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  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: You may feel sorry for Mika, who turned out to have good investigative skills but allowed her jealousy towards Akane to cloud her own judgment which resulted in her being cornered by Togane and the Sibyl System for looking into things she's not supposed to. It's even worse after she accepts the truth behind the system without any complaints. She's not deluded or brainwashed or anything; Mika is fully aware of the consequences of her actions. Why is this worse? Having learned what Sibyl is, how powerful it is, etc she's stuck in a corner and can't get out. She can only sit back, watch, and try to delude herself just to keep functioning.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Kougami's actions in Episode 1. Was he really going to blow up the victim with the Dominator or was he trying to test Akane's resolve? On one hand, he was clearly about to pull the trigger before Akane paralyzed him. On the other, he mouthed something to Akane before he did (presumably "shoot me") and showed no signs of being angry with her the following episode.
  • Angst Aversion:
    • The way the first episode played out with the Criminal of the Week, which in itself created a bit of a Broken Base for his on-screen rape of the Damsel in Distress, has already induced this for some.
    • In Season 2, after seeing Division 3 shooting up a bunch of panicked civilians solely based on their Crime Coefficients, there weren't many viewers who cared about their Total Party Kill in Episode 6.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Akane was seen as one from the first episode due to her character design being considered ugly and/or odd-looking compared to the other characters and Akane herself being seen as naive and incompetent. The first episode's Info Dump makes it seem like she signed up for a job she knew nothing about, and the episode makes a point of it when the cynical Enforcers claim that the academy's training is useless.
    • Ginoza in Season 1 is a polarizing character at first. His By-the-Book Cop Jerkass attitude towards Enforcers and highly critical response to Akane's decisions earned him detractors; others felt that he made a point of criticizing Akane because he wants to make sure that she avoids the pitfalls of Shinya and his father and that his attitude is a case of being a Jerkass Woobie. After his father's Heroic Sacrifice gets Ginoza demoted to Enforcer, the fanbase warmed up to him fast.
    • While he was initially well-received and considered a great villain by many, opinions on Shogo Makishima eventually grew more divided. In essence, his supporters think he's a cunning, charismatic villain with a compelling philosophy and a beautifully poetic way of showing it despite his raw, soulless viciousness; however, he grew a fanbase of detractors who thought he was a generic White Hair, Black Heart villain, whose plans come together too easily for him and whose philosophy is little more than a senseless, edgy mess. This divide doesn't stop at fans, with critics also debating whether Makishima is a complex villain or a thinly-characterized, pretentious villain. Essentially, the conflict comes down to whether Makishima is cool or if he's lame and the writing tries too hard to sell him.
    • History Repeats in the second season, with viewers hating Mika Shimotsuki for her abrasive, dismissive attitude toward Enforcers and acting like a Know-Nothing Know-It-All in front of Akane. Some fans started warming up towards her after her Alas, Poor Scrappy moment while others were satisfied by her situation. She's given a more stable personality in the movie which most consider an improvement, but she still has some detractors, particularly for trash-talking Akane to her face. Her personality might be a case of Depending on the Writer, as some think that Mika could have been more likable in Season 2 if she was less of a complainer.
    • Arata, the new protagonist in the third season, has gotten this, mostly because he was designed to intentionally contrast Akane. Some fans enjoy his free-spirited Cowboy Cop antics which allow him to be more empathetic and creative than she ever could, and love his Childhood Friends dynamic with Kei. Others think that his behavior is too reckless and unprofessional to inspire sympathy, consider his Mentalist powers to be poorly-explained and a source of Ass Pulls, and think of his friendship with Kei as a poor imitation of the dynamic that Akane and Kougami had.
  • Broken Base:
    • Akane's actions in Episode 11. Half the fanbase sympathizes with Akane, saying that her breakdown and inability to rescue Yuki from Makishima's clutches was justified. The other half says that Akane had every reason to kill Makishima and easily saved Yuki, but was either naive enough to depend on Sibyl or couldn't bring herself to break her code even to save another.
    • The show's first opening song "abnormalize" seems to be something of a polarizing phenomenon, mostly due to the singer's overblown falsetto.
    • Tow Ubukuta, who is writing the series composition of Season 2 instead of Gen Urobuchi (who would be supervising the script), made some viewers worried on that the style of the story would be different, particularly when Urobuchi amusingly quipped that "if people die in Psycho-Pass 2, that's Ubukata's doing"! Some people noticed that Season 2 has more action and less social commentary than Season 1, and a lot of viewers wonder how this season will affect the movie given that there wasn't much impact except for the revelation that being criminally asymptomatic is a non-permanent condition. With the movie released, many officially declared Season 2 as non-canon because the majority of the subplots had little effect on the movie, even though the movie was the reason most of the events of Season 2 felt so inconsequentialnote .
    • The change of studio, from Production I.G to Tatsunoko Production, caused some to worry that the animation quality would drop, as in episodes 6 and 7 where some of the faces looked different.
