class very refreshing however the remix of the opening felt rip off and unoriginal. Case 2 was great, since as other reviews mentioned how it explores the other aspects of Japan in that age. Plus a good backstory of well developed characters, Case 3 brought us back to Kogami again and new characters it was great to see again but the way of his handling was flawed too much of introspection and unnecessary plot just to make him come back again, still okay. And again animation was superb very well handled too along with R rating justice.


SPOILERS for PP 3

I swear this is the worst expansion of Psycho pass ever possible. Here at MAL I noticed about Tow Ubukata. It's a spot on.


Characters ---
Shimotsuki suddenly became a boss, do we still remember the ending of Psycho Pass 2 and how she was basically crushed under the pressure of Sybil and want to move against Akane and in this she magically works with both. And the role of Sybil has been completely eliminated in every episode, the new Characters are forgetful.

Akane Tsunemori is an Ex Inspector ? Without any absolute explanation and hiding the plot, basically plot armor. And make us sit through so much of time for no explanation at all.

Arata is absurd, he doesn't even fit into this universe, if they are planning to put something supernatural, why don't they explore it before Psycho Pass is always about the crimes and political ideology of the Sybil system and the inspectors detective abilities, Although his character is witty, perhaps mature and more of a flawless type like Tsunemori which is only similarity I see as a consolation prize for the viewers.

Kisaragi never gets to do anything, expect to talk around and boss during their drinking sessions, and the left over bit from ep1 gets out in ep8 and yet again nothing absolutely happens. She doesn't do anything.

Kei is an immigrant from Russia who is exceptionally agile, strong and a mean approach but again as with the whole series, but cracks him apart thanks to the "immigrant" plot this season pandered with. We now know how the EP8 moves very fast vs the rest of the episodes it's hasty.

Irie's history with the slum zone is perhaps fine BUT it falls of a cliff when Enomiya gets destroyed in a whiff without any depth.

Tenma doesn't get any exploration or such, one episode of the Herkales's place where his family is working for. Herkales is just a buffed up buffoon who is running for the political seat because of genes and body, it's not just bad.

Komiya and her ultimate mcguffin AI is forgettable for that arc, governor and on top of immigrant backing with beautiful look and young. Ugh, just awfully written her character's few lines were just generic run off the mill lines. And in EP8 when she speaks up, it's worse as if suddenly she knows it all how to build the utopian Japan.

Toya Sainoji, just shown there for nothing and gets absolutely decimated, No motives behind the Bifrost's Round Robin game's other players (Congressmen wtf) for 45 min length running 8 part series.

Shion doesn't do anything at all, Kunizuka was brought for fan servicing, another beautiful and well written character to nothing, and got destroyed unceremoniously for the sake of having the hype and destroy that PP was made of by slowly eliminating all OG characters.

Kogami is relegated to fan service with SAD because of SS Movie 3 ? and the plot of bs bifrost works with clear hues but have guns and other skilled ex military personnel like that Vixen. But no relationship with Sybil.

Aume / Shinogi / Kurisu - All are very poorly written and explored just because this story hangs on a thin line of immigrats vs Japan, remember there is no Sybil here just using Sybil approved it.

Plot / Screenplay / Animation and Conlcusion ---
The screenplay was absurd and the whole plot skipping from Case 2 even how Kogami suddenly starts working with the Hanashiro without any depth of backstory of how they started investigating apart from Public Safety bureau, at-least how the Ginoza started as well from Case 1, no answers no depth.

Bifrost associates, that means so many are there but none are shown 1,2,3 and 11.. No weight to this. Plus they can pull strings anywhere for plot armoring. To make it worse SAD is formed to work with those Case 3 type Peace breakers using weapons like guns freely without consequence because they are having clear crime coefficient since they do not know what they are doing ? lol. This is the biggest flaw tbh.

They are shooting a gun damn it in the cymatic scanner rigged Japan, and killing people. It is shown that Japan is the only nation which is not fallen apart since 2 seasons and yet we got this ridiculous plot with flaw in Sybil it self. Another gigantic plot armor there for the blind spot of Sybil. It's like the story writers are blinded by what they are even writing at this point. I suspect they will say that Sybil itself has issues and Bifrost has been able to hide because of Sybil's few mentalities etc.

It feels like Amazon pressured the studio and Urobuchi working on that Obsolete anime ( pure garbage) for YouTube originals, put that inept Tow Ubukata in-charge, the director is same like Season 2 but this is worst and also again just 8 episodes. The whole Political angle of this series. What the actual hell, Western Propaganda wasn't enough in Hollywood already and now to Japan too. Just a cashgrab for the generic crime investigation instead of the excellent dystopian orwellian psycho pass sybil system.

That's very very sad, the whole PC drivel pandering this season has about the immigrants and the plot is just astoundingly retarded and shallow because of the way the detectives, inspectors go through them with the magical mcguffin arata's mental trace and other means and the involvement of Kasei is non existent when a bigger entity is there, esp considering how they were non existent for the S1 and S2, Movie, SS series.

