It's been barely two months since I finished my first watch-through of the series but I was so enamoured that I went right back to the start to do it all over again. Having now properly digested the series and make lots of notes, here is my tier list of the cast.

A few points:

• Honestly overall, the character writing of this franchise is really good. There are only a very small members of the cast I would say are 'poorly written', it is a very high bar.
• I am inherently biased towards female main characters in anime and Psycho-Pass is no exception. Akane and Mika have become two of my favourite detectives in fiction. They're completely different: one is the perfect citizen from the get-go, the other has to go through incredible trauma and suffering to become better. But they're both sharp, and courageous, and feel very human despite their larger than life personalities. They also share (in my opinion) one of the saddest and most moving scenes in the franchise at the end of Providence. I sincerely hope that, if season 4 materialises, there will be some closure between them.
• I know that lots of people will be surprised at me putting Tenzing so high, but her role in Sinners of the System really resonates with me.
• I know that lots of people like Kagari a lot, and I don't deny that he is pretty neat, but man, he really needed more screentime and a proper arc of his own. Cases like his must be so frustratingly common in the world of PP that he deserved it.
• I wish Homura would stop vague-posting. Saved by some fantastic voice acting from Mamoru Miyano.

Spoiling my Kogami Cosplay Photos. Hope you like it!

Was it ever explained why Kogami didn’t look Makishima up in the citizens data base during the years he was investigating him? He had his name because of the file from enforcer Sasayama, and we know Makishima exists in the database with his full name because they were able to pull up his id with facial recognition after the memory scoop. Just wondering if I’m missing something.

I was about to rewatch Sinners only to not find it on Crunchyroll. I freaked out and thought they removed it, but in actuality they moved it to the main series page. Up until recently Sinners used to have its own page just like Providence and The Movie do.

Update: Crunchyroll has renamed Sinners back to “Sinners of the System” and it is now placed in the middle of Season 2 and Season 3. It’s no longer called “OVA Season 1” as seen in these photos.

Which is great since “OVA Season 1” sounded a little weird. Also I just checked and Sinners of the System is now officially streaming on Crunchyroll UK! Will make a post about that soon to let everyone know

What's the consensus on this guy? An "adopted" son of the person who developed Bifrost. Apparently invisible to Sybil, but as soon as both meet Sybil is like "are you ready for a public life? Might be too loud for you? Anyway, come work right under me!" Randomly wants to free Akane?

His interaction with Sybil was so creepy, it made me think Homura is not a human but a vessel for another Sybil-like system. Like a little brother "system", maybe one that was made to be a "child" and grow under observation of Papa Homura? To better understand humans?

Drop your theories on this guy.

Thought provoking, serial story, dystopian, good characters, etc...

i don't know if there is something i missed but why ginoza also joined mofa? is there a specific reason for kogami, ginoza and sugo to join mofa? a reason about akane or sibyl perhaps? i watched every season and movies

Currently rewatching season 3. In episode 3 of season 3, we discover that Arata was recommended to become a PSB Inspector by Akane, and Kei by Mika.

However, from the wiki, Arata and Kei only actually join the PSB's training course to become inspectors in April 2120 - in fact both of them only graduated from their previous educational institutes in March 2120. But we know from Providence that Akane went to jail in January 2118. Even if Akane somehow recommended Arata to become a future inspector all the way back then he would still have been in school and it wouldn't have been certain if he even wanted to become a Ministry of Welfare employee.

So how was Akane able to recommend Arata for the position? Do we know from supplementary materials?

About Providence, when I watched it was ridiculously confused about why Kogami and Akane acted like a divorced couple in Providence. It felt weird considering their dynamic in the 2015 movie where even the actors noticed they became so close they pointed the cigarrete scene as the one that shows how important they are to each other. Akane wanted Kogami to return to Japan in the movie and that's exactly what he does in Sinners of the System. Was Akane's silent treatment meant to be a facade? I was confused since Ginoza's reaction was completely different.

Screenshot attached. I think it's a pretty nifty contraption. Not necessarily with the self-driving feature lol, but does anyone know of any life models of it or just anything similar to it that's built irl?

