PSYCHO-PASS 2

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionPSYCHO-PASS
MOVIE ActionPSYCHO-PASS Movie
MANGA MysteryPSYCHO-PASS 2

REVIEWS

• 

  ReBuggy

  30/100
  "Have you ever wondered what Psycho-Pass would be like if it were devoid of everything that made it good?"

  Have you ever wondered what Psycho-Pass would be like if it were devoid of everything that made it good? Well, look no further, because Psycho-Pass 2 looks to answer that exact question!

  Psycho-Pass was a fantastic dystopian cyberpunk story. It made frequent (almost too frequent) allusions to great works of literature and philosophy, then explored those ideas in a technologically automated world. It was frequently dark, but the darkness was always to make a certain point. It had a variety of arcs, each emphasizing a different idea or theme, but all leading to a greater conclusion. The nuanced characters were also a selling point for me. In an industry where most shows play it safe by writing archetypes rather than actual characters, Psycho-Pass's leads felt like a breath of fresh air.

  Psycho-Pass 2, however, seems to miss the point of all that. Instead of basing the story around ideas that the world would raise, it attempts to manufacture the first season with new material. While I give the season props for at least understanding the formula of the first season (i.e., separate arcs focusing on an idea that ties into the villain's philosophies), the ideas it explores are all the same basic idea clumsily done in different ways, and when the arcs all finally do come together, it turns out that the concept they're based on is itself clumsy.

  The second season is so concerned with trying to replicate the first season that it completely ignores the world and the characters, investing all its energy into a premise that is itself flawed. Said premise--a variation of the omnipotence paradox--could have made an interesting story. The question "can an all-judging entity judge itself" is one worth asking, but the ideas explored in the first season should have already answered the question with "it doesn't need to because it is above judgment." Worse, in attempting to answer the question, the show directly contradicts certain elements of the first season, such as how the Sibyl System functions or what "criminally asymptomatic" means.

  In addition, Psycho-Pass 2 seems to flat-out miss the point at times. When the first season contained gore, it was usually to demonstrate a point, such as how depraved a certain individuals inner desires were. Most of the gore in the second season is there for shock value and is violence for the sake of violence.

  Finally, let's talk briefly about the characters. The old characters in Psycho-Pass 2 are used with reservation, likely because the upcoming film meant they couldn't be drastically changed. The new characters fall anywhere from uninteresting to offensively bad. I wish I was not able to say that there was more than one character whose entire existence ceased to make sense once their backstory was revealed. But no, the characters either fail to engage or engage on a level that provides negative results.

  Of course, there's plenty of action and violence and a storyline that seems like it's deep and engaging to those who don't know any better. I'd recommend it to people who like Elfen Lied or Tokyo Ghoul, or those who liked Psycho-Pass for the wrong reasons (i.e., it's got violence and cool science fiction stuff in it). To anyone who likes to be engaged on a more meaningful level, though, skip it. Please. It will only succeed in insulting your intelligence and giving you Darker than Black 2 levels of disappointment. Two stars.

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• 

  ThyMrMan

  65/100
  While a decent show, the length means the characters don't have enough time to develop fully.

