This show is seriously good

This show is seriously good.
Outside hella gay designs for men.
Heard on Sup Forums that 2nd season is worse. Is it?

How about you hella get the fuck out

k

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.

user, cmon.

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.

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 mindless 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 grip 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.

Who the fuck is going to read all this shit even for a pasta holy crap

tldr it sucks

I dropped that pretentious tripe after 1 episode, but I'm glad some other loser had the time to actually suffer through the whole first season.

The direction, art style, and sound design are all great, but fuck me that writing is bad.

Dont watch the 2ds season, its litteraly garbage and fuck up the first season
Dont watch the movie, its even worse than the second season and turn kogami in a perfect faggot

tldr dont watch anything beside first season, they wanted to make it in a cash cow despite s1 having a very good ending and failed

How much worse are we talking? Gunslinger girl 2, lodoss war tv or something else entirely?

>after 1 episode
user, you are weak.

unwatchable, kogami isnt in the second season, the story is ridiculous (villain has power and try to looks "deep"), I can go on like this for hours, there is nothing good about this shit, but you can still go for it user.

>kogami isn't in
Is it really that much of a loss though?
I havent finished show yet, but I think it could keep going even with other characters.

I wanna fuck those men

The lesbian is cool, just like when she was in DtB S2. The second season is kinda worse but not bad due to creative constraints due to the movie.
Also
>hella gay men designs
>he doesn't appreciate all beautiful forms
What are you, gay?

Everyone in this anime is gay or lesbian. It's pretty revolutionary.

Kougami isn't It was cut you nigger, stop trying and Akane isn't. Gino may be gay for his dad, but he also super wants to get into Akane's pants and the computer chief is a swinger. Also the professor is straight, though really /fa/

If someone was interesting enough to take his place, yes it wouldnt be a loss, but when we tease you about him every fucking time and Akane start smocking to try to think like him and maybe find his location, it become a problem.

My main issue with this new season is the lack of story, clearly you can see that 2nd season wasn't by the same author and don't have the same vitality, villain is bland and ridiculous beside having weird powers, they ruined Mika, Toukane is edgy for no reason beside being edgy ...

Different user but I agree with all that he said. Second season simply lacks all the charm that the first season has and it is evidently poorly written in comparison.

I wouldn't say that it is total garbage but it really leaves a bad aftertaste when you consider it makes bad what was originally good.

This show seriously sucks shit

God damn what a boring waste of a good setting.

People who like Psycho Pass are college dropouts who think they could have been physicists

>who could've been physicists
What's that have to do with anything? Both premise and everything else are quite simple.
You could say
>boring waste
only about part where they are quoting Kant or Gibson's Neuromancer.

Skip season 2 and pretend it never happened. Once you finish S1, dive right into the movie.

>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.
wrong