    • The animation for the second season's opening was initially this, as some viewers found it pretty cheap to simply repeat the same frame over and over again (and to use this technique multiple times) but once people began noticing the subtle differences in each episode's opening and that it was becoming a bigger and bigger Mind Screw with each passing episode, the complaints went away. It turned out there were a lot of clues in those credits.
  • Complete Monster: Season 1 has the season's Big Bad and two Serial Killers:
    • Shōgo Makishima is the darkly charismatic villain who believes people living out their darkest desires is the "true state" of humanity. Contacting multiple killers to enable them to do as they please, Makishima allows one project to turn his classmates into grotesque statues and another to hunt people at his leisure, disposing of his pawns when they inevitably bore him. Undetectable to the Sibyl System's criminal registering metric, Makishima takes advantage of his unique state of being to slit the throat of an innocent girl in front of her best friend in pure bliss at his mockery of Japan's protection measures. Wishing to plunge the country into anarchy, Makishima organizes a terrorist attack on the building housing Sibyl, causing mass riots in the streets and putting all of Tokyo at risk while he infiltrates the building. When his initial attempt fails, Makishima attempts to sabotage Japan's food supply and forms a twisted attachment to Enforcer Shinya Kōgami, unable to believe Shinya can go on without him when Makishima is gone.
    • Rikako Ōryō, one of Shogo Makishima's side projects, relishes Shakespeare's plays when they depict human cruelty and suffering. Rikako has an obsession with creating art by drugging her fellow female students before murdering them. In order to mimic her father's artworks, which Rikako enjoyed even if she had nothing but contempt for the man himself, Rikako dissects the girls and arranges the corpses into scenes to mirror the portraits.
    • Toyohisa Sengūji, another of Makishima's associates, is an old man who has converted most of his body to cybernetics to achieve immortality. To alleviate his incredible boredom, Senguji has turned to hunting human beings. Senguji enjoys releasing his prey into the large sewers underneath the city and hunting them down while dressed as a Victorian hunter, along with his cybernetic robotic dogs which he uses to savage his prey before he executes them. Senguji's only passion is hunting people like this, and he has racked up dozens of victims. When done, he harvests the bodies to make tools out of their bones.
    • For Colonel Nicholas Wong and Desmond Rutaranga see here.
    • For Kyōka Tsujigai, Colonel Yoshito Takaesu, Jean-Marcel Belmondo see here.
  • Contested Sequel:
    • Season 2. Some fans dislike it because Urobuchi isn't writing it, the antagonist is boring, Kogami is absent, a lot of people randomly die during the first half of the show and the viewers have no reason to care about them, the lack of social commentary and less screentime for the returning characters, most especially Ginoza and Yayoi. Many detractors have also pointed out that quite a few plot-points in Season 2 are suspiciously similar to those from Season 1, with some even accusing the season of frequently dipping into Recycled Script territory. Others like it because of Akane's Character Development and the antagonist's broader scope, claiming that it still captures the essence of the show. Some consider it a disgrace, others think it's fine but just can't live up to the first season, a small minority thinks it's better than the first season, and most just consider it So Okay, It's Average.
    • History Repeats with Season 3. Although many fans do like it for its greater emphasis on social commentary and consider the new characters introduced to be fresh and likable, others are more critical, and consider the new characters to be Replacement Scrappies. The most common points of criticism are that the commentary on immigration and racism is Anvilicious and doesn't make in-universe sense, and that the greater focus on police procedure and political power plays causes the series to lose its identity.
  • Continuity Lockout: Though the Sinners of the System movie trilogy can be watched as a stand-alone, it is highly advisable to watch it as preparation for Season 3 as it contains several plot elements that were present such as Mika's Character Development, Frederica's and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's introduction and Shinya's recruitment into Frederica's team.
  • Creepy Awesome: Tougane. He's singlehandedly responsible for a good chunk of Season 2's nightmare fuel, and is all the better for it.
  • Designated Hero: Some viewers were convinced from the start that the Sibyl system was nowhere near just, or even morally gray, considering it the real Big Bad of the setting. This point is an integral part of the series itself, however, though how easy it is to cheer for Sibyl's agents depends on the viewer.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Because Shogo Makishima is so well-written and is rebelling against a brutal totalitarian dystopia, many people tend to ignore the fact that he is an evil bastard through and through whose endgame involves plunging Japan into anarchy and molding people into serial killers just like himself. An article on Medieval Otaku says that Makishima should be the hero of the series, and to make things even funnier, there is an anime quiz app on Android about anime heroes that lists him as a hero.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Shusei Kagari, due to being a Manchild and Nice Guy. Many fans were upset at his death.
    • Risa Aoyanagi started to get pretty popular due to being a merciless Inspector, contrasting Akane, but also having a softer side to her around people she likes and genuinely caring about her job. Which is what made her death such a Gut Punch. Likely due to this, she received quite a bit of screentime in Sinners of the System - Case 2: First Guardian.
    • Sho Hinakawa got a lot of fans due to being Adorkable and using his skills to uncover much of Kamui's plan.
    • Sakuya Tougane gets a lot of fans thanks to the opening animation, which foreshadows his true character. This is also because he's similar to fan favorite, Shinya Kougami. A lot of viewers agreed that his goal to darken Akane's hue was the one of the most interesting plotlines of Season 2.
