Anime Club: Psycho-Pass: The Movie

Hello everybody! With the recent release of the movie upon American soil, it’s time to review Psycho-Pass: The Movie.

PSYCHO-PASS: THE MOVIE

DIRECTED BY: Katsuyuki Motohiro, Naoyoshi Shiotani 

STARRING: Kana Hanazawa, Hiroshi Kamiya, Tomokazu Seki, Ayane Sakura, Kenji Nojima, Shizuka Itō

GENRE: Science fiction, crime

YEAR: 2016

COUNTRY: Japan

Four years (2116AD) after the events of season one of the series, the Japanese government has begun to export the Sibyl System technology to other countries, with plans to ultimately spread it throughout the world. A state in the midst of a civil war, SEAUn (the South East Asia Union, pronounced “shian”), brings in the Sibyl System as an experiment, and the coastal town of Shambala Float achieves temporary peace and safety. But then terrorists from SEAUn appear in Japan, slipping through the Sibyl System and attacking from within, drawing Akane Tsunemori and her team to Shambala Float (based in what was once Cambodia) to investigate, drawn by evidence linking Kōgami with them.

In any case, this movie wastes no time jumping to both the heady and gory extremes that have always made the series stand out. Its opening moments are underscored by Kogami reading passages from the work of Frantz Fanon, while the ten minutes to follow are an exercise in exploding-guts excess. Psycho-Pass‘s strength has never been in subtlety, (there’s no going back after the insane reveal of Sibyl’s true nature), but it’s also never held back in addressing all types of corruption in societal structures. Since Fanon and Sartre are the philosophers of choice for this movie, and Sibyl is headed overseas in an experimental expansion, that means we’re in for a message about how colonialism is bad.

Okay, you might get bored sometimes. Between all the terrific action setpieces and shocking climaxes, the Psycho-Pass movie has about fifty minutes of story, no more or less elaborate than the many two-part episodes that defined the first season, lavish and theatrical setting aside. Its mission statement is powerful, but it’s also incredibly simple, so the movie spends its extra hour and change of runtime reiterating basic ideas and status quos from the TV series in its first act, marinating in violence and melodrama in its second, and invoking the ghost of Makishima once again in its third. The movie only gets better as it goes along.

Of course, that fearless eccentricity can also be a double-edged sword, and the movie often becomes sodetermined to hammer home its message than it can border on absurdity. Nowhere is this more clear than in the movie’s badass gang of post-colonial radical mercenaries, whose leader quotes philosophy while pouring liquor over the muzzle of a phallic-ly positioned gun onto his victim’s face. Okay, believing that it’s better to live as an animal than a slave is also bad, I think we got the point. Interactions between the main cast are likewise enriching at heart, but sometimes embarrassingly direct in execution.

PROS:

• Plenty of gore and blood.
• Hammers home philosophical ideals.
• Stays close to the original narrative.
• Kougami is back!

CONS:

• Weak beginning.
• Ignores second season events.

SCORE: 9.0 / 10

If you have any suggestions for films/TV/Games/Music/Anime for me to review, drop me a comment!

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Brandon Stuhr

Who am I? Just some guy who decided to start writing on the Internet years ago and now operates his own brand and site. Owner/Operator of Modern Neon Media, I make all kinds of niche content to suit my interests at the time. DIY Enthusiast, Brewmaster extraordinaire, and avid freak for geek culture. Follow on my socials for a more “on” version of me.