I was inspired to do this by posts from another community where people would answer commenters’ questions while staying in character. Since Gino is my favourite character, I thought it would be fun to give it a try!

This is set around Season 1, before the later episodes where some major events take place. Some answers may contain spoilers depending on the question asked.
I know Ginoza best from his season one portrayal, so I'll be basing my answers on his characterisation from that point in the story. I haven't read the manga yet, so everything here will be based on the anime.

I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as I can, while staying as true to his personality and character as possible.

It’s a fun little challenge for me, so feel free to leave a question!

I also saw a flipped-over semi truck and 2 guys chasing each other or something in the field before this, too. Some crazy stuff.

There's actually a kinda cool story behind this; the gunshot sound in the video actually happened as I was filming.

As soon as I saw the field, it already reminded me of the Makishima scene. As I was recording a video of the sunset, I heard the gunshot sound (which I'm pretty sure was a propane cannon) and I knew how perfect it was for the scene lol. Genuinely started laughing.

It looks interesting and I'm considering picking it up (especially since it's not too long, just 35 chapters in 6 volumes), but wanted to hear thoughts from people who've read it.

NOTE currently delaying my viewing of S3 because I don’t think I can cope with an ending …

Content: everything except s3

Psycho pass is a master piece; the peak of anime as a form of political and educational art if the viewer choose to interact it that way. Especially in the present day when themes of AI, desensitization,  brain rot, and the reality at a global level where the human psyche is captured in the technocratic, late stage, imperial racial capitalism system.
 
Rewatching now as an adult working in corporate, living a very mediocre life but supposedly got credentials from an accredited liberal arts higher education institution, the theory that permeated through every exchange of characters as well as the encountering of various scenarios: different character philosophies with each other, various characters with deviants, deviants with deviants, and all subjects interacting with the system, which is a collective of previous subjects who were deviants I think effectively illustrated the nuances in many complex political theory works, in a way that in my humble opinion is much more enjoyable than reading through dense essays/papers written by these people otherwise (though there is still lots of value of working through dense reading!! If anything psycho pass shows that one must be able to learn and think of themselves (self awareness, and awareness of the world, and their positionality within that world, then use knowledge as power --> inform their choices rather than letting Sibyl just doing it for them, or choosing to look away and abide)
 
The positions of Kogami, Akane, Ginoza, and Makishima are worthy of extra attention. Kogami was a top candidate, a perfect student with the score of 700, recognized by the system as the perfect data point, became an inspector for the bureau, then due to the brutal murder and lack of justice / closure / solving of his employee and enforcer Sayama caused his psycho pass to drop, those demoted to being an enforcer.
 
Of course there are many factors in which the show critiques how psycho pass fluctuates and is calculated, however I would like to mainly use the lens of how much 1) how much a person trusts and believes the Sibyl system ability to make everyone in society better off, therefore accept its version of justice, and its framework of human well being 2) how unwavering their own belief system and moral compass is then finally 3) how well the degree and nature of their own belief system aligns with Sibyl's
 
Applying this to Kogami, I would say after Sasayama he distrusts the system, which made his idea of justice complicated, but he didn't always have an unwavering sense of justice -- or perhaps it was violent unmaking of his previous moral compass -- which arrives to 3) Kogami is a character that does not believe operating with the system can deliver the sort of justice, or its framework of human welling, that he had learned to believe in. So from his demotion to an enforcer to his psycho pass gradually worsening through out the show to finally his decision to fully exit the system in order to kill Makishima all makes sense.
 
Here I would like to say there is great temptation to perhaps have an alternative 'happier ending' if one is more of a ' I want a akane and kogami to be together'. Kogami could have easily accepted Akane's school of though which I will outline next, where he does not kill makshima with a gun and use dominator's paralyzer mode, and continue to serve and therefore live within, because doing so would signal that Kogami in fact still believe in Sibyl's framework of justice and society. Therefore, I am so happy and why I love this show so much.
 