    • Jyoji Saiga, Shinya's former mentor, is well liked as one of the few who pointed out the flaws of the Sibyl System.
    • Ginoza's dog, Dime. Despite having only appeared in one Season 2 episode and one audio drama, he's a surprisingly popular subject with fan-writers and fan-artists, particularly those looking to show a softer side to the normally cold and aloof Ginoza.
    • Out from the new Season 3 characters, a lot of viewers like Homura Shizuka not only because he's handsome but his Hidden Depths where he gambles for the bureau's success as he is working with the Sibyl System to destroy Bifrost.
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • The second season's opening is a huge Mind Screw. It's spawned legions of theories that Tougane might be Kougami or stuff even more bizarre than that. The opening actually keeps changing subtly with every episode, becoming more and more glitched and static-filled, providing plenty of fuel for this trope.
    • One of the most popular theories since Season 1 is that a lot of fans believed that Akane is criminally asymptomatic given her crime coefficient never goes up during dire situations and her Hue never goes dark. However, the story never discusses this, and more subsequent materials counter this theory such as the appearance of another criminally asymptomatic character, Arata Shindo, who remains on the side of good which led to the Sibyl System being interested in him.
  • Evil Is Cool: Shōgo Makishima is quite the baddie but is such a charismatic and Wicked Cultured villain and a genius planner to booth, Makishima is quite the awesome baddie which as First Installment Wins tells below, gives a legacy that no other villain from the series lives up to.
  • Fan Nickname: Kirito Kamui is sometimes called "Evil harem lead Kirito" as a nod to the similarly named protagonist of Sword Art Online for various reasons, most of which involve a Take That! or two.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans disregarded Season 2 and declared the 2015 movie as "the true sequel" to Season 1, considering that Season 2 hit the Status Quo Is God ceiling and several of the main plotlines weren't referenced in the movie.
  • First Installment Wins: Season 1 is regarded as the best due to establishing the world of Psycho-Pass, tackling the philosophical and psychological use of the Sibyl System and introducing the most compelling and memorable antagonist. The next two seasons tried to emulate this style but both are widely considered to fall short of the first season.
  • Foe Yay Shipping:
    • Some fans ship Makishima and Akane, even though Makishima murders Akane's best friend right in front of her.
    • Kougami and Makishima. It's very obvious since the first episode, when Akane narrates that they're destined to meet each other, and it doesn't really help when Senguji said that whenever he mentioned Kougami's name to Makishima, it made him smile.
    • The novel offer some (one-sided) basis for Choe and Kagari: when Choe hears Kagari's voice for the first time, he notes that he sounds young and wonders whether Kagari is good-looking, too. This is never mentioned in the anime, but it certainly gives their conversation an interesting subtext on Choe's part.
    • There's some one-sided tension between Akane and Togane in Season 2. Considering that Togane is Kogami's Suspiciously Similar Substitute and Akane keeps hanging out with him, the subtext is there despite that Togane happens to have a darker side...
  • Franchise Original Sin: Most of the common criticisms of Season 3 were elements present in the first two seasons that got out of hand:
    • A good portion of the season is dedicated to political power struggles and mass immigration, two storylines that were argued to make no sense since the first season showed that politicians are effectively puppets chosen by the Sibyl System and Japan's borders were locked down tight in order to preserve peace and order. But the first season also had both of those things; the difference was that the politicians were, as mentioned, puppets, and the Korean immigrant shown was there because the Sibyl System wanted to get him on their side so he would return to his home country singing their praises so that they could gain support for controlling that country as well. In contrast, the prevalence of mass immigration Season 3 is shown to cause loads of tension and unrest, something that would make the viewer doubt how or why the supposedly all-knowing Sibyl System would ever approve such a thing in the first place. While the storyline was likely intended to be a commentary on modern sociopolitical issues, it wound up not making very much sense setting-wise.
    • The villains were argued to be some of the weakest in the series, being Stupid Evil with no motivations beyond committing evil for the sake of it. But the arc villains in season 1 also noticeably lacked much motivation for committing evil deeds. However, this was tied into that season's major themes about the restrictiveness of the society governed by the Sibyl System and what sort of monstrous personalities that a society where there's basically zero free will could produce, and all of them were legitimately unique, competent, and threatening in their own right. The Movie and the Sinners of the System trilogy started the trend of shallow antagonists, but those also had a shorter length than the TV seasons, so it was more forgivable in the sense that there just wasn't enough time to flesh out the bad guys. But when Season 3 and its sequel movie aired, that was when the most complaints started to occur, as the bad guys up to the Big Bads were seen as inferior, with Azusawa largely considered too petty and simplistic to live up to the standard set by Makishima or even Kamui, and Bifrost and its caretakers being much too vague to care about. It's one thing to make the antagonist of a 45 minute movie shallow, but quite another thing to do it to every villain including the Big Bad in an entire season of TV animenote .
