Psycho- Pass
Season One
Hannibal Lecter goes cyberpunk
Release Date: 1 September 2012 | 15 | 550 minutes | £ 59.99 ( Blu- ray)/£ 39.99 ( DVD) Distributor: Manga Entertainment Cast: Kana Hanazawa, Tomokazu Seki, Kenji Nojima
Cyberpunk and grisly pulp fiction converge in this anime from the studio behind Ghost In The Shell studio. In a rigidly controlled future Tokyo, every person’s mental state is monitored for signs of criminality. Despite ( or because of ) this, ghastly crimes still occur and some of the police investigating them are “latent” criminals themselves. That’s not true of the heroine though, rookie Akane, who’s going to have some very nasty shocks in the line of duty…
Psycho- Pass often plays like an SF version of a Thomas Harris horror- thriller, with dismembered and puréed (!) corpses, and some extremely cultured maniacs à la Hannibal Lecter. At its best, it’s smart, engrossing and ethically challenging. It blends old- school SF issues with Grand Guignol interlocking plotlines, conveying a world with very different morals from ours. At its worst it descends to repellent, pretentious titillation.
The glossy visuals and ambitious themes resemble those in Stand Alone Complex, the TV version of Ghost In The Shell, but Psycho- Pass also shares GITS’ stodgy exposition and intellectual name- dropping. Yet by the end, its ideas and character arcs pay off powerfully, and even Akane – who at first seemed pitifully cute – has developed in logical and fascinating ways.
Extras: Commentaries on three episodes, plus a subbed interview with three of the show’s staff at a US convention. Andrew Osmond
The show’s writer is Gen Urobuchi, a big name in current anime. He also wrote Fate/ Zero and Puella Magi Madoka Magica.