Anime/Psycho-pass

Hmmm I have been hearing good stuff about this work lately and I am interested by the premise....

Time to binge after I get through finals without hopefully throwing my head into a wall.

Basically, think of the show as being a mix of Equilibrium, Minority Report, and Judge Dredd. It is every bit as awesome as that sounds.

Well I can say so far that I love it. Seems exactly my taste and the designs are wonderful. The criminal in that first episode was also played pretty well, that guy was disturbingly realistic for someone who snapped.

Edit: The second latent criminal was also pretty disturbingly realistic too as I have read about crazy loony fans like that and have seen people like that. I loved the design of the online avatars though and I find it amusing that we might have something like that in Real Life decades from now.

edited 17th Dec '15 4:34:30 PM by Bleddyn

Having seen Season 1 and now 2, do you know which character I really hate in this franchise? Akane.

Akane is the ultimate fucking bystander. She KNOWS how fucked up the system is and doesn't truly do anything to actually change it from most I've seen. She just goes about being it's enforcer because of her blind hope in the law, which is a dumb concept here because she KNOWS that the law is literally being exploited.

I really hate how black and white she is about it too! Or her bullshit like" You could have gone about it non-violently" at times when she literally knows how Sybils judgments work. And all her talk about "someday someone will come along" is weak because it's just her passing the buck to someone else to do what's necessary, which of course she won't truly help matters because SHE'S A HURDLE TO OVERCOME ANYWAY!

Fuck Akane. She ended both season 1 and 2 the same at her core: a pawn of a corrupt system that exploits and perverts order. In fact, I say she's worse than when she was an ignorant pawn at the beginning because she consciously chooses this existence in spite of how negative it is and fragile it is. If she truly wants change and for order to be restored, she'd do what she can to shepherd a new order, not further enable an old one. And this isn't a case of me feeling working from the inside doesn't have a case, it's just that this is an extreme situation where Sybil is a dictator and is the law. There is no other law to turn to. There is no means of internal reform outside of rebellion sooner or later. All it takes is revealing the true nature of Sybil too, which she can do. Sure, there is going to be some chaos, but that's inevitable no longer how long they take since Sybil doesn't offer any peaceful alternative to resist it. And once humanity reclaims it's, well, humanity, can then work to build a better society, learning from the mistakes of old. This world is at such an extreme state along in how horrible it is as well as leaves no viable options to resist it without being taken down that it's first time I've ever felt extreme destructive measures on a mass scale that would even harm innocent people are necessary and that sickens me. And that the sacrifice is worth it in the long run. After all, instead of approaching the law as black & white like Akane still does without her appearing to ever think of anything actually viable (she just spouts out abstract concepts, but I've yet to get any actual depth out of her on how to make the world better), I think it would have shown her losing her naivety like people claim she did if by placing her faith in people to build a better world in spite of the initial struggle they'll have outside of Sybil as opposed to the ideal concept of the law. She failed to really think things out long term wise.

And I hate that the series tries to always make her appear right for this as opposed to giving us someone reasonable who challenges her worldviews on law or just tell her she's right anyway. For all the talk about her growing out of her naivety, I didn't see it. She's more competent, no doubt, but her fundamental failing has never changed in my eyes. I'm not saying she needs to become a cynic, I'm saying her faith is misplaced because she's a slave to her subjective reality that harms so many others and all she's done is sustain the fundamental problems longer.

So yeah, I really don't like Akane. She's complicit with every negative thing Sybil does after she learned what she did.

And now that I'm presently watching the movie, this whole "Every location in the entire world is at war and there is no decency outside of what is forced by Sybil" is one of the most stupid things I have ever heard. This has always been a shit backdrop for the series, but what the hell. Akane's preachy side with Season 1 end, at points in Season 2, and now this writing to try and justify Sybil bullshit and, hell, rationalize a dictatorship & her choice to choose a dictatorship because that's supposedly the only way to gain a peaceful existence are all just putting me in a foul mood.

As an aside, I actually didn't mind Season 2. It wasn't Season 1, but Season 1 has it's varies flaws too and I came into Season 2 prepared, so was able to appreciate various other ideas and elements in it.

edited 9th Jan '16 7:11:26 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

Plus if every part of the world is at war one of the best ways to get them to unite is to give them a common enemy. If Japan is the only country prospering then that means the other nations can go in and invade. No matter how many weapons Japan has its still one small country and they could go and try to take those hyper oats and other stuff like that.