    • Removing older characters to replace them with controversial new ones started in Season 2 when Kougami was absent and replaced by the Suspiciously Similar Substitute Sakuya Tougane, and new character Mika Shimotsuki was widely-reviled for her clashes with Akane and bratty attitude. The difference is, Season 2 was never supposed to be made—The Movie, where Akane finds Kougami in Southeast Asia, was supposed to be the direct sequel to the first season. Because of that, Kougami couldn't be present in the second season by the very nature of the timeline. And both new characters' frosty reception dissipated after Tougane was revealed to be a villain and Mika suffers the consequences for her stupidity and undergoes Character Development in later installments to a more likable character. However, most characters that survived the first season were still prominent in the second, but the third season replaces almost everyone with an entirely new cast. It's more egregious in the fact that all of the characters from previous seasons are still present but make comparatively few appearances; Ginoza and Kougami only show up a few times to fight the new protagonists or on one instance help them out, Yayoi is brought back only to be seemingly killed off, and Akane spends the whole season rotting in a jail cell. Sidelining a few members of the cast is one thing, but to do it to the characters who have been the protagonists since the very beginning of the series is another matter entirely.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • In 2099, the Japanese government was actually planning to deactivate the Sibyl System. Altruistic? No: they were going to replace Sibyl with another national surveillance program called "Panopticon", named after the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's concept of a circular prison where a single guard in a tinted central post could monitor every prisoner at any given time and the prisoners would never be able to tell when the guard was looking at them, only that he could be.
    • The first two episodes of Season 3, titled "Laelaps' Calling" and "Teumassian Sacrifice", are references to the mythological Laelaps the hunting hound, and the Teumassian Fox. Laelaps always caught its prey, while the Teumassian Fox was impossible to catch, and the act of Laelaps chasing the Teumassian Fox risked causing a paradox requiring Zeus' intervention. The obvious parallels are the Inspectors being Laelaps always catching criminals, while Bifrost is the Teumassian Fox, constantly evading Sibyl.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In Season 3, it's a bit of a Running Gag that Arata and Kei keep upsetting powerful people in their investigations, which leads to Shimotsuki getting a constant stream of complaint letters on her desk. Most of these are pretty humorous as Arata and Kei keep managing to get away with their antics with the thinnest of justifications. Then during the gubernatorial campaign case, Todoroki gets insulted by his stepbrother who also proceeds to insult his mother, which causes Kei to snap and punch the stepbrother. This time, the letter of complaint is played dead seriously, as a PSB officer attacking a civilian is not an incident Shimotsuki can just brush aside like the previous times, and she chews Kei out in her office, suspends him, and orders him to get a Psycho-Pass evaluation and go to counseling.
    • Episode 19 reveals that about 99 percent of future Japan's food supply is based on genetically engineered "Hyper-Oats"; even, presumably, the meat products people have been shown eating. The same week this episode came out, there was a lot of press about that a lot of mass-produced food products throughout the world are not what they seemed: Horse meat popped up in some of Europe's meat supply as well as in IKEA's meatballs and Anheuser-Busch brewers were charged with significantly watering down their beers.
    • In January 2013, roughly halfway through the show's run, Edward Snowden went public with the details of the NSA's PRISM program, making the premise of the show even more relevant.
    • The riots that occurred in Episodes 15 to 16 came really close to home where a riot also occurred in Ferguson, Missouri in response to a policeman shooting African-American teenager Michael Brown in 2014.
    • Kamui's backstory of being the sole survivor of the plane crash, which killed 205 people became more horrifying that two weeks after the show ended, AirAsia QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea en route from Indonesia to Singapore which resulted to 162 casualties. Coincidentally before Season 2 aired, two passenger plane incidents occurred in 2014: The missing Flight MH370 which presumably crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean with 239 people still missing and Flight MH17 which crashed in Ukraine after being shot down by a missile during the ongoing pro-Russian unrest in the country, resulting to the deaths of 298 people.
    • Shuusei Kagari is branded as a latent criminal at a young age but he never shows signs of committing crimes. This became very disturbing when his English voice actor, Scott Freeman, got arrested in 2015 for possession of child pornography which ended his voice acting career.
    • In 2019 it was found that the Chinese government was using a smartphone app called IJOP to monitor the personal histories of many citizens in Xinjiang as well as using facial recognition cameras and "reeducation" centers, which is very similar to what the Sibyl System does.
  • He's Just Hiding: The Stinger of the Season 3 finale shows Yayoi, dying after her car was crushed by a fallen beam. Many fans refused to accept that she's dead because she's one of the original characters with the shortest screentime in the previous seasons only to have more relevance in the third season. Fortunately in First Inspector, she's only in critical condition and is slowly recovering at the end of the movie.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • I Knew It!: Not too surprisingly, considering the show's excellent use of clever foreshadowing.
    • Kougami used to be an Inspector.
    • Also Shogo being immune to the Sibyl System.
    • Masaoka being Ginoza's dad. Due to the mention of Ginoza's father being a latent criminal combined with Masaoka's age and fatherly air, many fans guessed it episodes before it was revealed.
    • In Episode 16, everyone who thought Kagari would be the first of the main cast to die were proven right.