  Hmmm, how would I sum this up, a show with a ton of potential ruined by the length given to it. With only 11 episodes, it lacked the space to allow the characters and the world of grow and just told us the pure story. Which without the support of character development, felt like it kinda failed to deliver a story that was as strong as Psycho-Pass 1.
  Characters
  The weakest part of this show for me by far. Akane sticks around, and continues to be a strong character. Who as shown in Psycho-Pass 1 will continue to hold onto her beliefs, even when everyone is attempting to make her break. And while I feel she has changed some from Psycho-Pass 1, we don't see a ton of that change. She spends a ton of time moving from plot point to plot point, without any downtime to explore how much Psycho-Pass 1 really effected her. Which seems to be an issue I have with all the characters in Psycho-Pass 2. We get introduced to a number of new characters, many of which had a ton of potential to grow into great characters. Its just that we don't get a chance to see the characters just talk without an imminent threat coming.
  Characters like Sho Hinakawa, get teases occasionally of character development. At least telling us about the history of the character, and yet after a single scene it is never brought up again, and kinda just fades. Until the only thing left of Sho is he is the shy red hair guy who is good at computers.
  The other main Inspector in Psycho-Pass 2; Mika Shimotsuki gets a fair bit of development throughout the show. But can probably but summed up as believing 100% in the system, and doesn't want to deviate from the system. She is said to have a surprisingly clear psycho-pass, but we never really learn why this is. It is just stated as a fact near the end of the show, the only reason really mentioned that I can think of for it being so clear, is her near cultist belief in the system.
  Sakuya Togane, an enemy that was created to be a villain from creation. We get flashes of his backstory, but it is never overly explored. His main drive seems to be the person he sees as his mother, who is now part of the system. He did a decent job of being a kinda unhinged looming threat throughout the show. We are told early on to watch him, and it isn't till we get close to the end that we understand why.
  I guess the main villain would be Kirito Kamui, who following the trend of Psycho-Pass 1 isn't really a villain or a hero. He seeks out the Sibyl System in order to force a change in the world. A change that he sees as necessary in order to feel like he has a place in this world and gain judgement. I enjoyed his development, seeing how he came to be invisible to the system. And how caring the burden of all these people has drawn him to want to create a change. While I would have loved to see more development for his character, expanding on beliefs even more. It did a pretty good job the time given to it.
  Music, Art, Sound
  Starting with both the OP and ED, loved them really. Enjoyed them at least enough that I didn't feel like skipping them like I do many shows. While in general, the music and sound effects throughout the show did a good job. It did what was necessary, and helped to elevate scenes when needed. While the art throughout was really good. Kept the style that I would expect, and was high quality pretty much everywhere you looked. The explosions from the Dominators where just as messy as you would expect.
  Story
  While the story developed strongly, and came to a definite satisfying ending personally. I can't help but feel like it was let down by the characters, which would have helped it have more of an impact. Feel like some changes unfortunately ended up occurring to things from Psycho-Pass 1, but I can give shows some freedom when it comes to shifting things somewhat to allow a story to come together. The idea of the paradox was satisfying and interesting, with a collective being forced to judge itself in order to judge another. But I feel like the change we believe happened, didn't really have that much of an effect. Since the system itself says it can't correctly judge collectives yet, and we know the system can freely tweak numbers to suit its needs.

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• 

  Igiveyouheadpat

  26/100
  A useless secound season that is not at all worth watching

  As a follow-up, Psycho-Pass 2 serves little to no purpose.

  This season does not lead to anything, it doesn't present any new ideas and worst of all, it tries to copy many things that are good about the first one, but fails miserably.

  This could mainly be the fault of the staff being switched. The first season was made by Gen Urobuchi, Shiotani Naoyoshi and Production I.G. While they went off to make the upcoming film, another studio and staff went on to create this season in the meantime.

  In the first season: The pair of Urobuchi and Production I.G was a match made in heaven. Since Urobuchi is known for his grim and dark stories that include many twists and lots of exposition (I.e Madoka Magica & Fate/Zero) & Production I.G are a studio that are famous for making cyberpunk shows with tons of world-building like Ghost In The Shell & Eden Of The East, while also being involved with other classics such as Evangelion & FLCL. So, a writer of grim and dark stories and a studio famous for their cyberpunk with tons of worldbuilding and action was a great choice. But what sold Psycho-Pass for me was having Hana Hanazawa as the main role, who is one of my all-time favorite seiyuu!

  Anyways, Psycho-Pass 2 is made by a completely different team, which already dismisses the originals show’s vision. This is noted clearly in terms of it lacking things that made the first one so awesome, shittier characters, a boring plot, and a much, MUCH worse villain.

