Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

So, it’s time for the penultimate episodes again. Starting with Psycho Pass, which pretty much showed an example of such an episode done right. This definitely was a story headed towards its climax with the country at stake, but at the same time it never stopped developing its characters. In fact, it’s this episode where a lot of the characters come together, and get pushed further.

And this is for nearly the entire cast here. It’s because of this that the death scene made impact. Everyone can kill off a character near the end of a series. Making such a death count is an entirely different matter, but that is exactly what Psycho Pass did with Nobuchika here, and his relationship with the other enforcers. It fitted perfectly onto the buildup that he has had for the past episodes. But also Akane really surprised me as a really strong character. Plus Makishima Shougo again demonstrates what it’s like to be an actually good villain here. Yay!

Now that the series is nearly over, I’d say that Psycho Pass for me ranks above Blassreiter, Fate/Zero and Madoka Magica as a Gen Urobuchi series, and below Phantom. Although out of all his stories, I do think that this is the strongest. Blassreiter mostly stood out through its CG. Fate/Zero had some pacing issues (which to me, Psycho Pass didn’t really have that much…), and it’s longer than Madoka Magica, allowing it to put more detail into its setting. Phantom had a weaker story, but its characters still made it as my favorite Urobuchi Gen series.

And yeah, it’s a shame. But in a week we’ll have no more Noitamina for the next three months. Bummer.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Aha, a great type of episode so right before the climax of this series: one that nearly entirely consists out of people talking to each other and exploring the ins and outs of the setting here. Discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the Sybil System. With this episode it’s clear that the creators knew full well what kind of flawed system they created with Psycho Pass.

I really liked the atmosphere of this episode, especially at the time where Akane was talking to those canned brains that make up the Sybil System. This episode also revealed that just about every pair of brains there comes from some kind of latent criminal, some of which did even worse things than Makishima Shougo did. That explains why they took an interest in him. It creates this interesting paradox here: when they contribute so much to society, does that make up for their actions when they still had a body?

And I wondered about this many times, but with this episode it’s really clear to me that the lack of security is intentional. Gen really intended this to be a criticism of modern society, and the way in which it’s heading. Having everything done and decided for us makes us lazy. We don’t take any insurances for the worst case scenarios, we don’t think for ourselves.

So this seires will get more epic and all, but there is one point that this episode stressed that I really like about it: destroying the Sybil System isn’t going to solve anything. It’ll just create chaos and nothing more. This is not a case in which we can just kill the evil big bad guy and have things automatically fixed. Also, since Makishima Shougo is far more interesting than your average villain, this is one finale I’d really want to see.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

This episode earned a lot of points for me. It’s a build-up episode,but instead of being boring it actually makes very good use of its time. Most notably: the characters try to look inside the mind of the villain. Instead of heading towards the next climax they speculate what he will do next, and how his mind works. That’s not something you see often, especially with most series having villains with… rather simple motivations and plans.

Also, I’m really beginning to think that Psycho Pass is about a society that has evolved into the wrong direction. My biggest theory here was that there was a point at which the Sybil System was given too much influence, and that it transformed the society as monotone as possible, as free from outside influences as possible, and as safe as possible. What we saw in the first half were the exceptions that slipped by. I really became convinced of this when this episode revealed the crazy idea to have the entire food production of a country depend on one single type of crop. They’ve just completely eliminated variety. We’re not in a 1984 setting in which people have no privacy, but there are more and more similarities.

I think that that is one part that I would have done differently: the first half of this series was all about different psychopaths, but it did not show much about the setting: it didn’t colour the world as well as it should have, so now this series suddenly comes with details like this, this late in the series. If we had known this earlier, I think it would have made an even bigger impact.

The plot of this series really is fine, by the way. This episode again had a good balance of twists, and attention to the characters. Kagari suddenly receiving the attention of the Sybil system with her good behavior… I can buy that, and it will give her an even more interesting role in the story when she learns of what’s going on. Also: this episode stressed something. Kougami has some eerie similarities with Makishima Shougo, but Kagari does as well. Most notably with how her Psycho Pass stays the same.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

So I already read that the animation of this episode would have… issues. So how did it turn out? Well, it was definitely noticeable For some shots, it felt like the cleanup-animation work was not done, and I suspect it was a case of an outsourcing company that did not make its deadline. Still, it wasn’t that bad and this episode did get across what it wanted to do, and it was a building-up episode anyway. I have seen much, much worse, many times before.

The strongest scene of this episode was where Akane shot Kougami. It was a bit of a strange move in which the Sybil System lacked a lot of subtleties in hiding their true intentions, but still: at htat point they probably believed that nobody could do anything against them and it was worth the risk. Akane has grown much more than what I expected her to do and I loved how dependable she has become.

The inner politics of the police force were really interesting in this episode. And yet again, I have to wonder why the police force is so small and why it’s so difficult to get replacements? I mean I get that there is less crime and all, but society has to be pretty screwed if there can be hardly any capable policemen in the case something goes wrong (like in this episode, where an enforcer starts to think a little too hard). I mean that is the big fault with the Sybil System: it doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of insurance. Did Urobuchi Gen do this intentional?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)