Akane, similar to Kogami was the top candidate…
Akane's distinguishing ability to have a lucid self awareness which allows her to be sure in her decisions, her actions, but also the way she can think through the messiness, chaos, and brutalness of the world and still find a way to live and have hope leads to a super clear psycho pass. When Akane cries to shion about how she must be a person with no feelings, I think viewers but also I deeply disagree with her (which is totally fine, beause girl was definitely going through it) but actually what makes Akane such as a good protagonist is she isn't constantly rubbing it in 'our' faces how good she is at being a perfect subject under Sibyl. Another detail is when Sibyl lists out why Akane is worth while for them to keep alive they point out how she is able to remain clear headed and optimistic, facing on the contradictions and dialectics of being a human while being paralyzed by it…(probably lots of marx/hegel on dialectics will be helpful here)
 
One of the most important lines of the show is at the end where Sibyl tells Akane to struggle, to suffer, to continue feed the system 'its nutrients'. This is so deep I was literally freaking because it relates to the idea of the anti revolution, which are …( all my Joy James stuff here)
 
A detail about Ginoza: when Akane asks him a 'boring' or 'mundane' or 'uninteresting' (no akane! Its not any of these! The banality is important (OMG BANALITY OF EVIL, HANNAH ARENDT IS A GENIUS)) if his glasses are blue light (is how I understood the subtitles, but the important thing is that these glasses are not key for his sight because Gino is not actually visually impaired) and he said no, it because I don't like my eyes (BECAUSE HE DIDN"T WANT TO BE JUST LIKE HIS DAD OMG TEARS) but the glasses were a metaphor for pretending to be someone his not, to intentionally choose to be essentially to be percied as impaired … I think Gino's psycho pass is cloudy because he understand Ko and his father Masaoka and he doubts the system, but he fights against it: because he is afraid, fearful to end up just like his dad who he simultaneously loves and hates … but gino isn't like akane, he couldn't compartalmentalize without having all the negative emotions take over. Therefore, taking off his glasses and becoming an enforcer shows his 'awakeness', a choice that allows him to finally 'see'.
 
Random thoughts on the genius of proper nouns in the show
Dominator: a total arbiter, dictator, it is the arm of the totalitarian(the system)
The final episodes name: the perfect world. In kanji, Kanpeiki is written this way: separately (using my mandarin analysis here) the character kan means whole, or full, peiki means wall (literally). In this way, I think in a literally sense the word perfect is a full wall, which I would argue traps rather than enables more freedom and choices. Ultimately, Sibyl is a system that reduces rather than encourages people's ability to choose, ultimately acting as a paternalistic ruler: I know what's best for you so I will choose for you. I think Akane had a reckoning with this her imaginary monologue with Yuki about choices and also with Kagari, who scoffed at her as someone who were one of the subjects who had the least amount of choices.  Here then is a question though, which many political theorists have grappled with, what a subject's choices all are sort of 'bad'? Or that humans don't have the conditions to understand and fully utilize their ability to choose, in a way that makes society better off? I think that’s why Akane stayed within the system vs Kogami who took off immediately --- but ultimately she agrees with Kogami in one of their final conversations when Kogami said if there were more people like Akane then there would be no need for Sibyl at all, which akane echoed when defiantly yelling at Sibyl: you are a system with no future

Yayoi’s scoff and Shion referring to Ko and Makishimq as romantics

Really random ass thoughts on Makishima
I would have 100% worshipped him
If it were t for his ego. I think Ko is right though he comes off as someone who cares about societal progress / progress of the human race Ultimately what drives is his lack of recognition but he dominate systems, being invisible….so he has h healed trauma lol

But he is super smart, and has great points. For example I think even drawing from my life living “off script” are the moments I discover what is essential to me and so the meaning of my life … going back to Kagari’s convo with Akane this is where sibyl really stripped human identity or even renders the existential question obsolete …

ALSO BTW . HAVING A TON OF BRAINS TO GOVERN IS JUST A OLIGARPHY, DIFFERENTLY FROM A TECHNOLOGY SINGULARITY. ITS BUT A BUNCH OF HUMANS

Ty for bearing my witness to my stream of consciousness

According to IMFDB (Internet Movie Firearms Database - https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass_Providence ), the gun that Atsushi Shindo used to shoot himself (given to him by Kasei earlier) is a Glock 18, the exact same model that Akane uses to later shoot Kasei. It may even be the very same gun considering how hard it is to get firearms in the Psycho-Pass world.