  First of all, the villain is a Makishima-Lite. They’re both eerily calm villains who had been outlined by the sibyl system, thus wanting to destroy it, but what this new guy lacks is the charm or even intellect as Makishima had. What made Makishima so scary compared to Mr.school shooter was that Makishima wanted to see the splendor of human souls. Nothing about the new villain stand out. He just feels so vanilla and plain and also what a coincidence that his name is Kirito.

  Secondly, speaking of the characters, most of them were really bad and poorly written. When they are presented to us, they have no characterization like f.ex a backstory, quirks, and motives. Many of them fill in the role of characters that are absent this season like f.ex Kogami who is replaced by Togane or Makishima who is replaced by Kirito. However, the characters that aren’t a replacement are either completely boring or so dislikable that you want them out of the show. Those that are boring are not apart of the narrative like all of the characters in season 1 where. F.ex a boring one was this guy who is a read head and all that we get to know about him is that he’s shy but actually really smart. We don’t get a backstory as to why this might be, we the viewers have to just accept this. And an example of someone who was dislikable was Mika, who I rooted for at first. But with her arrogant and naive attitude and her at first, holding a grudge against Tsunemori and then trying to help her only to fail miserably was disappointing to see.

  Togane was, however, an exception and he was one of my favorites from this season, I thought that he had the most interesting progression and I thought that the way he hides his true intentions was interesting because he is quite an enigma. But still, one of the reasons why I liked him was because he was similar to a character that isn’t in this season.

  With many of these characters, they lack some flesh to the bone with the characters. What made the characters in the first season so interesting was that most of them used to have a motive, but over time lost it, like f.ex Kogami became jaded and lost his purpose for being a detective since his college buddy got slaughtered. Masaoka had similarly to Tsunemori, the instinct of justice but lost it when he realized that he didn't have control over who was or wasn't a criminal. Ginoza became stressed out after an incident that happened and has been frustrated ever since then. The only one who still had a purpose was Yayoi, who wanted to be an enforcer because her girlfriend had become a latent criminal, but that was still revealed later.

  Thirdly, there are no new questions that have been raised like f.ex Is the Sibyl System moral and who counts as a criminal? These questions got risen up in the very first episode of S1. But here, no new questions have appeared. One of my favorite things about the first season was all of the ideas that it presented and questions like “What is law”, “What makes someone happy”, “What is moral and immoral” while showcasing many different sides to the spectrum.

  First, we had the MWPSB where everyone had great intentions and carried out them with hoping to serve good, while usually doing so. Then, we had the critic of the Sibyl System, Shogo Makishima and his crew. He and his crew were totally against the idea of the Sibyl System and only wanted people to make sure that they were right. Then, we had the main sibyl system, which used criminals' minds to govern people and their crime coefficient. These people were outliers, who had strange ideas and ambitions while also being criminals themselves and criminally asymptomatic, meaning that they are unreadable. What’s so great about this is that if any of these are good or evil is completely up to the viewer. My view is that even though the Sibyl System may not be perfect and a bit immoral, it’s fucking awesome since it makes sure that most people are happy with only a tiny fraction of outliers.

  Fourthly, the very first 3 episodes were all TERRIBLE! We are immediately rushed into a situation where they are trying to arrest a criminal who's bombing different locations for Kamui. But we get absolutely no information about what's happening, why there even arresting him and why we should care. We just seem to have to figure that out ourselves. Which in some cases might be understandable and even necessary, but doing that in the FIRST episode of a NEW season just feels useless and out of place.

  The missions that appear in the first couple of episodes lack the excitement that the first season delivered. Since none of the new characters question the system, the stakes are incredibly low and the criminals are just crazy lunatics compared to in S1, where the criminals were more or fewer puppeteers by Makishima. And yes, the criminals here also seem to be that as well, but he feels like he controls them extremely poorly. Like f.ex he just lets his buddy die without any reason. Whereas in S1, Makishima disposed of his pawns for a REASON.

  Conclusion: Psycho-Pass 2 is a really bad follow-up, even the things that it does well are things that were common in earlier episodes.

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