Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Psycho-Pass: Part 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't pass this one by.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 12, 2014

Note: For content specifically about Part 2, skip down below the first screenshot. This introduction gives some general background information on the series which was included in the Part 1 review. For those wanting to catch up on the story so far, there's information in our Psycho-Pass: Part 1 Blu-ray review.

People who aren’t able to sublimate their emotions are often accused of wearing their hearts on their sleeves, but imagine for a moment what life would be like if your general emotional state at any given moment were a quantifiable data stream that was being measured by the government, just to make sure you were staying on the straight and narrow and weren’t about to go off the deep end and do something stupid like commit a crime. Psycho-Pass is built on just such a conceit, a sort of anime version of Minority Report, where a sort of “precog” entity known as Sybil is constantly measuring each and every individual’s emotional temperature, scoring it, and then deciding if the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division needs to take action to prevent any imminent crime. The actual anime starts somewhat in media res, slowly bringing the viewer up to speed about this dystopian future society. The focal character is a young woman named Akane Tsunemori, a rookie cop in Unit One of the Criminal Investigation Division who is thrown headlong into a hostage situation which deprives her of any typical “rookie training” at the hands of her supervisor Nobuchika Ginoza. Instead new Inspector Akane is quickly briefed on Enforcers, so-called “latent criminals” whom the Criminal Investigation Division utilizes to track down bad guys in a sort of “it takes one to know one” gambit. The Inspectors act as watchdogs over the Enforcers, making sure they don’t do anything untoward as they close in on their prey. Both the Inspectors and the Enforcers come equipped with a high tech weapon called a Dominator, a sort of combination Star Trek tricorder-phaser that instantaneously measures any given individual’s “crime coefficient” (meaning the likelihood they’re about to commit a criminal act) and then amps up an appropriate blast which can vary from a kind of quasi-“stun” which paralyzes the perp to a much bloodier level which basically makes the bad guy explode.

As the second half of Psycho-Pass starts up, it appears for a while that the series has taken a rather strange left turn. Instead of initially focusing on the growing relationship between Akane and Kogami, or even Akane’s role in Unit One and various investigations, the show instead delves into a series of flashbacks from three years previously that begin to detail the backstory of a would be rock star named Yayoi. While this might seem to be a departure, it soon dovetails into some of the main themes of the series, probably most importantly the role of latent criminals and Enforcers. It turns out that Yayoi is housed in an institution for latent criminals, and the flashbacks reveal that her interaction with a rebel named Rina may have led to her current predicament. There are some passing revelations about how Sibyl “approves” various artistic pursuits and how the obsessive qualities of some artists ends up making their Psycho-pass hues verge dangerously toward the latent criminal end of the spectrum.

It turns out that Kogami is attempting to recruit Yayoi to be an Enforcer, but the girl has doubts about going along with the ruling powers that be, especially since her repeated requests for guitar strings have been denied by Sibyl and the institution’s drone robots. When Kogami arrives one day with the desired strings, her will begins to crack, and when Kogami tells her that there’s an incipient rebel force in the region where she used to ply her musician’s trade, her interest is definitely piqued, especially when some surveillance seems to reveal that Rina is performing (there’s a slight but unmistakable hint of a lesbian relationship between the two).

More in line with developments that were depicted in the first half of the series, the ongoing hunt for Makishima continues, with Kogami seeming to be especially intent on bringing the character to justice, especially since his crime coefficient never rises to levels where the Dominator could be of use. This particular aspect of Makishima also plays into some revelations about Sibyl and Sibyl’s true form and ultimate intentions that take up at least parts of several episodes toward the end of the arc.

Akane’s relationship with Kogami actually ends up being less of a central issue for the series than Akane’s relationship with Sibyl does, in one of the nicer sleights of hand the series pulls of as it reaches its endgame. While at least one revelation about Sibyl will again remind some people of Minority Report, as was mentioned in the first part of this review above, there’s a very interesting turn of events that once again foists an all important decision upon Akane which becomes a brief but compelling focal element as the series comes to a close. Once again Akane is forced to face what it means to be an Inspector, and perhaps even more importantly, a cog in what turns out to be a rather vast and even conspiratorial wheel. The series folds back on itself like a Boolean curve, revisiting scenes that were glimpsed in passing as the show got off to its bristling start, and then in a standard but nonetheless satisfying trope, Akane finds herself on the other end of the scene which introduced her in the first episode.

Psycho-Pass: Part 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

If you've seen any of the many Ghost in the Shell releases, you'll know pretty much exactly what to expect from Psycho-Pass' AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a dystopian future society that is one part Blade Runner, with neon signs seeming to "melt" under nonstop rain, and one part, well, Ghost in the Shell itself, with dark, shadowy environments which occasionally burst into brightly lit daytime environments where things seem relatively "normal", if only for a moment. A lot of this anime is intentionally on the soft side, with objects seen through glass or other intermediary objects. However, when the animators give us a close-up or a brightly lit sequence, it becomes obvious how sharp line detail and color are. There's a slightly desaturated look to long segments of the series, especially in the nighttime, outdoor sequences. It should be mentioned that a lot of Psycho-Pass is intentionally very dark, to the point that it is sometimes difficult to make out exactly what's going on, but that seems to be stylistic choice meant to mirror the troubling world that Akane finds herself in.

Psycho-Pass: Part 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Psycho-Pass features an English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and the original Japanese language track in Dolby TrueHD 2.0. The English dub is (expectedly) much more aggressive, with quite a bit of nice immersion with regard not just to things like the Dominator in action, but also more subtle ambient environmental effects of the urban cityscape. Dialogue is very cleanly presented and the show's score is also noticeably more fulsome in the 5.1 rendering. Fidelity is excellent on both of these tracks and dynamic range is quite wide as well.

Psycho-Pass: Part 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Episode 13 Commentary features Zach Bolton, Jason Douglas, and Josh Grelle.


• Episode 18 Commentary features Zach Bolton, Stephanie Young and Linda Leonard.


• Psycho-Pass at Sakura-Con Part 2 (1080p; 20:18)


• Textless Opening Song "Out of Control" (1080p; 1:32)


• Textless Closing Song "All Alone With You" (1080p; 1:32)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:15)

Psycho-Pass: Part 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fans of anime know that Fuji Television's noitanimA block has been a hit or miss affair, but Psycho-Pass certainly is one of the better entries in this "short form" set of series. Some may (perhaps rightly) see Psycho-Pass as a kind of B-movie knock off of some of the ideas (and especially the style) of Ghost in the Shell, but the series offers some really interesting characters and a compelling, if somewhat derivative, concept. The series is at times quite exceptionally gruesome and graphic (and so is most definitely not an anime for younger children or the easily squeamish), but it deals with some nicely nuanced issues in an unexpectedly adult way. While the supplements on this second set pretty much mimic those on the first in their own way, the technical merits continue to be very good. Highly recommended.