Psycho-Pass 2 Episodes 1-2 Review

I'm not a fan of these two episodes. Let me be clear that I really DON'T like these two episodes.

This season kicks off right where S1 left off, or at least that's what it felt like but apparently, there has so far been only worse animation, shit new characters, a boring plot, and a much, MUCH worse villain. Let's start off with the animation being worse, it looks less poppy and bright, almost toned down. The futuristic setting paired really well with the look of the characters, but here it looks weird since it's toned down so much, and the problem doesn't lie with the resolution. I have watched both seasons with 1080p, however, the new one looks just "worse" for some reason. This is most likely due to the switch in studios, but I'm not sure about this as of now. I will elaborate more on this in later episode reviews.

The new characters are also really bad and poorly written, they have no characterization like f.ex a backstory, any weird quirks, and motives. They more or less feel like cardboard cutouts and this makes me feel NO reason to care about these people. With these new characters, we have gotten none of that. What I'm trying to say is that there is no flesh to the bone with the characters. What made the characters in the first season so interesting was that most of them used to have a motive, but over time lost it, like f.ex Kogami became jaded and lost his purpose for being a detective since he's college buddy got slaughtered. Masaoka had similarly to Tsunemori, the instinct of justice but lost it when he realized that he didn't have control over who was or wasn't a criminal. Ginoza became stressed out after an incident that happened and has been frustrated ever since then. The only one who still had a purpose was Yayoi, who wanted to be an enforcer because her girlfriend had become a latent criminal, but that was still revealed later.

And then entered Tsunemori, who questioned the system after watching an innocent civilian gets killed by the dominator. This was the inciting incident of the show where her colleges realize that she might have a point and that there might be some deep mystery that they're all unaware of. This new season doesn't even have a fucking inciting incident, it just rolls after episode 1. In S1, you really understood that these are detectives who catch and kill criminals, where it's a world full of morals and ethics, so it made perfect sense that most of them had been let down by the system. and I get that the point of this season is to show how Akane has adapted to the system after she realized the truth, but it's only disappointed me.

With the plot, it's even worse. There are no new questions that have been raised like f.ex Is the Sibyl System moral and who counts as a criminal? These questions got risen up in the very first episode of S1. But here, no new questions have appeared. Also, the new missions lack the excitement that the first season delivered. Since none of the new characters question the system, the stakes are incredibly low and the criminals are just crazy lunatics compared to in S1, where the criminals were more or fewer puppeteers by Makashima. And yes, the criminals here also seem to be that as well, but he feels like he controls them extremely poorly. Like f.ex he just let's his buddy die without any reason. Whereas in S1, Makashima disposed of his pawns for a REASON.

And lastly, I know it's hard to make a villain that's as good as Makashima, but here they barely even tried. The new villain doesn't have any character, what a coincidence that his name is Kirito as well. Like Makashima, He's behind all of the new crimes, but the biggest mistake is that he's revealed in the first episode! In S1, Makashima was revealed to be behind all of the crimes first in episode 9 and this guy is shown instantly without any buildup or characterization. Like the other new characters, we don't know any of his motives, all that we get shown are these two things, 1. That he is working for the MWBSP and 2. He sprays "WC" to the locations where he slaughtered his victims and to those that he's a warning.

The only thing that I can make small praise for this season is the development of Akane, since learning about the Sibyl System has become much more assertive and more of a leader then before. But then, this was already shown in the last 3 episodes of the original season, so it doesn't matter too much.

These where the main four issues that I've had with PP-2, but I had some enormous pet peeves as well. Like f.ex Akane is now a smoker for no apparent reason, Kogami has basically disappeared from the face of the earth without any explanation as to why and at first it felt like this came right after S1, but there has been a 1-year time skip.

Overall, I'm not impressed and I sincerely hope that things will become better later on so that my suffering for these earlier episodes has been worth it.