The anime franchise "Psycho Pass" is the brainchild of director Naoyoshi Shiotani and writer Gen Urobuchi, a cyberpunk thriller set in a dystopian future Japan. It's a Production I.G. title, and shares many visual similarities with the studio's flagship franchise, "Ghost in the Shell." However, "Psycho Pass" is a little more down-to-earth and less cerebral, specifically citing the work of Philip K. Dick as an influence. Like Dick's "Minority Report," "Psycho Pass" takes place in an authoritarian society where nearly all crime has been eliminated, because criminal behavior is predicted by the sinister Sibyl System that is constantly scanning and rating people's psychological profiles - their "psycho passes." If someone's psycho-pass becomes "clouded" beyond a certain threshold, they're declared a "latent criminal" and shipped off to mandatory therapy, prison, or in extreme cases shot on sight.
In place of the police, we have the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau, where potential criminals are tracked and pursued by Inspectors and Enforcers. The Inspectors are essentially police detectives, and the Enforcers are latent criminals who do the more dangerous work under them with significant restrictions. Being an Enforcer is the only legitimate job that a latent criminal can hold, and there's a disturbing trend of Inspectors being exposed to so much psychic damage on the job that they eventually become latent criminals and Enforcers. Our central heroine is a rookie Inspector, Akane Tsunemori (Kana Hanazawa), who joins the Bureau and is put in charge of several Enforcers, including Shinya Kogami (Tomokazu Seki), an ex-Inspector who is still obsessed with a particular unsolved case. Other characters include Tsunemori's fellow Inspector, Ginoza (Kenji Nojima), middle aged Enforcer Masaoka (Kinryu Arimoto), and the female Chief of the Bureau, Kasei (Yoshiko Sakakibara).
"Psycho Pass" is the anime that comes closest to following the usual template of an American crime procedural. There are some ostentatious character design flourishes, but the style is more subdued than the majority of action anime. The show also originally aired as part of the Noitamina programming block, and is aimed at adults, so there's little of the zany humor or fanservice that tends to take me out of similar shows. Each episode brings a new case and a new criminal to pursue, with some thornier season-long mysteries involving serial killers Shogo Makushima (Takahiro Sakurai) and Rikako Oryo (Maaya Sakamoto) playing out more incrementally. More importantly, there's a big focus on the protagonists' personal relationships, and the show pulls off some decent dramatic twists. "Psycho Pass" is also a much easier watch than something like "Ghost in the Shell." It has its share of dense intellectual rambling, and high tech eye-candy, but more human characters and an emphasis on action scenes. The big showstopper visuals often involve the Bureau's special Dominator firearm, which essentially blows up anything it targets.
I watched the 22 episode first season of the show, which is self-contained, and the first theatrical film featuring most of the same characters exploring a different corner of their dystopia. The level of the production isn't as high as some of Production I.G.'s other titles, but "Psycho Pass" comes off as a perfectly serviceable action thriller. I especially appreciate Tsunemori as a rare young female heroine who stands her ground and gets to be a big part of the action with relatively little male gaze-y material. She fits into the older mode of sharp-minded "action girl" heroine like Noa from "Patlabor" or Deunan from "Appleseed" that I've missed in recent years. The rest of the characters are fairly generic types, but the show uses them well, and avoids many of the usual melodramatic pitfalls.
I'm a little surprised that the remake rights for "Psycho Pass" haven't been snapped up in the U.S., because the premise is such a strong one, featuring a host of interesting science-fiction concepts and themes to explore. On the other hand, FOX already made a "Minority Report" series a few years ago that didn't do well. Also, I stopped watching where I did because the show's format reportedly changes significantly from season to season, swapping out various characters. By all accounts the first season is far and away the best one. I might come back to the "Psycho Pass" universe eventually, but the original 22 episodes wrapped up so nicely, it feels like the best place to leave it.
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