Edit: Plus I have a feeling it's Unreliable Narrator more than anything. Kogami definitely cannot be trusted because he wants a fight and only tries to delude himself into thinking otherwise. Even the hallucination of everyones favorite villain points out that he's just a dog chasing his prey and that's just the kind of person he is.

edited 30th Dec '15 2:33:55 AM by OmegaRadiance

I wish I could say it's an Unreliable Narrator type thing, but nothing came up to challenge it so I choose to take it at face value. Plus logic like that doesn't necessarily apply to Psycho-Pass.

Everyone we heard it from was in SE Au N's corrupt government or Sibyl and to be honest neither of those were trustworthy either.

This is true there, especially with Sybil, but still, I see no reason for both sides to lie about that. Sybil, yes, the rebels confirming what Sybil says, not so much.

It could be wrong, but still, given what we saw so far, I'd assume it's fact and this entire setting is just stupid. It being a stupid setting because that's what the plot needs it to be is more consistent with me than everybody who brings up the state of the world outside of Sybil and the example scenario we see which represents the hold world being liars. Both have problems, but one of them requires tons of conjecture and theorizing based on possibilities while another we have more concrete support for it.

edited 10th Jan '16 1:57:17 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

Yeah, my objections exactly. The notion that DAWMFG ENTIRE WORLD AT WAR EXCEPT SYBIL is really really dumb, but we don't really have good reason to doubt it.

Maybe there was a zombie apocalypse?

Would make as much realistic sense as most things with this franchise.

My guess is because this series runs so much on Humans Are Bastards and trying to run with idea of Sybil working under Hobbes Was Right, but it's hard to conceivable portray Sybil as anything but an absolute black without trying to create an extreme equal to it. And the problem with the extreme that it takes to justify it literally just says that humanity will destroy itself without a Nanny state. And if we're supposed to believe in humanity, the show barely does anything to inspire such faith.

Also, real quick again, fuck Akane and all her preachiness about the law. She's this world's equivalent of the 1% telling the 99% on how they should act, given that she has freedom practically nobody else ever gets and the ability to actually choose.

...She just REALLY set me off when Kogami is painted purely as being selfish guy in the wrong and he agrees with her or what's his face in Season 2 when she dared to say to him that he could have rebelled against Sybil peacefully and that other options exist.

edited 10th Jan '16 3:04:50 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

I wonder if we will ever see the Sybilla System being defeated.

English dubbed trailer ahoy!:

Funimation's bringing the film to cinemas for you folks in the U.S. on March 15 & 16. Here's their official page for the film.

And yes, that's Jason Liebrecht (Nicholas Wong) in another Hiroshi Kamiya role after Noragami.

Any guess when they will post the list of theatres it's coming to?

edited 3rd Feb '16 10:26:58 AM by moberemk

Watched season 1 about a month ago on Netflix and loved it. Going through again on Bluray.

Is the second season good? I don't hang on a lot of anime sites, so I don't have a good feel for how people see it. I know I can just stream it free anywhere online, but if it's good I'd love to see it on Bluray first.

Yeah, I know, think for myself. It's just that I'm cheap and I don't usually buy shows without having seen them somewhere first.

edited 20th Feb '16 2:52:53 PM by ArbitraryValues

Depends on you really. Some people don't like it and some do for various reasons.

Season 2 is a massive case of Tough Act to Follow.

That's helpful. And yeah, I figured that ultimately I won't know until I see for myself. Still, I figured it might help to get an idea of what critics didn't like about it.

If it helps anyone understand me a bit more, I really enjoyed the characters in this show. I was afraid going into it that it would be action-oriented but was pleasantly surprised (not trying to sound condescending towards action or anything, but that's how I felt).

So I guess I'll like season 2 if there's good character stuff.

Fairy warning, Season 2 isn't really about the characters besides Akane. It's not nearly as good as the original season, but I'd say it's still watchable.

Honestly though, if you find yourself not loving it, you can pretty safely just skip ahead to the movie. The movie is a much better continuation of the first series and it's a very entertaining ride, doing a good job with bringing back the Akane/Kougami relationship.

What Season 2 does

• Show Akane being more competent and less hesitant to get her hands dirty (still no killing though)
• Ginoza has taken to his new role as a Enforcer quite nicely. He pretty much is a younger version of his father. Sadly he is not given very much screen time despite that interesting development
• You know that one sole girl that survived Rikako's art crusade? After accidentally sending her friend to her horrible death no less? Well she returns in Season 2 as the newly minted Inspector Mika. The problem with her is her attitude towards Enforcers can get very grating really fast. She ended up becoming The Scrappy in some fans eyes.
• The sole antagonist of this season just simply could not compare to Shinya's brand of evil in the last one. The latent criminals are also lacking.
• A lot of the new characters die pointless deaths which is rather unfortunate considering Season 1 handled that pretty well.

