Wednesday 31 December 2014

Psycho Pass Season 2 broke my poor little heart ...

After Psycho Pass Season 2 was announced, i like others was quite excited about the thought of another adventure in this cyberpunk world Gen Urobuchi created. In retrospect i should have been more worried that Tow Ubukata was the dude chosen to handle this season while Urobuchi worked on the movie. Ubukatas track record when it comes to anime writing isn't the best but then again neither is Urobuchi's since the nigga did write that clusterfuck, Blassreiter. More thoughts after the jump along with spoilers.


So yeah this season started of relatively well. As well as could be expected. Initially it was looking good. Then what should have been the first red flag went off. Apparently dumb Urobuchi forgot that he set up holographic technology in such a way that Ubukata concluded that not just clothes can be changed. Now you can program holographic people to distract police while you mess about abducting people. None of this is extrapolated upon in any meaningful detail but i just went with it. Ok. So far Akane and Ginoza also stayed untainted mostly and continued to be their lovable selves. The same couldn't be said for Mika though. A character that joined the main cast in the closing minutes of the first season, she has now changed personality completely from when we saw her briefly in the short arc in which she appeared and has now digivolved into the form of a raging asshole. If anything her attitude towards Akane could be a metaphor for Ubukata's toward Urobuchi but that's just me reaching so hard i should change my name to Reed Richards. Mika was perhaps the single most obnoxious anime character of 2014. While she slinked off into the background drinking haterade, Akane actually got her job done and all Mika could do was complain about how Akane did her job a little off the book compared to herself. It filled me with immense joy everytime Akane disregarded Mika's hate speech and just continued to do her job. In essence Ubukata chose to show Akane's development by shitting on another character which is not the best way to do things in my opinion.

As the season progressed another factor that led to widespread disdain for this season was the reckless abandon with which Ubukata chose to use the dominators' "lethal eliminator" mode. By i think episode 4 we have a gang of civilians and one inspector (well on her way to becoming a good character) unceremoniously blown up in an extended shooting gallery scene. The reason why i think this is troublesome is that this was used sparingly in season 1 so when it was used the few times it was, the 1 victim was animated very disturbingly as they met their demise. Here its just used in excess and looses all impact. There are many scenes of ridiculous brutality in this season that have no weight to them because of the overuse of the gore this season and thats all Ubukata's own fault. Characters like Togane were the only few left with any discernible importance to the main plot and while Kamui (our villain who mysteriously can't be judged by dominators ) was off enacting the most horrendously idiotic plan imaginable, niggas were asking "what colour is sybil lol" every few minutes. This question in and of itself is flawed when applied to sybil but I'll explain that momentarily. So while the "investigating" was going on, Kamui had dudes trolling our heroes and this gave Ubukata the excuse to use one of the more interesting characters from last season. The doctor who messes with people's  psycho pass just by talking to them. Obviously this doesn't effect Akane because she's just that hard boiled but their interactions where interesting besides all the bollocks near the end when they started spouting book quotes at each other. Then the first big reveal as to why our villain can't be judged by dominators is revealed. Apparently the nigga is made up of a couple hundred niggas bodies patched together like frakenstein's monster so apparently since he is a hodge podge sybil can't judge him?

What this implies is that to get away with stuff,  all you have to do is replace enough of your organs and you'll slip right through the system apparently. This completely disregards the fact that how sybil checks you is nothing to do with organs and such but rather things like stress levels, brain activity and that kinda stuff. Nothing to do with you having some other dudes kidneys or something. Then the thing that really illustrated to everyone Ubukata had a limited underdstanding of the universe in which he was playing around, the fact that Kamui's entire plan relies on the fact that there would be some brains in the system that weren't criminally asymptotic. This makes no sense seeing as the system was explained to us as being made up entirely of criminally asymptotic people like Shogo Makishima. So even if Kamui were to find out "what colour" sybil was, the psycho pass wouldn't be high or anything as far as i understand. This being the biggest inconsistency means Mama Togane wouldn't have been allowed into the system since her psycho pass could still reach that high in the end meaning she wasn't criminally asymptotic in the first place. Nevertheless, even without those the show itself is still terrible regardless. The characters left like Aoyanagi are used incredibly poorly and replaced just as quickly. Theres no dwelling on the death of comrades for too long because we have to get to the next idiotic plot point. No time for a breather at all and worst of all theres a scene with a character killing puppies to show how evil they are. Just urgh ... here's hoping the movies saves the franchise eh.

On the animation front, Tatsunoko did a very mediocre job. Animation quality is sporadic without any impressive sequences anywhere. Character Designs by Kyoji Asano look good however. Akane is rendered better than she was last season. Directing is really iffy though. Storyboarding is pedestrian without any really interesting layouts or anything of that nature. Lastly Backgrounds are generally fine though episode 3 and 4 have lighting issues with areas being too bright and characters not being adequately shaded. It was rather disappointing. Toshiharu Sugie did work on Episode 3 but nothing of his style shines through. Tatsuro Kawano also did work but nothing impressive that could be accredited to him was evident either. The opening however was pretty decent with some nice visuals with some cuts provided by Masashi Ishihama whose work will be familiar if you've seen Bleach Opening 13, Attack on Titan Opening 2 and Beelzebub Ending 3. I'd score it 1.5/5. It was a bad show on both fronts unfortunately.


If you do wanna have a laugh and have time to waste I'd highly recommend it though for its utter stupidity at points. Anyway have fun folks and see you next week for a few more end of year blog posts.

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