    • Quite a few people guessed that the Sibyl System was powered by the brains of Criminally Asymptomatic people. Episode 17 proved them right.
    • In the second season, viewers were sure that the plane crash briefly mentioned in episode 2 would turn out to be important, because an airplane appears prominently in the opening. They were right.
    • There were viewers who guessed that Togane was connected or related to the Sibyl System in some way due to the opening hinting so, they were totally right. One of the Sibyl Systems brains is his mothers. He works for her!
    • Many viewers correctly guessed that Mao is one of the Bifrost "foxes" within the PSB. But by the time this was revealed, Mao is already going a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Iron Woobie: Akane. Even after being put through hell in Season 1, she still maintains her clear Psycho-pass and continues to look at the positives in life (although now she's fully aware of all the negatives too).
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: Season 2 has only 11 episodes, half of what Season 1 had. On the first glance, the 8 episodes of Season 3 look even worse, but each episode was twice as long as episodes of the other seasons. Combined with First Inspector, a direct continuation of S3, they are as long as Season 1 was.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • Masaoka is Ginoza's father.
    • The Sibyl System is a Wetware CPU composed of the brains of criminally asymptomatic people.
    • Shinya leaves the bureau near the end of Season 1.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Ginoza. His view on Enforcers as "dogs" and trust on the Sibyl System completely is due to fear of being demoted into a latent criminal which already happened to his father and his partner. It doesn't help that his Psycho-Pass is slowly getting cloudy and eventually, he ends up being demoted to Enforcer after watching his dad die to save his life.
    • Mika by the end of Season 2. See Alas, Poor Scrappy above.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • Fans who don't want to watch Season 2 due to Kougami's absence only watch Episodes 7 and 10 because he's there despite appearing for only one minute and existing only in Akane's mind. When the trailer of the movie came out, a lot of people were excited about it because Kougami would finally show up.
    • There are fans who only watch Season 3 because they want to see the original Division 1 members, particularly Akane, Ginoza and Kougami.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Season 1:
      • Shogo Makishima is a Serial Killer obsessed with the inner darkness of human nature. Swaying others into becoming killers themselves to help damage and tear apart the current society, Makishima then eliminates them when they disappoint him or serve their purpose, and begins cultivating inspector Shinya Kogami as his chosen nemesis as he schemes to destroy the oppressive Sibyl System. Forming multiple plans to tear the system down, it is revealed Sibyl in fact wants Makishima to join its Hive Mind, which he lethally rejects by murdering their emissary, declaring that his loyalty is to his own individuality and he will keep playing his games by his own will. Even after all his forces are beaten, Makishima sets out on a lone wolf attack, nearly bringing all of Japan to its knees by destroying the centralized food plant. Cultured, charming, manipulative and ruthless beyond measure, Makishima will stop at nothing to impose his vision of freedom upon Japan and revel in the resulting chaos.
      • Choe Gu-sung is a Korean war survivor and Shogo Makishima's best friend and intellectual equal. Acting as liaison between Makishima and their clients, Choe provides them the resources to commit crime in the Sibyl System's "perfect" Japan as part of the revolution the duo seek. Also a genius programmer, Choe uses his abilities to distract the entire nation's security forces while he and Makishima deduce the location of and assault the building housing Sibyl's mainframe. Hacking through all its defenses and using his words to distract the Enforcer tailing him, Choe comes moments to exposing the undetectable criminal brains used to run Sibyl to the world and his death motivates Makishima to carry on their goal.
    • Season 2: Kirito Kamui was surgically made into a collective being as a child after he alone survived a plane crash indirectly caused by a precursor to the Sibyl System and now seeks its betterment for humanity. A master psychotherapist, Kamui gets his followers' crime coefficients below judgeable levels, making them all the more threatening. Engineering a series of daring attacks, Kamui surmises the physical location of the Sibyl System and forces it to remove a number of corrupted brains from itself so that it can judge his collective mind, dying satisfied with the impact he made.
  • Memetic Molester: Tougane. His way of wanting to "darken" Akane's hue is creepy even without his Stalker Shrine, and his manhandling of Mika can be borderline rape. Fanarts presented him being overly dark and creepy and a bonifide stalker.
  • Memetic Mutation: See here.
  • Misaimed Fandom: After Episode 11, Makishima has picked up a nice pair of leather pants with parts of the fandom. Is anyone surprised?
  • Misblamed: Tow Ubukata got a lot of flak from fans for the mediocrity of Season 2. An ANN interview revealed that he just "filled in the blanks" after he was told of the plot of the movie. While some had forgiven him for this since it can be a case of Executive Meddling, others find it an excuse to justify the staleness of Season 2 and that he should have done better. Of course, there are other factors why Season 2 didn't live up much to the first one.
  • Moe: Regardless what the staff says about "banning moe", there are some characters who several fans want to protect in an anime where Anyone Can Die:
    • Hinakawa in Season 2. He's Adorkable, shy and stutters a lot. Most fans are praying that he doesn't die. And at the end of Season 2, he survives!
