Monday, June 3, 2013

Psycho-Pass



Genre: Cyberpunk, Sci-Fi, Mystery
2012 Naoyoshi Shiotani (director), Takeshi Wada (producer), Production I.G




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skysenshi's Description:
In a futuristic world, everyone's psychological well-being is recorded and managed by a computerized entity known as the Sybil System. People are evaluated based on their psycho-pass, which indicates their mental states. Careers are decided this way. Criminals are also judged this way. The protagonist, Akane Tsunemori, is a newbie Inspector of the Public Safety Bureau's Criminal Investigation Division. This anime series follows her team's exploits as they uncover one murder case after another.

(22 episodes)

Spin-off please!!! >>> by skysenshi
I don't even know where to begin when it comes to an amazing anime title like Psycho-Pass. At first, I had misgivings, thinking that this could be Minority Report meets Death Note. Thank goodness it didn't become as convoluted as the latter. I remember wishing that Death Note would end by the 13th or so episode and I thought I'd be wishing the same thing for Psycho-Pass but by gawd! Twenty-two episodes is not nearly enough to give me closure.

The characters are interesting: You have Akane Tsunemori, who has a very stable mental state that she'd still have the perfect hue (color measurement of her psycho-pass) even when she's stressed. Then there are her "enforcers", the most astute of them is Shinya Kogami, who uncovers the patterns that connect their murder cases. Enforcers are an inspector's assistants. They have clouded psycho-passes and are already considered latent criminals even though they haven't done anything wrong yet (much like in Minority Report). The only reason enforcers aren't judged is that they understand criminal thinking and they implement tasks that are deemed too harmful to an inspector's mental condition.

In a society that is deemed perfect by the Sibyl System, it is noticeable how fragile the characters are. This is what gives this anime its flavor. The world woven in this anime is a world unused to stress and yet relationships are explored in such a way that makes stress mismanagement an inevitable outcome.

It is also a world where a viewer can question his/her own goals in life and the amount of free will he/she exerts over them. At a certain point, there are discussions of existentialism and theories of identity abound. Heck, a criminal mastermind even cites Foucault!

If there is one thing that I have consistently felt while viewing the entire series, it's that I probably would not go out of the house if I lived in this reality. The psycho-pass scanners would go berserk upon reading my possibly very cloudy mental state. I also cannot find myself living with regulated art, no university professors to explore new innovations with (my guess is that people join the work force directly after high school because the Sybil System already picked the perfect careers to match their aptitudes), genetically modified food, and complete isolation from the rest of Earth. Yoikes.

If a medium makes one think about the meaning of one's life choices and the purpose of one's existence, then that medium is worth experiencing. Because of this, I highly recommend Psycho-Pass.

Individual Rating: Art/Animation 9; Story 10; Characters 9; Sounds 9


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