Review of Psycho-Pass: The Movie

The Psycho-Pass movie is a solid return to form for the franchise after the edgy abortion that was Psycho-Pass Season 2. Gone is the gratuitous shock value gore and comically silly antagonist motivations; now replaced by, well... still a lot of gore and violence, but violence that feels earned and serves a purpose in depicting the deeply troubled situation of the world outside of the Sibyl System's grasp. This is most likely owed to returning writer Gen Urobuchi, who was previously absent from season 2. Personally, I've never been a huge fan of Urobuchi's work, and while I appreciate his efforts to bring more depth andmaturity to the medium, he also has a tendency to get a little too stuck up his own ass, with characters standing around waxing philosophical a bit too bluntly and telling too much rather than showing, to the point that the narrative starts to drag. Psycho-Pass is no exception to the rule with Mr. Urobuchi. However, Psycho-Pass by far has proven to be the anime that best meshes with his writing style, as the political dealings at the core of its plot make sense that they would invoke a lot of philosophical questions and discussion.

Thankfully, the movie mostly ignores all of the events of season 2 and can be watched having only seen season 1, which I highly recommend as the route to go if you still have yet to enter the franchise for whatever reason. Like the original Psycho-Pass, the movie continues to deliver on the mystery, thriller, and political philosophy that made the first season so captivating, while upping the ante with more action setpieces and a grander scale. It also marks the long-awaited return of Kogami, Akane Tsunemori's former partner in pre-crime, which for the most part is handled very well, and stays true to his character.

My criticisms with this film mostly come down to problems that have long plagued the anime industry as well as Gen Urobuchi's writing. But first: the overuse of 3D CGI. It seems unavoidable that every studio nowadays feels compelled to shoehorn it in simply because they can, even though it overwhelmingly makes the animation look worse, feel cheap, or be merely passable at best. Thankfully, this movie at least falls into the category of the latter, managing to blend the CGI in just well enough to keep me from cringing, but it still suffers from the typical unnecessary reduction in framerate during certain scenes which creates a Robot Chicken-style plastic toy effect that makes it hard to take seriously. And in an anime that is this serious business, you should really try to avoid that at all costs. Most of the CGI in the background environments however is used to great effect, adding lots of depth to the scenery, but the use of it on the mechs and other close-up moving objects is just unneeded, and would have been better-served if hand-animated.

I am not opposed to adding a nice jolt of action to the anime as well, but some of the action choreography started to cut a few too many corners with the animation, getting uncomfortably choppy and losing its cool factor. With a larger chunk of the narrative focusing on the action, it needs to consistently look good, and there's no excuse for skimping on the animation with the bigger budget provided for a movie adaptation. Luckily though, the animation works more often than it doesn't, and overall the movie does look marginally better than the TV series.

Finally, there is the issue of Gen Urobuchi. As I said, he has a tendency to get drab and let the story drag at times, and some of the middling segments of the film start to suffer from this. A series of plot twists in the third act happen a little too fast and everything gets wrapped up a bit too quickly. With these twists being particularly some of the more fascinating segments of the movie, I would have liked to see these points expanded upon and explored more while trimming some of the fat in the middle. And above all, despite everything that happens by the end, there isn't any fundamental shifts or character development for the main protagonists. Everybody is mostly in the same place as where they were when they started. Even in spite of this though, Psycho-Pass has always had strong and interesting characters, which helps lessen the disappointment in this area.

As far as the sound department is considered, this is where the movie excels in nearly all respects. The sounds of gunfire, the epic music, and superb voice acting all come together to make this world feel like a lived-in one. I heard that the Japanese voice cast attempts to speak a lot of Engrish with this taking place in a European setting, which after a while starts to turn off-putting, but I watched this in English dub where none of these problems were apparent. A litmus test I often like to use when it comes to exceptional voice acting is if you can take someone who has never seen the show before and place them in an adjacent room where all they can hear is the sound, and they end up mistaking it for a live action drama instead of a cartoon, you know that the voice actors have put in a good effort. And indeed with Psycho-Pass, I believe the English voice cast passes that test with flying colors.

All in all, the Psycho-Pass movie is a worthy addition to the franchise; one that is definitely worth seeing if you were a fan of the original series and hoping that it could still be salvaged after the second season shat its story into a paper bag and lit it on fire. I'm looking forward to this hopefully not being the last of Urobuchi's best work.