    • Kagari who was detected as a latent criminal at the age of 6 but is a Manchild. Sadly, he dies in Episode 16 of Season 1 and several of his fans are still mourning for him.
    • Akane. Yes, even her due to her character design which basically screams "Moe!" and having an adorable jellyfish hologram and moeblob avatar of her. Even though she matures as the series progresses, she still keeps a lot of cute aspects.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • An in-universe example in Season 2. Akane promptly decides Kitazawa is beyond redemption when he detonates a bomb that kills a lot of people... and this was after she had already gone out of her way to bring him in alive and give him a second chance. Even her patience has limits.
    • As revealed in Episode 9, Tougane already crossed the line after he killed a puppy as part of his mother's experiment back when he was a kid. And then he kills Akane's grandmother offscreen just to darken her hue.
    • Kobuo Okura may elicit sympathy at first due to his being a normal Salaryman mistreated by society for getting a bad Psycho-Pass one time, but he loses all sympathy points when he rapes his hostage.
  • Narm:
    • The gibs-explodey death of the criminal in the first episode was a bit... gratuitous. Since this appears to be a standard function of the Dominators, this happens many more times.
    • Shinya getting worked up in the second episode and Akane's reaction. It was a dramatic scene, but the Melodrama and Akane's Off-Model face made it... less dramatic. This is without even mentioning Kogami's happy face.
    • Episode 17 has Kogami waking to drink some coffee quietly and... Holy crap!
    • Episode 18 has the funniest looking facial expressions ever.
    • Episode 19: HYPER OATS.
    • Episode 20: Be careful, Kogami, Makishima is stealing your happiness.
    • The ending animation theme of Episode 14 (Episode 7 in the New Edit), which first featured EGOIST's "All Alone With You", shows all the main cast naked from the torso up. It doesn't help that the effects used in the animation made it more cringe-worthy. Fortunately, it was changed in the following episodes.
    • Season 2's 9th episode was almost non-stop Nightmare Fuel. Sort of. Unfortunately, the Dominators being used so many times per episode is diminishing their impact, and some find Tougane's puppy killing scene to be so evil it's almost cartoonish. He also refuses to stop smirking evilly every 5 seconds he's on screen.
    • Season 3 has the heroes investigate a cult where the lowest-ranking members are referred to as "Bottoms", and the term comes up in dialogue repeatedly.
  • One True Pairing: Though there's no romance, the majority of the fandom supports Shinya/Akane, considering that there's a lot of Ship Tease in both seasons and the movie. The second season ramps it up where Akane imagines talking to Shinya while discussing the Kamui case and doing second-hand smoking with the same brand of cigarettes that Shinya smoked.
  • Only the Creator Does It Right:
    • Those who really disliked Season 2 feel that Ubukuta doesn't live up to what Urobuchi established in Season 1, particularly how several elements were used such as the characters (old and new) and the Sibyl System's portrayal and how the first half devoted much on the shock and gore. And at the end of the season, it feels like there wasn't much impact on the characters (except for Mika) and the setting itself. Because of this, a lot of viewers have expressed their excitement and approval towards the movie which is almost entirely unaffected by Season 2's story and is written by Urobuchi & Makoto Fukami, the same duo behind the first season.
    • Even though Urobuchi didn't return to write for the Sinners of the System movie trilogy and Season 3, many fans also consider Makoto Fukami, the co-writer of Season 1, the 2015 movie and the movie trilogy, as the true successor to what Urobuchi established. When it was announced that Ubukuta was in charge of the series composition for Season 3 while Fukami would be one of the scriptwriters, some are cautiously optimistic that the latter would fix the flaws that Season 2 made.
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • The whole notion of "quantifying" mentalities and arresting potential criminals (and occasionally executing them) before they've even committed a crime. (Yes, it's been done before, but that doesn't make it much less scary of a concept). And to make matters worse, even an innocent victim can have their Psycho-Pass hue clouded and their Crime Coefficient raised simply by the emotional stress of being victimized, to the point that they themselves can end up targeted for law enforcement action. Nor are Inspectors safe, since the better they understand the criminal mind, the more it affects their own Crime Coefficient, and at least three Inspectors have been demoted to Enforcer by getting so caught up in a case that their Crime Coefficients skyrocketed.
    • In the second season, Kamui's disguises means he could be anyone and anywhere.
    • Also from the second season, we have several people across the city playing a harmless mobile game, unaware that they're controlling homicidal drones and gunning down innocent civilians and Enforcers. The very next episode ends with their mobile devices being hacked and showing the damage they caused. Imagine texting or playing a game on your phone and then suddenly, dead bodies everywhere.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Many fans who started out the show hating Akane grew to like her as she took several levels in badass and gained a more mature, if still positive, worldview.
    • Some people didn't like Ginoza in Season 1 due to his behavior towards the Enforcers and for being a typical By-the-Book Cop. But everyone felt sorry for him when his father died in front of him, and he ended up being demoted to an Enforcer. Come Season 2, he Took a Level in Badass and Kindness, and was much more likable.
