Anime Review: Psycho-Pass

Psycho-Pass: cop-turned-criminal tangles with disgruntled literature major (or that’s how I like to look at it). This 2012 series from Production I. G. is excellent hard sci fi and close-but-no-cigar to excellent character drama. Set about a hundred years in the future, the series posits a Japan in which all people are monitored by means of a biofeedback device called a “psycho-pass” (katakana pun on “psychopath”). The psycho-pass measures emotional state. If a person reaches a certain level of agitation, a very pink and kawaii robot (or cop inside a holo-robot suit) may appear to suggest therapy. At a higher level, the pink robot may arrest you or shoot you dead. This system is the basis of Japan’s new calm and well-adjusted civilization. But as you might expect, it also poses problems. For one thing, some high-strung or traumatized people are not really criminally inclined, yet they may find themselves imprisoned or worse. Conversely, there’s a segment of the population that tests as normal but is, in fact, coldly sociopathic. (If this sounds like Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it’s meant to: the anime explicitly invokes the book.) Throughout the series, a team of Enforcers (emotionally volatile prisoners put to work as cops) and their detective supervisors deal with with various crimes, mostly fomented by one of these cold sociopaths.

Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project.

Clip from My Film, The Hour before Morning

I'm quite happy with the way this one is shaping up!