Akane struck the Sibyl System a terrible blow, with the exact same weapon it used to take Shindo's life.

i saw there were multiple psycho pass series/ films on crunchyroll (im only episode 3). in what order do i watch them?

I invite you to a theroetical game, to self-determine if Sibyl would allow you to live within the crowd or not.

If my understanding is correct, Sibyl is treat loners and introverts as a potential treath even if their hue is clear, because this kind of people presumedly easyly able to detach from the (rules of) seceity. Who is doing stressfull job or for various reason frequently interacting with 100+ citizens, or criminals are endangered too.

I beleive mine is can be at high 80s, low 90s most of the time and Sibyl keeps it's eye on me.

My life isn't the stressfull kind, but people in general are annoys me and i prefer to stay alone rather than mixing with others. My job is in military as a civilian, so i need to work with noisy, inattentive extroverts, so called soldiers.

This above isn't can be a reason for me to beleive mine is in the low 90s, but in my country the everyday ppl are frustrated or stressed and it has effect on me too. Fortunetly we finally was able to demote our (for legal reason) presumedly corrupt politicians, what has a clearing effect on our hue, but beside that, the last 30+yrs wasn't kind to our society, the damage is done, obviously and healing is started recently.

What is your toughts about your coefficient?

If you don't want to write a novel, don't do it. I wrote this stuff to show what internal and external viewpoints ,effects was in my mind, what i considered important when i did this tought experiment on me.

SO, who else knew that the already iconic Akane/Kougami "being a detective" hospital scene was adapted in the manga as Kou convincing Gino to bust him out of said hospital, seek out Akane and Masaoka, help them apprehend the suspect, collapse to his knees, be helped back to his feet by Akane and THEN professing his *deep professional respect* to her.

The writers seem to have even less chill than Kougami himself.

I have no idea exactly how Arata's ability works, but he seems to be very empathetic and intelligent, allowing him to put himself in others' shoes and reconstruct cases. At least, that’s what I think—it’s been a while since I watched Psycho-Pass. However, I recently rewatched the first episode of Season 3, and Arata mentioned that anyone could learn this ability. Is that true? Or was he just being modest?

My GF (who is a huge dweeb) always tries to put on different animes, but it’s really hard for me because I lose interest very easily. I have watched some anime, but again, I lose interest really quickly if I don’t get attached to it, be it for character development, plot, or whatnot.

One night, she was watching some anime while I was lying next to her, and she ended the new episode of “Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You,” a fun, cheesy, feel-good show. Anyways, she scrolled past Psycho-Pass and said for the hundredth time, “I think you would really like this one.” At that moment, I had been doomscrolling for quite some time and said, “Fuck it.”

My god, what a good fucking show! I really enjoy it. We are barely on season 1, episode 10 or something, but goddamn, this shit slaps!

That’s it, just an appreciation post!

Cheerio!

Has there ever been a full English translation of the light novel adaptation of Season 1 (上 and 下)? I've heard people saying that it delves more into the thoughts of characters and details of the worldbuilding not in the anime

The number of people who know the truth about Sybil grows with each installment: Akane, Mika, now Arata (who might tell Kei). Interestingly, where Season 1 implied that if general population learned about it collapse would happen, Season 2 showed that normal people would actually find the brains to be OK. Season 3 actually revealed that many government higher ups are aware of the setup.

This makes me wonder what could happen if more and more characters learn about Sybil. People in Public Security seem like they would support Made of Brains Sybil for the sake of "order", but I cannot imagine people in Foreign Affairs ever being OK with it. Kougami will get downright murderous if he realises Sybil consists of the same psychopaths he did his best to kill off. Frederica is famously happy to give him free reign. Finally, all Dejima people are accustomed to function without the crutch of Sybil's judgement.

IDK, it just seems like it has the potential to be a very interesting dynamic both on the institutional level and the personal level. Akane is such a paladin of morality for most characters, but if Kougami ever learns that she knew about Made of Brains Sybil all along, he might lose his trust in her for good.

Thoughts?