    • Mika who was hated for her incompetence and jerkassery finally went through much needed Character Development in Sinners of the System. Not only does she put her detective skills to good use, but she is also much kinder to the members of her team, particularly Ginoza. She is also much more courageous and was willing to take on latent criminals head-on even as she was Trapped Behind Enemy Lines completely outnumbered. This extends into Season 3, where she is now the chief of Division 1 and has grown into a tough but fair boss. Some viewers have even noted that her rougher personality fits much better for a desk job authority figure than as an agent in the field.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Some fans have decided that Makishima is justified in trying to bring down the Sibyl System. Considering the Sibyl System is one of the most corrupt things in fiction... He's kind of right.
  • The Scrappy: Mika in Season 2, due to her rudeness to Akane and Ginoza, overall lack of competence and unshakable belief in Sibyl.
  • Shocking Moments:
  • Spiritual Licensee: This is about the closest thing there is to an anime adaptation of Minority Report and Judge Dredd.
  • Sophomore Slump: Season 2 is derided for being mediocre and rushed with a boring storyline which is a rehash from Season 1 storyline and new characters which the viewers don't care much. Season 3 managed to fix some of the damages such as new characters that made the viewers care, reworking Mika's personality and an interesting storyline.
  • Squick:
    • Rikako is seen sleeping naked with another naked girl in her bed. Then, it turns out that the girl in question is already dead.
    • Kougami was reading a case file to Akane about a politician who was murdered with his hippocampus cut out and shoved into his anus!
  • Take That, Scrappy!:
    • In Episode 5 of Season 2, Kasei looks annoyed when Mika reprimanded Akane's actions as if it were a bad thing. When Mika leaves the office, Kasei states that she "will get eaten alive". And a majority of the fans agreed with her.
    • Then in Episode 6, Jyoji Saiga has to tell her to stop whining and just do her job as an Inspector when a Psycho-Hazard breaks out.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Sibyl System's portrayal in Season 2. In Season 1, it was morally ambiguous Well-Intentioned Extremist system, with its main intentions being creating a peaceful, ordered and safe society with some faults in the form of Utopia Justifies the Means attitude. It worked, being effective against most criminals and keeping most citizens safe, to the point that even Akane had to admit that. However in Season 2, it's portrayed as a downright evil Big Bad, with numerous Kick the Dog moments, years-old conspiracies to stay in power and butchering its own workforce for no apparent reason.
    • It's later indicated that at least some of its erratic behavior is because Kamui's existence is such an aberration that it is causing the System to suffer a kind of Heroic BSoD because of the gaping flaws he exposes in Sibyl, and it has gone into a state of deep denial causing it to act in an irrational manner.
    • Following after the above, one major criticism of Season 3 is that the Sibyl System is essentially background fodder for the whole season, which is the very core identity of the franchise. Some viewers have derided the third season for being Psycho-Pass In Name Only and that there isn't too much that separates the final product from most other generic Police Procedurals. While Sibyl was also sidelined for Case 2 & 3 of Sinners of the System, they were side stories; it's a different matter entirely to do it for an entire season.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Yayoi does not undergo any important event or do anything of importance for the entire series, and some were bothered by how she appeared to be there just for the Les Yay. It's telling that, if she had never existed, the plot wouldn't have changed in the slightest. She was the only Enforcer to get a full-fledged flashback episode and even that didn't tell us much about her that we didn't already know; her connection to Rina became an Aborted Arc when Season 2 came and probably won't be revisited. What's worse is that she only had one line in the movie! Fortunately, the first Sinners of the System movie and Season 3 gave her a huge role.
    • Choe Guseong. Although he was important plot-wise, he never got any Character Development or had his motives explained, especially disappointing because Korean characters are so uncommon in anime. In the context of this show this was doubly disappointing because he was the only foreign character, full stop: It would have been interesting if he had provided some context on how other countries view Japan's Sibyl System.
      • His character gets developed in the novel but it was censored due to what happens to his country is close to what happened in real life.
    • Shusei Kagari only gets the focus in about two scenes, neither of which are followed up on: In the first he reveals that he was declared a latent criminal at age five and subsequently hates both SIBYL and Akane for saying that making choices was a problem, in the second he's offered the chance to join the villains and destroy SIBYL. The first doesn't actually affect how he and Akane get along and the second just results in Kagari giving a speech refusing the villain before he's killed off. He could have offered perspective on those who grow up marginalised by the Sibyl System, but that's never explored and he never really provides any insight into investigations. The New Edit gives him an additional scene where he muses on what life was like for him when he was living in a containment cell for years right before he's killed off.
    • This is how many felt about Ginoza who's now an Enforcer in Season 2. The second season doesn't utilize much of him, particularly his contribution to Akane's case on Kamui, his feelings and viewpoints on being an Enforcer or how he copes with Aoyonagi's death. Since he's a major character in Season 1, viewers were very disappointed that he had less screentime in Season 2. While he is given the spotlight in the first Siners of the System, he goes back into being Demoted to Extra due to being transferred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs between the movie trilogy and Season 3 with no explanation.
