Dec 12, 2019
With Urobuchi gone, I didn't expect much of this season. It still failed my expectations.
I expected to, much like the second season, for it to try and explore the themes set out by the first season at the base of Psycho Pass' world. Instead, we have a plot centered around the introduction of a completely new entity, Bifrost, that contradicts the position Sybil appeared to have when Urobuchi.
I expected it to remain grounded in the world set out by the previous seasons, but, after 8 double-length episodes, Arata still appears to come up just short of clairvoyance, the perfect control of the Sybil System is
...
contradicted by the existance of intentional gaps in it's control, and the politics of Sybil controlled Japan, which were previously stated to be a sham, are suddenly an institution with actual power and influence, and all changes going unadressed.
I expected the main characters from the previous season to be a constant presence in order to continue their stories. Instead, Shimotsuki appears to have undergone significant development almost entirely offscreen, and, for the longest time, Ginoza, Akane, and Kogami occasionally show up as barely a cameo, mostly to hint at further developments.
I also found the plot overall harder to follow than when Makishima discoursed at length on philosophy and Sci-fi references for several minutes at a time. That might have to do with having to wrap my head around the inconsistencies in world building. The characters of season 3 can spend several minutes discussing the implications of a political elections and just leave me scratching my head, wondering why, under the totalitarian control of Sybil, that would be important.
As a minor gripe, I wish we had seen the Dominators being used more often, but I guess that's a symptom of the smaller presence of the Sybil System in the world of Season 3. We did get some nice looking fist fights, but it's jarring for the inspectors, representatives and arbiters of Sybil's ultimate will, to have to engage in punch ups when any intent to beat an inspector to death should cloud one's hue enough for them to be justifiably used. I'm not sure we even saw the non-lethal paralyzer being used at all.
In short, I doubt I'll be back to this series. My expectations were low, but the contradictions in worldbuilding, the lack of a concrete continuation of anything set by the previous seasons, and a complete lack of any conclusion amount to a complete lack of justification for the existence of another entry to the series. Considering the way the last episode felt, the post-credits scene, and the name of the next movie indicating that it might be a prequel, everything just make me feel like the intent here is to slap the Psycho Pass name on an unrelated sci-fi detective series rather than continuing what made it interesting back in 2012.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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