Anime / Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System

From left to right: Crime and Punishment, First Guardian and On the Other Side of Love and Hate.

Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System is a movie trilogy that follows up on the first two seasons of Psycho-Pass, directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani while the scripts were written by Ryo Yoshigami for the first movie and Makoto Fukami for the rest. Animation was done through Production IG.

The movies consist of the following:

• Case 1: Crime and Punishment: Set in Winter 2117 after the events of Psycho-Pass: The Movie, the Public Safety Bureau is deployed to stop a hostile vehicle fleeing pursuit from law enforcement vehicles. After they arrested Izumi Yasaka, who suffered from a breakdown while being held under detention, Chief Kasei tasked Division 1 to return her back to a facility known as the Sanctuary somewhere in Aomori Prefecture. Inspector Mika Shimotsuki is tasked to handle the handover with Enforcers Nobuchika Ginoza and Yayoi Kunizuka to assist. But when the trio starts to check on Yasaka's background and her relationship with the facility, they realize that Yasaka's breakdown was only the start of an indication that something criminal is happening inside the Sanctuary.

• Case 2: First Guardian: Set in 2112 prior to the recruitment of Akane Tsunemori, it centers of Japanese Ground Defence Forces drone pilot Teppei Sugo of the JGDF's 15th Integrated Task Force stationed in Nago Base in Okinawa. He was tasked with a small group of ITF drone pilots/commandos to support SEAUn military forces in mainland Southeast Asia against anti-government forces. A few months after the disastrous intervention, the Japanese Ministry of Defense is under attack by a combat drone stolen from Okinawa. The PSB deploys Inspector Risa Aoyanagi and Enforcer Tomomi Masaoka to investigate Sugo as a potential suspect after they find out that the suspect who used Sugo's military credentials is Colonel Itsuki Otomo, Sugo's superior and a supposed ITF commando who went missing in action.

• Case 3: On the Other Side of Love and Hate: Set in November 2117 after the events of Psycho-Pass: The Movie, ex-PSB Enforcer (and Inspector) Shinya Kogami travels from Cambodia to Bhutan, which is a part of the South Asian supernation Tibet-Himalaya United Kingdom. He befriends a Bhutanese-Japanese girl named Tenzing Wangchuck, who he saves from being killed by anti-THUK guerrillas. He later meets with Guillermo Garcia, the leader of an armed group called the Peace Monitoring Group, which is trying to monitor ceasefires between the three main guerrillas faction, which consist of the Purple Dragon Clan, the South Asian Independence Army and the Himalaya Mountain Patrol Regiment. While Kogami helps Tenzing and reflects on her path to enact vengeance on the culprits responsible for killing her parents and fellow villagers, he later learns that someone's trying to secretly sabotage the peace talks by helping an armed group take on the other three guerrilla factions. Kogami meets Frederica Hanashiro, who's sent on a mission to survey any Japanese nationals stuck in South Asia, although she has another agenda for her meeting with him.

The trilogy also has a manga and novel adaptation only released in Japanese.

It's followed, in terms of canon, by Psycho-Pass Providence.

Be warned: spoilers from the TV series will be left unmarked if you haven't seen it.

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Crime and Punishment provides examples of:

Tropes

• Action Prologue: The movie starts with Shimotsuki commanding a PSB roadblock to corner Yasaka's vehicle.
• Badass in Distress: Yayoi gets drugged and manhandled by the Sanctuary employees who found out that she's leaking information to Mika.
• A Day in the Limelight: This movie gives more spotlight to Mika and Ginoza (and to extent, Yayoi) with the former earning her Character Development.
• Driving Question: Why did Yasaka escape from the Sanctuary and what's going on in there?
• Government Conspiracy: The Sanctuary staff were digging up nuclear waste that's buried underneath the facility and they're using their patients who were treated to have low hues to dig them up. If they die of radiation, then they can always recruit more. And the Sibyl System knows about it, but didn't do anything to stop it.
• Imagine Spot: After defeating Rojion Matsuki, Ginoza nearly falls off from the building until someone grabs his arm. At first, he thought it was Kougami but it's actually Yayoi who saved him.

First Guardian provides examples of:

