Psycho Pass: the Movie

The Lost in the Jungle ROSSMAN

So the final Psycho Pass story has been told. It is really fun. It wraps up everything in the Psycho Pass universe in one neat and tidy little bow.... One of those sentences is false. Knowing the Japanese anime business model, try to guess which one is not a true statement.

Yes, this is the last chapter in the tale, and yes, it is a really fun trip that expands and advances the Psycho Pass universe in cool new ways, but it is definitely more of a "middle chapter" story rather than a huge, answer everything (or anything) finale. That's the only thing that is disappointing with this movie: it doesn't feel like any kind of real ending at all. Maybe they'll make more Psycho Pass in the future, but there are currently no plans for it.

First of all, this movie isn't for Psycho Pass noobs. This is a continuation of the super complex and sci-fi-techy plot that we've already been following for 2 TV seasons and around 33 episodes. Anybody jumping into this movie without any prior knowledge of the background plot (or who the main characters are and why they're doing what they're doing, and what the Sibyl System [that rules Japan with an iron fist] is) will be just as confused as your parents when you try to explain to them that simply because you lock yourself in your room all day (watching anime, singing theme songs in Japanese [without knowing what the lyrics mean], and jerkin the Gerkin to hentai images off of 4-chan), that you are NOT socially inept, nor that you aren't on the spectrum at all. Yes, they'll be THAT confused, and yes, you ARE on the spectrum... Or at least mildly retarded.

The movie assumes that you're up to date on your Psycho Pass lore, and starts off with a group of foreign terrorists sneaking into Japan with a buttload of weapons, ready to do what they can do to take down the Sibyl System. Akane and her now well-oiled group of cops and criminals-on-lethal-leashes take the bad guys down easily, without even one casualty on her team. Then, by brain-diving into the only two survivors of the illegal immigrants minor militia maneuver, they find out that the infiltrating gaijin are from a war-torn section of the world now known as the South East Asian Union (aka "SEAUn"). But they also find out that these terrorists know Akane's old partner, Kogami, who appears to be a big player in the SEAUn revolution that's currently under weigh.

Akane gets permission from her superiors to go to the SEAUn in order to find and arrest the now criminal Kogami (though Akane wants some answers from him first) due to the battle-weary nation's franchising of the Sibyl System in an attempt to replicate the false peace that Japan has acquired through its use. The SEAUn's beta-site for their Sibyl System is on a man-made floating city called Shambala Float, off the coast of what is currently Cambodia. Akane witnesses how another country (not as sophisticated, nor as refined as Japan) uses the psycho pass-judged program to rule its society, especially when it's in the middle of a horrifying war (known to cause psycho passes to rise dramatically in the general population). To give any more away would be a disservice to you, but I will say that there are lots of Dominator and bullet and grenade-caused death and destruction in this thing. It's fun for the whole family!

This Psycho Pass movie is a lot more action packed than the slower, more dramatic, more cerebral TV series, but it does push the plot of the Sibyl System and its desire for control further, and it answers and asks new intriguing questions about what makes a society civil. There is also some pretty delicious character development that takes place during its rather hefty runtime, most especially having to do with Akane and Kogami after they're reunited in the middle of a bloody war for independence in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

That was perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about this flick: how it took the story out of the shiny, controlled streets of futuristic Tokyo, and planted Akane (and we, the viewers) into the middle of a jungle nation suffering from a long, drawn-out, violent as fuck civil war. I did find it a trifle bit unrealistic that Akane wasn't shell-shocked at all by all the dirt and horrors that she'd been thrown face-first into, but I guess she'd already seen her fair share of blood and gore while trying to keep Japan's "civilized" cities clean. So yeah, nevermind.

Cool new futuristic weapons and four-legged tanks, along with crazy dictators and callous army officers make this feel more Gundam than Blade Runner (which the previous two TV series used as an obvious template), but all the new additions are well-enough established during the course of the film that you soon enough accept them as a part of the same universe. And that's... That's pretty much all I can really say about this movie without ruining any of it for you. And seriously, you should watch this movie if you've already seen the series and liked them. It's more of the same goodness.

Other than wishing that this story was just the first 1/4 or 1/2 of a full season of episodes — the rest of which I would have hoped would wrap up the story of Sibyl-run Japan in a satisfying manner — I have nothing to complain about here. Once again, this is not a real ending to the Psycho Pass tale, it's just a well-told side story really. Unfortunately, it looks like it's all we'll get.

I liked it. You'll like it too, if you liked the TV series. I liked those. My friends liked those. If you didn't like the TV series then I don't like you, and you ain't no friend of mine. Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, Ike, like, like. I give The Psycho Pass Movie a psycho pass of 20 out of 500 (which means that it's cool, calculating, and not brazen or crazy, and very unlikely to kill you).

The Passing Psycho CARL

You know how the Rossman makes it a point in his review to say how "if you haven't seen the TV series before hand you'll be lost with this movie"? Well, I guess I was the control group for that experiment...

I had NO FUCKING CLUE what was going on in this movie. None. I didn't know who that girl was, who that other girl was, who that guy in the jungle was, who that old woman behind the desk was, or why any of them acted certain ways to anybody else. I didn't understand how those guns worked, why they worked differently on different people, why that one country wanted the sterile, lame environment that future Japan is apparently built on, or anything. I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.

And so, in the end, I give this movie a "Q out of Eleventy." I didn't understand it, so it won't understand me.

ANGRY AAAAAAMY

War is bad. Got it. Thanks, Psycho Pass writers. I wasn't sure.

I give Psycho Pass: The Movie 4 out of 5 stars of obviousness. I'm pretty sure that its only point was to tell us stuff that we already knew... In case that wasn't clear enough for you.