    • Not quite the same, but a similar case applies to Mika. Her background was that she moved on from the trauma of losing a friend and became an inspector. She was handed over to Akane's care and introduced the same way as Akane from Season 1. These backgrounds sets up some high expectations for the character which, in the eyes of most, she never fulfilled.
    • There is a faction who go the other way and feel what they tried doing with Mika (making a foil for Akane who would break upon learning the truth rather than choose to stand against it) was an interesting idea, but just not handled well, partially because Akane never really reacts to all the shit that Mika sends her way, so we never see them properly interact on that level.
    • Risa Aoyanagi was an Action Girl who was cynical when it came to her job but was also sensitive and caring to those she cared for. She has great chemistry with Ginoza, she seemed as though she'd be more fleshed out and become a major character in Season 2, and she proves in Episode 4 that, despite being nearly naked, handcuffed, and thrown into a light fixture, she still holds her own. Then she's brutally killed, by her own Enforcer, no less, and she's only mentioned a few times afterwards. Fortunately, the Sinners of the System - First Guardian movie managed to make up for her appearance where she's in a good working relationship with Masaoka and Sugo.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • It would've been great to see a romance subplot between Ginoza and Aoyanagi in Season 2, as it was hinted that they could start dating at some point, but the subplot is thrown out the door once Aoyanagi is killed.
    • None of Season 2's events has any effect on the movie particularly with the system being capable of judging a collective which has nothing to do with how they segregate and screen the normal civilians from the latent criminals in Shamballa and how they send Akane to SEAUn so they can make an excuse to have the latent criminals in the military police terminated which they already knew at the start. With the exception of Mika being a Yes-Man to the system and being antagonistic to Akane along with the introduction of Hinakawa and Teppei, many people treated Season 2 as non-canon.
  • Too Cool to Live:
  • Tough Act to Follow:
    • Tow Ubukata takes the reins from Urobuchi in writing Season 2, but the second season didn't live up the first , especially in how the old characters were used. It doesn't help that it's revealed that Ubukata was asked to "fill in the blanks" because of the movie, so either you believe this is a case of Executive Meddling or just an excuse for not doing a good job.
    • Season 2's Big Bad, Kirito Kamui, is widely considered boring: Unlike Shogo Makishima, whose very interesting characterization made him a borderline Draco in Leather Pants, Kamui's in-universe reputation seems unearned. When his Dark and Troubled Past is finally revealed, it's considered ridiculous and convoluted due to a combination of MST3K Mantra and Artistic License – Medicine. In fact, many anime fans remembered Makishima as one of the greatest antagonists made by Urobuchi while Kamui is quickly forgotten afterwards.
    • Season 3's Big Bad, Bifrost, is even worse: nobody, not even the viewers, knew what their endgame is until First Inspector where they're using the debugging system to get around the Sibyl system just to leech off money. The two "Congressmen", Shirogane and Kyoko, don't have much depth making the viewers care less about them even after their defeats while Homura turns out to be working for the Sibyl System so he destroy Bifrost from within. Though one of the members, Azusawa, is portrayed as a compelling villain since he rarely underestimates the PSB in Season 3 and outsmarts everybody, except the Sibyl System, in First Inspector, his real motive is to join the system due to his god complex until the system deems him unworthy, causing him to go under a Villainous Breakdown.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
    • Senguji externally looks like a human, but he's almost completely a cyborg. This is most evident during his interview in Episode 9, where his eyes are completely unblinking and hollow and his smile looks unnaturally stuck on his face.
    • The CEO at the drone factory also qualifies under this trope. He's drawn in an unusually realistic style compared to most other characters in the series, which becomes pretty jarring in a few unflattering close-ups of his mug showing his mouth to move with the same mouth-flap style typically seen when it comes to anime characters. His cheerful disposition doesn't make him any less creepy either.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Considering that her best friend was murdered in Season 1, a lot of people expect that this would be Mika's motivation as an Inspector... except that she comes off as Know-Nothing Know-It-All complainer who's jealous of Akane and tries to get her fired. When that backfired, she was confronted by the Sibyl System who used her information to get Togane kill Akane's grandmother. Though her situation in the last episodes is considered to be Alas, Poor Scrappy, the movie erased all that sympathy and made her more obnoxious to point of keeping Akane in the dark regarding the Sibyl System's true plans and calling her dense for not figuring it out. And due to having less screentime, she seemed to move on with getting Akane's grandmother killed after she denies that none of it is her fault.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: English-speaking viewers are more likely to pronounce Nobuchika Ginoza's last name with a "g" as in "general", but the proper Japanese pronunciation is like the "g" in "girl".
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: With special mention to the Commu-Fields in Episode 4 of Season 1.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Season 3 does go out of its way to explore the issue of immigration and racism, with one of it's main characters (Kei) being an immigrant himself. This becomes especially apparent within the last few episodes, where the issue becomes a standpoint with the Heaven's Leap follower bombing immigrant hotspots and Kei's actions in the first few episodes being twisted to the point that he had to be let go from Karina's bodyguard personnel. It's hard to overlook that this may have been intentional on the writers' part, especially with this sociopolitical climate of the recent decade or so.
  • The Woobie: That poor girl in the first episode.

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