Episodes 3 and 4 of Pyscho Pass are difficult to talk about. This show has been extremely consistent so far. The staff have handled this sequel with an understated confidence that’s hard to dislike. I still don’t find the show to be as atmospheric as the original, and I still like the dialogue less, but the narrative continues to be engaging. I think where the narrative has really succeeded is in avoiding extraneous clutter that would detract from the major themes of the show.
However, this is both a strength and a weakness. While Psycho Pass 2 doesn’t waste time, the direct style of writing can be a bit predictable at times. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who saw the drinking scene between Aoyanagi and Ginoza as a clear death flag. And one episode later, sure enough, Aoyanagi gets turned into red pudding . This show is clearly trying to shock the viewer and I think it would do a better job at this if the plot was a little more surprising. But that’s a minor quip.
I think a bigger quip would be that if they were trying to shock the viewer with the violence in episode 4, they didn’t do a great job. The hand-to-hand combat shown in the first part of the episode was quite disturbing, and really succeeded at unnerving me. But this effect was sort of ruined with the gratuitous dominator shootout at the end, which honestly felt kind of cartoony to me.
And then there’s Mika Shimotsuki. As much as I hate to admit it, she’s really become the wild card in this series. Her ethically questionable decision-making raises some interesting questions, questions that don’t have easy answers. Chiefly, was her inaction simply malicious or does it speak to more undestandable flaws in her in character? And is her rage against Akane simply the result of a bad attitude or is her anger rooted in the trauma that was inflicted upon her in season 1? Is Mika just a testament to the failure of SYBIL to produce a healthy society? These are tough questions and I’m excited to see how they get resolved.