Snap, sounds like I might not like the second season.

So about the movie, will it make sense having skipped the second season? Also I can't seem to see it on Blu-ray on Amazon. Does it not exist yet??

I personally liken the second season to that of Robocop 2. Meaning that it focues too much on shock value and violence while leaving behind the subtleties and themes that made the first one so good.

Or, to compare it to one of the biggest stories that the series is influenced by in terms of quality, if the first season was Dredd, then the second is Judge Dredd, and not even containing the moments of unintentional hilarity that at least that film had that made it fun to watch:

Just skip ahead to the movie if you can.

edited 20th Feb '16 8:40:43 PM by LDragon2

http://www.siliconera.com/2016/02/22/nis-america-localizing-psycho-pass-mandatory-happiness/

North America, here it comes.

No Xbox 1.

Just finished my re-watch and it was even more glorious the second time, especially the final episode. :D :D

edited 23rd Feb '16 3:18:46 PM by ArbitraryValues

Desperately trying to find out if a nearby theater is playing the movie next week. Funimation has a theater locator, yes, but since there are none in my immediate area it just tells me nothing. So I don't know how to find the closest one.

Anyone know of a list of the theaters?

So I was looking through people's thoughts on the series, and I came across this one rather lengthy critique of it (Wall of Text Warning):

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

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

Psycho Pass's setting is the future, when technology can now measure a person’s stress levels as means to estimate if it’s unstable and violent. Basically you get this numeric scale, if you pass the safety limit you need medical treatment, and if you refuse it or get to danger zones, they send people after you to capture or kill you. The police are using such people with high numbers in their missions, as means to fight fire with fire. And said people are armed with specially designed guns that measure the target and decide the proper course of action. It sure has some very interesting themes regarding morality in it. Here are some I have pinpointed.

- Is it ok to treat someone as a criminal without having committed a crime, just because his “soul” reads negative?

- Is it ok to shoot at people just because you are ordered to?

- Won’t a criminal be pushed into doing far more violent actions if he is told he can’t be treated as a citizen anymore?

- Is it ok to treat other people in an inhumane way, as long as you manage to keep your head cool?

- Does life have any significance if it’s devoid of pain and suffering?

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

The setting is dystopian, so nothing is really rosy in it. The society depicted in the show is messed up and the security system is all full of loop holes and things that make no sense. Basically, you see lots of neat stuff regarding “how they work” but very little regarding “why they are as such”. And that is why I never liked Urobucher’s plot-driven/shock factor overflow stories. Everything may sound nice on paper and shinny on screen but when you try to analyze them, they are all confusing and contradictory.

They are never elaborated past the obvious, since as soon as one case is over, so are its themes. I especially don’t like how he never gives free will to his characters and strives mostly to manipulate the emotions of the superficial viewers instead of elaborating upon his concepts. The result is a show full of annoyance and derp moments for not having characters with an actual opinion of the world they are living in. What follows is an analysis of all the interesting stuff you can find in this show and how they fare when analyzed.

1) Concept: The police are using criminals to capture other criminals. They don’t want the police officers to experience too much stress that will raise them to dangerous levels. But it’s ok to use those that have already crossed the limit, since there is no salvation for them. Technically, the police is fighting fire with fire by letting someone else to lit the fuse, not risking to think or act like those that it tries to lock away.

Analysis: That is a bit silly of course, since the criminals are unstable to be considered trustworthy, forced like slaves to capture others like them. Plus it is stressful to have police officers LOOKING at these atrocious crimes, even if they don’t need to personally press the trigger against the criminals. In fact some of them end up becoming criminals because of that. One could say that the present police force is not any better, as many police officers are corrupt or become too violent because of their jobs, and there are many cases where they use criminals in order to uncover and arrest other criminals. The investigators of the show are not a better variant, just a different one.

2) Concept: New police officers are completely oblivious to what they are supposed to do. They don’t even know how to hold a gun.

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

3) Concept: The educational system of such a society is useless outside of academics and theoretical knowledge. It is hard to be so advanced in the first place, if its citizens are incapable of doing anything after they graduate.

