Psycho Pass 2 – Early Thoughts

Moe on the right, shit in the middle.

With the drop in quality from Urobuchi’s writing as of late (not that he was ever that amazing to begin with, but he’s definitely done some good stuff and now seems to be getting worse than ever), I started wondering if I should even bother watching this or if it would just soil my view of the original series (which I found to be outstanding). I did decide to try it out though because Urobuchi is indeed not writing this season…and now I wonder if that was such a good idea on their part.

It ended up – obviously just in regards to episode one – as a fairly big disappointment…though I was expecting that at least. The art quality is total crap compared to the first season – I mean it really looks so bad in comparison, though at the same time it does look pretty good often (just not as good, plus has a LOT of “QUALITY” moments) and the new character designs (both the obvious and subtle) really ruin the old overall look and feel of everyone and everything. The new characters feel forced in and vapid (I know, it’s just one episode, but still), and one of them in particular is to a point that I may drop it because of her. The biggest problem aside that girl though is that with season 1 I was excited about watching it right from the get go. It just had something about it that made you feel like shit is going down and you were really getting into some crazy story with this super interesting cast. This didn’t have that feeling at all, it felt more like stepping into a mediocre action series that’s trying too hard.

As a show it’s fine, I suppose, but not anything better than that so far. Even the voice work doesn’t feel as good as last time – including from the recurring actors like HanaKana and Sawashiro who always do an amazingly good job, but this time it felt like they were directed to tone it down to try and be ‘more serious’. HanaKana especially doesn’t sound right at all, when she fit Akane perfectly before, as if they are trying to make her sound “harder” and lifeless. That’s how the whole episode felt in general, actually, like it’s trying to be extra edgy and ‘hardcore’. They’ve also slightly redesigned Akane’s eyes, which sort of ruined them. They now just look like generic serious girl eyes and not those extremely unique eyes she had before which were used in such a great way as an aid to the developments of her personality.

The new girl is a bitch for no reason just to create an antagonistic relationship between the old team and the new cast, making her easily the worst thing so far. I mean she’s unbearably obnoxious and shitty about it just nonstop the entire episode. Even the very last line in the episode (before the post-credits scene…which is incredibly important so it’s a bit stupid that it IS a post-cred scene) is her saying “YOU’RE WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG, TSUNEMORI!”.

Oh, and everyone has very tall alien egg-shaped heads now.

Surprisingly the best character so far seems to be the one I thought would be the second word addition, the serious looking older guy added to the enforcer team. He seems extremely respectful of Akane and of his position – there’s no “I don’t want to be doing this” or any sort of negative feeling from him. He’s also not overly serious and he simply follows orders and acts as his position deems him to. Every time Akane tells him something, he does it, every time he sees something importnat, he tells her immediately. They are a good team – and he’s also up on the roof with her at the end, laying down some actually good lines to help talk down the criminal so they don’t have to kill him. He seems like a man with a dark past but who ended up how he is now because of things he simply felt necessary. He seems like an actually good intriguing and interesting character that I want to learn more about, but he’s the only one in the show that way now. He seems surprisingly likable and I hope that not only doesn’t change – but that him and the two old members (Ginoza and that one lesbo who are now enforcers) are the main side kicks of Akane, while the rest of the characters kind of do whatever.

There’s also two new cute tomboys but they aren’t in the main team, so I’m not sure how much they’ll be around. Well, post-credits scene implies heavily at least one of them will already end up a villain (or arrested/killed) simply due to her crime coefficient surely going up drastically from the event that unfolds there.

The OP is shit – the song is fine but the video is just annoying with the constantly looping a 1 second part like 5 times for absolutely no reason over and over again through various scenes, just making it a pain on the eyes – and the ED fucking sucks. I mean it’s terrible, really fucking bad. An affront to the sense of hearing. Strange given how wonderful the EDs were in season 1.

All in all, this was a big disappointment and I ended up so bored with the writing and so annoyed with the cast that I had a hard time finishing out the episode, even ending up (only a little) skipping ahead a few seconds every now and then just to get it done that tiny bit faster. Even as a show without comparing it to season 1, it’s just bad. Unless you really loved Psycho Pass, I’d advise you to really consider how much it’s worth sitting through something that is almost insulting to the original before bothering with this. And, really, I’m a huge fan of the first season – so even if you did really love it you should just fucking skip out on this one. I can’t continue this more than another episode or two to make sure I’m right at the most, especially with that new girl constantly being a total cunt both to Akane and to the enforcers – treating them like trash without end. I highly recommend the first season, it’s outstanding, but this…not so much. You can tell so easily that this is just a cash-in thanks to the unexpected mass popularity of the original.

Update: Even after more episodes, the show only actually got worse than when I wrote this after episode 1, so this review is actually being pretty nice about how bad it is.