Tropes

• Action Prologue: The movie starts with Otomo's unit training in the forests of Okinawa against OPFOR androids.
• Bittersweet Ending: Aoyanagi and Masaoka were able to kill Colonel Yoshito Takaesu of the Joint Staff, the mastermind of Operation: Foot Stamp's failure. But the Otomos were dead thanks to the coverup and Sugo blames himself for not being able to help them. Due to this incident, he was forced to leave the JDF after initial attempts to treat his hue were not succesful. Sugo was later recruited to the PSB after he was publicly declared to be a latent criminal.
• A Day in the Limelight: The movie focuses on Masaoka, Sugo and to the lesser extent, Aoyanagi. It even shows the relationship between Masaoka and Aoyanagi.
• Deadly Gas: Nano VX was used in secret by the Japanese Defense Forces (JDF). And they prefer to keep it hush hush even if it means forcing the PSB out of their investigation or putting Sugo in a training accident.
• Doomed by Canon: Since this movie is set before Season 1, viewers already know that Aoyanagi and Masaoka would end up dead in the show: The former being killed by Sugo's Dominator after her Crime Coefficient increased in Season 2 and the latter sacrificing his life to protect Ginoza from Makishima's bomb in the penultimate episode of Season 1.
• Foregone Conclusion: Near the end of the movie, Frederica offers Sugo to join her team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs due to his military experience. Sugo gently rejects the offer, choosing to stay in the PSB instead. However, he would eventually join her team as seen in Season 3.
• Government Conspiracy: The Ministry of Defense was covering up events in SEAUn that Nano-VX nerve gas was deployed using Sugo's combat drone under cover of providing ammo and supplies to Otomo's unit during the fight against anti-government forces.
• Operation: [Blank]: The operation to deploy JGDF forces in SEAUn was known as Operation: Foot Stamp.
• Prequel: The movie is set before Season 1 of Psycho-Pass started. However, the first part of movie and the epilogue is set after 2015 movie due to the presence of Akane and Mika as inspectors and Sugo being part of Division 1.
• Title Drop: Sugo's codename in an operation in Southeast Asia was known as "First Guardian".
• What the Hell, Hero?: Ginoza is furious at Aoyanagi and Masaoka for visiting his mother during investigation, calling it a waste of time. Aoyanagi calls him out on this, asking him when was the last time he ever visted his mom.

On the Other Side of Love and Hate provides examples of:

Tropes

• Action Prologue: The movie starts with Kogami fighting against armed men in a bar with Garcia tossing his combat knife at one of them for trying to attack Kogami from the back.
• The Atoner: The book that Tenzing possessed is entitled, "恩讐の彼方に," or "Beyond the Pale the Vengeance", which tells about a Buddhist monk named Ichikuro who helps those he stole and killed as an atonement for his sins. The story itself is related to Kougami's situation who tries to help others in need as a way to cope for the loss of his former life and as an atonement for seeking revenge.
• Bittersweet Ending: The peace talks are salvaged and are on course, but the THUK government and the other parties in the talks framed Kogami for instigating the killing of Garcia and the PDC leader in order to give the public hope that the civil war is coming to an end. However, this give Kogami the chance to return back to Tokyo with Frederica while Tenzing recovers from the knife wound when Garcia hurled his combat knife at her.
• A Day in the Limelight: Kougami is the protagonist on this movie where it shows him coming into terms with his revenge against Makishima.
• Private Military Contractors: The Peace Monitoring Group led by Guillermo Garcia in Sinners of the System - Case 3. The PMG has recruited its manpower from former United Nations peacekeeping units that were disbanded. The PMG been hired to end the three-way war in the Tibet-Himalayan United Kingdom Alliance. PMG actually intensified the war by secretly murdering civilians from all sides, escalating the conflict and ensuring that Garcia will get a bigger paycheck in the end when he does end the war.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Like the 2015 movie, this entire movie takes place along the boundary of the eastern Himalayas specifically Bhutan.
• Silent Scapegoat: After killing Garcia, who also is the mastermind behind the death of the Purple Dragon clan leader, concerns were raised that his death can derail the peace talks between Tibet-Himalaya United Kingdom government and the guerrilla factions since he's the one who arranged it in the first place. Kougami and several members of the PMG agree to let the former take the blame of the deaths; the two parties agreed to this decision. This allows Kougami to return to Japan with Frederica where he would eventually join her team in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• South Asian Terrorists: Kogami and the PMG encounter anti-THUK forces trying to target civilians, as well as THUK soldiers. However, they're not the only ones with an agenda. Garcia's included and he's in league with Belmondo.
• Start X to Stop X: Guillermo Garcia and his top men in the PMG intentionally fan the flames of war by using disguised mercenaries to commit war crimes against civilians, which escalates the conflict into a situation bad enough for the local governments to ask PMG to come in. PMG then suppresses the warring parties, negotiates a peace deal, and leaves heroically... of course, after they are paid handsomely for ending the war. Had Tenzing not discovered the scam this time, Garcia and PMG would have left the Himalayas to do this again in another conflict zone.
• Thou Shall Not Kill: Kougami tries to struggle not to kill people throughout the movie. In the prologue, Garcia notes his hesitation of not killing one of his attackers. Later on, Kougami spares a rebel who eventually shoots him at back, nearly killing him if it weren't for Frederica's sniper shot. During the climax, Kougami has no choice but to kill Garcia by stabbing him on the chest during their battle on top of the moving train.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: This is one of the themes of the movie: Kougami is trying to move on from achieving his revenge on Makishima which cost nothing but aimlessness and leaving his life in Japan behind. Then, he encounters Tenzing who requests him to teach her how to fight, so she can avenge the deaths of her father and the villagers. However, her uncle warns Kougami the consequences of revenge which the latter personally takes it by heart and tries to stir Tenzing away from this path by teaching her self-defense instead.

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