Analysis: Machines are supposed to do all the actual labour and dangerous parts in any profession, leaving the human factor as an observer who just presses buttons. This is why everybody acts in a very simple way, like they are mentally challenged. It is not better to our system, just different. This is even used in a smart way for narrative purposes, as the heroine is so oblivious; the others need to explain the tiniest detail to her. Indirectly this expands to the audience and thus we get a sort of excused infodump about everything that is going on.

4) Concept: The heroine decided to be a police officer even when she could have become anything else she liked. Her mental stability, combined with her will to help her society and learn more about how it works fundamentally made her the ideal candidate.

Analysis: Well, that is sort of weak, since she literally acts like a scared girl scout amongst ruthless murderers and rapists. We never get any more reasoning than “Well I want to help my society so I might as well expose myself to violence and death.” In our society, nobody would agree to that if he wasn’t in for the money or the action. The nihilistic way of life in the series just leaves this to be sort of like deciding to become a criminal hunter instead of a florist just because your brain can take the heat. Where is the motivation in that? Nowhere.

Now if you ask me, is there really something wrong in this sort of a concept, when to the most part it is so well presented and excused to the most part? Well, the most basic problem it has is the same most dystopian stories have. Instead of being presented as a society that is different to our own but still viable, it is presented as a fake paradise that ends up being worse than our own. They are presented as if their systems of government are pure evil or amoral to the point they become hated from the average person of today. The ones that manage to get over this snag are those that manage to excuse themselves as being grey (not good or evil) or at least trying to maintain their control even after their usage is over (clinging to the past out of fear of change). Anime like Ghost in the Shell and Shinsekai Yori manage to succeed at that, Psycho-pass doesn’t; it feels so evil and non-viable it becomes loathed very fast.

Especially after they reveal what the Sybil system really is and how it works; it is making you think the leaders of this society are all devilish pedophiles who drink the blood of the dead and kick puppies when bored. And then they expect you to believe it is a system that works purely on rationality and that it was established with little to no problem. This also becomes evident when you realize how each case the characters face is a crime based on the weaknesses of the system. It is constantly showing us how it DOESN’T work, instead of how it helps its people to live a happy life when it works. It is a sort of a farce, unreal and impossible to appreciate as an alternative lifestyle. They are telling you to hate it on every step of the way and thus make you lose interest in thinking about its possible beneficial aspects.

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

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

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

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

Episodes 3, 6, 10 & 15: There are supposed to be scanners and droids in every street of the city, measuring the population for possible high crime rates. Yet there is actually very little monitoring done, to the point it is extremely easy to do a crime and move around unnoticed. For a system that is based on making everything measurable and controllable, it is doing a very crappy job. In effect, it doesn’t really matter what kind of a system of justice this show has; it all comes down to failing for not having complete surveillance of the city.

Just imagine how much better it would be if every person had a GPS implant in his body or there were scanners in every house. And yes, it would happen without anyone complaining about personal life; since they are all midless sheep who believe everything they are told. They agreed to create a society where they are treated as morons, they will agree to have no personal space too. The funny part is that the same studio had created Loups=Garous back in 2010, which had the EXACT surveillance system I describe and also shared many similarities regarding a highly monitored world ruled by assholes.

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

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

Episode 11: There is a man whose crime levels are low no matter what he does. He is supposed to judge the system and even to seek its destruction but in effect he is one big asspull, since he can do anything he likes by magically not being subjected to the universal laws of the show. He is supposed to be the cruel but true voice of reason in the show but it is kind of pointless to hear “drugs are bad” from someone who is immune to a mountain of dope. It’s like that asshole Touma in Index, who has the liberty to throw around morality speeches and hoard all the chicks, just because he is the only one who can cancel out any superpower. No shit smarty pants, I can too challenge the universe if I can defy gravity or friction. Also, despite the attempt to make all cases to have a connection thanks to this ringleader, they still are pointless in the longrun.

You see, he wants to destroy the status quo by handing over helmets to average civilians that trick crime score scouters. If that was his plan, then he didn’t need those one-episode villains to begin with. Or skip that; he just needed to go to the food refinery and blow it up. Any reason he didn’t do that since episode 1? Of course and there is; you wouldn’t be bombarded with shallow morality and pretentious quoting ala Uroboshi style if the characters in this show weren’t plot devises and had common sense.

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

edited 6th May '16 1:03:01 AM by LDragon2

My thoughts are that you should link to the original post, summarize it and/or quoteblock what you feel is the most important thing, say what you think, and then ask the rest of us what we think.

No offense L, but I skip walls of text as a rule of thumb.