Monday, February 9, 2015

Psycho-Pass Series Review

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I’m not as adverse to anime as my friend Diego is. As a matter of fact, I love anime. For every series that is overloaded with mindless fanservice and repetitive monologues of friendship, there is a series that is extremely well written and makes full use of the various elements that anime as a medium has to offer. Fortunately, Psycho-Pass is the latter type of series.  It’s not quite the perfect anime like Cowboy Bebop, but this is definitely one of the better animes to come out in recent years. I will break down the many pros that make this series great and the few cons that keep it from reaching those god tier anime series.

First off, the world that Naoyashi Shiotani and Gen Urobuchi built is visually stunning. The design of the city provides a great amount of eye candy that I believe cannot be possible on any other storytelling medium (unless you had a really, really large budget). Each environment sets a distinct tone for the scene that would occupy it. It’s pretty crazy how many details and intricacies of this city the artists actually hashed out; it’s like observing an entirely new culture. To top it off, the animation is smooth and rich throughout the entire series. Overall, this has to be one of the best-looking animes I have seen in recent memory.
Now let’s get on to the story. The main aspect of this series that drives the entire plot in both seasons is that in this futuristic dystopian society, the law is carried out by something that is called the Sybil System. This system is basically the only judge, jury, and sometimes executioner in this society. It carries out these judgments by evaluating a person’s “crime coefficient”: this is basically a numerical value given to a person’s probability to commit a crime based on a psychological evaluation. If your coefficient is kept under 100, you’re safe. However, people with crime coefficients of 100 and above are labeled as “latent criminals”. If the Sybil System deems that you have the mental capacity to become a criminal, then guess what? You are a criminal.
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Well, if that isn’t a system begging to have its laws and regulations questioned throughout the story, I don’t know what is. Which, of course, they spend both seasons doing, but the way in which the system is challenged throughout the series is so well-executed that you can’t really fault the somewhat cliché-ness of it all. Sure, the dystopian society trope has been done to death at this point, but the different environment and focus of the story still makes it feel fresh, unlike, say, Avatar (makes use of a common trope, but adds zero twists/differences to keep it fresh).
It would be a shame if a society as well thought-out and constructed as this was left with boring characters to fill it with. Fortunately for us, this is not the case. This show is, at its very core, a cop/detective show. We follow two detectives and a bunch of cops that work under them, and watch them solve cases. With how much action is happening with them investigating and solving cases, it’s actually really surprising how much time they actually had to flesh out the characters, especially after about 7 or 8 episodes in when the plot really starts picking up and things start getting more and more fast-paced. Throughout the series, the director and writer find time to fit in these small character moments that help us grow attached to this group of detectives; we get to see how they interact off duty, their fears and doubts, and just what kind of people they are. So on top of a super-interesting society, Shiotani and Urobuchi have also created really fleshed out characters that you can care about, adding more weight to the plot.
Season 1 of Psycho-Pass is great, but the pacing is a little slow to begin with. The problem with any show that is set in a futuristic society is that the audience usually requires a large amount of exposition so that they could understand the rules of this new world before really jumping into the main plot; Psycho-Pass isn’t any different. The first few episodes introduces us to the characters while establishing how the law works in their society, and how detective work is different than that of the traditional police detective because of these different rules. After those few episodes, the ball really gets rolling and the pacing becomes great…until the middle of the season.
There’s this one part in the season in particular where something really really crazy just happened at the end of an episode, and you want to know what happens next…and then the show just completely switches gears and gives us a flashback episode for one of the side characters. I’m all for fleshing out characters even further with their own individual episodes, but really? At such a crucial point in the story? To top it off, this character’s backstory didn’t even have any correlation to present events other than “this is how the character got here today” and nothing else. So really, this was a story that was hardly worth telling and merely served as a distraction from the main event.
Other than the slow start and that small hiccup halfway through, the first season of Psycho-Pass is really, really great. It has a great, memorable villain, there are multiple shades of grey, and everything is just compelling. There’s not much more I can say beyond this without spoiling a few plot points, but I really enjoyed this season.
That being said, Season 2 of Psycho-Pass is better. Easily. Part of this has to do with the fact that despite the slow pacing in the beginning of Season 1, they did a really good job at building and setting up the rules of the world inside this show, so right from Episode 1, we jump right into the main plot. Things move much faster this season, and I mean much faster. In fact, Season 2 only has half as many episodes as Season 1 of Psycho-Pass. While no doubt, this keeps things interesting, sometimes it could be a little too fast. In Season 2, a lot of plot points get thrown at you, and sometimes you really don’t have a lot of time to digest it before they move on to the next one. During the first watch, there were a lot of times I asked myself, “wait, what just happened?” or “how did the inspectors come to this conclusion? Was there some evidence I missed?”; during the second watch, however, it was much easier to follow.
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So yes, Season 2 requires a lot more of your attention while watching, but oh, is it worth it. Just on a thematic level, this season resonates so much better than the previous, especially with the way they end (granted, I still loved the first season’s climax and ending). It’s also much more brutal than the previous season, questioning the laws and limitations of the current society even further, what true justice means, and whether or not that’s been lost in this system. It handles its thematic elements much better than the first season and just flows much better due to the fact that there’s fewer episodes as well as an already-established world, so there’s not as much time dedicated to exposition.
It’s been a long, long while since I’ve watched an anime that’s this smartly written, and it’s extremely refreshing to know that a few anime writers in the business today still know how to use overarching themes as well as give meaning to the action in a show (I cannot count how much anime I have watched where it’s simply going from one fight to the next that made it feel like a complete chore, complete with flashbacks and meaningless friendship monologues). While not perfect, Psycho-Pass has done what not many animes in recent memory could do: present a complex, detailed world complete with fleshed-out and well-developed characters and a gripping plot. If you’re looking for anime of high quality that isn’t old school, Psycho-Pass is a damn good place to start.
- Martin

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