It's shaking up the fundamentals of Psycho Pass. It just doesn't fit at all. And again where is the Sybil here ?

The whole story pacing is very very slow, I felt bored at most of times due to the way how the story (non existent) is progressed. And at finale they do move very fast which is very unnatural.

This Season 3 also has somewhat inferior animation consistency, it started good but falls off soon, complete disaster for instance if you notice how out of angle miss Shion looks like across scenes, poor handling of facial animation, ladies and body. Opening was bad, the soundtracks were reused no originality at all. However the depth of animation into world building and the physical world are excellent coming from Production IG which is good.

Production I.G should stop working with the western studios they only want to expand their portfolio and mint money by using famous IPs and ripping them apart, Japan and it's Anime culture were free from this milking especially the Psycho pass and Ghost in the Shell, Tow Ubukata ruined GITS by that Arise and now Psycho Pass too ? I didn't watch Arise due to stark differences in characters and everything, the worst is coming by Netflix another western studio ruining GITS again.

I do not know how the Movie will be now, I hope Urobuchi will be called for it and salvage what's left of it I don't have many hopes because of the "immigrant crisis" plot they shoehorned into this. I wish Production IG to stop working with these greedy agenda driven personnel and studio powerhouses, Psycho Pass has been butchered by these, all our beloved characters are being erased off slowly.

If they ruin the movie with the exposition and Tow Ubukata, I hope he doesn't get involved at all. Else I will just stop caring about this season, I will think it all ended with Psycho Pass Movie, or S2/SS case movies.

Thank you for your time.

It was terrible. I really wish they hadn't used the title psychopass for this shitshow. Starting with the magical boy detective who can see the past with his 'extreme empathy ' to stoic russian immigrant with killer skills trope with a dash of boring side characters, an overarching enemy that even sybil knows nothing about. This basically just shits on the entire plot building done in season one and two. I was among the rare few who thought s2 was ok especially because of the question the villain posed (who judges sybil) but in this season everything is magic,with a brand new nemesis called the ... foxes and any question about sybil has just been ignored. Honestly, I just watched it to see how the old division one was doing. Even shimotsukis character has been ruined. Thank god they didn't show the others in detail. What a waste of six hours of my life

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a manga reader so I always come absolutely blind to every anime I watch (that applies to any source material not just manga), so take into account that I judge only what's presented in the animation and/or season story-wise.

ABOUT THE STORY:
This one was a hit and miss. It's sad that this series have really interesting and unique world-building elements but has failed to improve the narrative and just gets worse with each new installment, and here's why:

The timeskip is completely unnecessary and confusing. Everything about the ungoing story to this point was rendered meaningless for this story arc. Every mayor reveal and ... plot twist is now belittled in the portrayal of the season, and this was not the first time this happens. Sybil's true identity and Shinya Kōgami's reinstatement and transfer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with Nobuchika Ginoza are neevr explained or even rendered relevant even though it is. With this last one we can assume he was offered the role at the same time as Teppē Sugo but it's never addressed.

This season did and awful job introducing so many new faces that no one really cares for during the season. The only thing keeping this afloat are the brief moments were we get to see Shinya, Nobuchika, Akane and Yayoi, characters that we as viewers grew to love/hate or at least got to really know. Even the analyst (Shion Karanomori) seems so uninterested towards what's happening in the Public Safety Bureau. And nothing gets to be explained at all, if the season were to be going in the direction of uncovering what happened to Akane during the timeskip, it'd be fine but it never gets addressed, on the contrary we're presented with a whole new plot. There's an organization all of the sudden that's comparable to the Iluminati but that definitely need to get their hierarchy order; it mixes up the terms (or ranks) "fox", "inspector", and "congressmen". When talking about "inspectors" might even include a translation error. The idea of the BIFROST organization was ok, but should have been presented, hinted or something in previous installments.

ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
So... Everybody is doing fine I guess with whatever has happened during the last 3 years, I mean no one seems to really care, and that sent the message we shouldn't either.

• ARATA SHINDŌ: I loved the voice acting of Yuki Kaji (our so likeable Meliodas) but that's about it. It's common to develop overpowered characters but you have to do a really good job for the viewer to be ok with the fact they're overpowered. Satoru Gojō from Jujutsu Kaisen and Gilgamesh from the Fate Multiverse are great examples of that. On the other hand it's fine that Arata is a mentalist but him having supernatural powers because he's "overly empathetic" is such a poor excuse and is rather ilogical taking into consideration the laws of the world already presented to us years ago. We are suppose to be interested for his father even, a character that didn't even existed alive on screen. Who is his father and why would I care about that?

• SHIZUKA HOMURA: it's hard to criticize this one, he was presented as the main villain when they decided to focus on his promotion to "congressmen" but he never does that much as a character. Again he is another unsolved mystery that with whom we never get to connect as viewers.